Take a simple case: a 3×3 pixel image with only black and white pixels. There are only 9 pixels, and each has 2 options (black or white), so the total number of possible unique images is:
2^9 = 512
That’s tiny, you could generate and look at every one of those images in a few seconds. But already, you’re looking at the complete universe of 3×3 B/W images. Every possible shape, face, glitch, symbol, if it can exist in that resolution and color range, it’s already in there.
Now scale up.
A 1920×1080 image (full HD), with each pixel using 24-bit RGB (i.e., 16.7 million colors), has:
(2^24)^(1920×1080) = 2^49,766,400 ≈ 10^14,983,365
That number is incomprehensibly massive. It’s orders of magnitude larger than the number of atoms in the observable universe (≈10⁸⁰). And yet, it’s finite.
Which means:
- Every possible frame of every possible movie is mathematically there.
- Every photo you never took exists in this space.
- Every piece of digital art, every childhood memory, every face, every impossible scene, all of it is representable by just one of those possible combinations.
Of course, almost all of those images are noise. Pure entropy. But buried in that space is literally everything.
Makes you wonder, are we creating images? Or are we just exploring a tiny, meaningful subset of a space that already contains them all?