7

I'm just listing things Suzuha explained in episode 14:

1. There is divergence meter which numerically explains the current world.
2. To make big changes you need to go beyond the 1% divergence to a beta world.
3. Divergence meter shows values between 0%..100%

putting all these together we might assume there are only 100 possible distinct worlds, aka. only 100 possible futures. Is this assumption right or am I missing something?

Ali1S232
  • 875
  • 3
  • 8
  • 20
  • if someone can come up with a better mark down I'll be more than glad to approve his edit! – Ali1S232 Jan 30 '13 at 00:12
  • 2
    The Divergence Number should not be taken as absolute, since it is just a reference point that the future Okabe who created. The number "1" was chosen to illustrate to the past Okabe that he needs to get beyond that number to change "major" world lines. He could have used any system, but he chose that one. – кяαzєя Jan 30 '13 at 01:41

1 Answers1

9

It's worth remembering that Suzuha comes from the future, but she only knows what is known by people in the future α world line. In fact, some of that turns out not to be entirely correct, or at least it's misleading.

In any case, it depends on what you mean by "future". Two different futures can have the same, or very close, divergence numbers. This is evidenced by the fact that Mayuri died in many different ways, yet the divergence number didn't change (at least not appreciably). While these are different futures in the near term, they all converge to the same end result, at least as long as they are still on a world line close to the α (alpha) world line. This is what is meant by the Attractor Field.

The divergence number measures how much the world line has deviated from a particular value. To reach the β (beta) world line, they need to get to a divergence number between 1% and 1.99%, and again there's an attractor field so that any world lines in this range converge to the same eventual future. There are also γ, δ, and ω world lines in the visual novel and drama CDs, and of course the

Steins Gate world line.

As for the particular values for divergence number, many are present. The divergence meter has been shown to change by as little as 0.000001%, which would allow for at least 100,000,000 world lines, and for all we know these numbers were just approximate anyway so there could be infinitely many (since they are only quoted to that many significant digits). We can't really say for sure either way, but most of those world lines end up being very close to each other in the end.

From the above link, the known values are:

α:

0.571046
0.571024
0.571015
0.523307
0.523299
0.456914
0.456903
0.409431
0.409420
0.334581
0.337187

β:

1.130238
1.130205
1.129848
1.130212
1.130211
1.130209
1.130208
1.130206
1.130205

γ

2.615074

Divergence numbers are unknown for the δ world line.

ω

.275349 (said to be negative, so maybe it's actually -.275349)

And the spoilery one:

Steins Gate
1.048596

So, depending on how you look at it, there are lots of possible futures (maybe infinitely many), but eventually all of them converge to one of these 6 (as far as we know). There could be more that are revealed later, but based on what is known right now, these are the only 6 possible long-term futures.

Logan M
  • 28,313
  • 27
  • 141
  • 225
  • I was asking about these futures with major changes of course. and by the way Mayuri every time Mayuri died it was a different world which meant different divergence number. except all those worlds were sharing first digit (aka. they were all in alpha line) – Ali1S232 Jan 30 '13 at 00:48
  • 1
    @Chunk-e-Yamani That definitely hasn't been revealed. However, it's worth noting that both the ω and Steins gate world lines share some of their range with α and β. The attractor fields can behave differently for different world lines, and not all of them occupy a 1% divergence interval. So it's totally possible that there are lots of other different unknown world lines. – Logan M Jan 30 '13 at 01:01