How did Hope's birth affect the multiverse?

Question

In some of Warren Ellis' work on Astonishing X-Men, issues #25-30 ("Ghost Box"), some nefarious individuals from other Earths use a Ghost Box to cross over to Earth-616, finding it relatively undefended given the tiny number of mutants post-House of M. They (the people of "The Annex") are looking to conquer Earth-616 for themselves, and have sent mutant scouts.

This particular dimension (and, it is implied, others) do have mutants, though there is some mentioned that their X-gene is present on a different chromosome. Beast and others theorize that in the instant that Hope was born, many dimensions would have sprung into being in the multiverse in which mutants were common again.

Apparently the Scarlet Witch affected the entire multiverse during House of M. However, how is it that Hope's birth is able to do the same thing somehow, creating parallel dimensions? Is there something significant to the entire multiverse about Hope's birth?

Answer 1

Everything that happens affects the multiverse. Conceptually, the multiverse is all the infinite possibilities of every binary condition in the universe, from the spin of a quark on up (and maybe down), played out in their entirety. Every time a binary condition presents itself, two complete universes are "created" insomuch as the quantum possibility of both eventualities exists, for an indefinite amount of time, with equal certainty. Then the penny drops and either one universe ceases to exist or, as in Marvel, one reality persists and the other becomes a What-If?

So, Hope's birth simply opened up a number of possibilities stemming from the re-population of mutants. M-Day had no special relationship with the multiverse, it simply created a situation where mutants were rare in 616. A theoretically infinite number of similar M-Days occurred throughout the multiverse. Hope's birth opened up the possibility that this would change. Beast's supposition is that during the time between M-Day and Messiah Complex, 616 was on the list of more desirable targets for multiverse-conquerors, but post-Hope, it's more of a gamble to dispatch an army to another universe, powerful mutant populations being more likely to occur, thus the need for advance scouts.