Question: Is it true that everything you can imagine exists in the universe somewhere? If so could there be a god somewhere in another galaxy?

Sophie Robinson answered on 13 Mar 2015:

The human imagination is a truly incredible thing. Human beings have the ability to imagine absolutely anything at all, even things which do not obey the laws of physics. The universe however is big. Mind-boggingly big. The greatest minds to have ever lived have struggled to understand its complexities. But, the laws of physics are constant throughout the entire universe and this limits what really can exist.

The universe includes all of the matter, dark material, stars, planets, life, mountains, rivers, ideas and jam on toast in existence. There are billions of galaxies within the universe, full of absolutely incredible things. Although there are things in the universe that are very difficult to explain, and also things that are at the very limit of our ability to imagine (like black holes, quasar, dark matter and dark energy), every obeys the laws of physics.

Because of this, it isn’t really possible that anything you can imagine can exist somewhere. Even though another galaxy may be billions of light years from us here on Earth, the basic building blocks and rules will be the same.

In terms of whether there could be a ‘God’ in another galaxy, this depends almost entirely on your personal beliefs. The six main religions on Earth all have a creation story, which tries to answer questions like “why are we here?” and “how did the universe come to exist?”. Even non-religious people (atheists) still ask these questions. If you believe that God exists in our own Milky Way, there is no reason why this same God does not exist everywhere.

On the other hand, it is theorised that parallel universes may exist where the laws of physics are different, and there is even more than three dimensions. In these environments who knows what can happen!