What if space isn’t a container at all, but a hall of mirrors — an infinite reflection of information folding back on itself? In this view, the universe didn’t explode from a single point; it unfolded like a cosmic origami of nothingness observing itself. Every particle, every photon, every heartbeat would be one shimmer in that endless reflection, where gravity isn’t a force pulling objects together but the geometry of these folds — the universe’s own self-awareness made visible.
If you could somehow fold an ordinary sheet of paper 103 times, its thickness would exceed the diameter of the observable universe. Each fold doubles its thickness, so the growth is exponential: after n folds, the thickness equals the original multiplied by 2 to the power of n. Starting with a sheet just 0.1 millimeters thick, by the time you reached 103 folds it would stretch to roughly 107 billion light-years—slightly more than the observable universe’s 93 billion. Of course, no physical paper could survive such a process; it’s a metaphor for how exponential transformation can outpace imagination, turning something as thin as thought into something vast enough to hold galaxies.
If that’s true, then dark matter may be an illusion born from our blindness to the reflections. Galaxies hold together not because of unseen particles, but because information bends — the folds of reality deepen where entropy tries to smooth itself out. The entropy field would be the pulse of that process, the invisible current that decides where matter clumps and where it thins. To us, it feels like gravity; to the universe, it’s balance — the way a mirror balances light.
But this vision comes with breathtaking consequences. It means the cosmos is not a stage filled with things, but a pattern of reflections, a recursive self-portrait written in light and void. Space is the architecture of these folds; time is their rhythm. And if this “folding universe” is real, then every movement — from the orbit of a planet to the firing of a neuron — is the void folding itself into meaning. In that sense, we’re not separate from the universe’s reflection — we are one of its mirrors, briefly catching its own gaze.