I'm curious, how can for example SHA-256 be unique if there are only a limited number of them?!
For clarification:
how many MD5 hashes are there?
$16^{32}$ MD5 hashes can be produced.
$16^{64}$ SHA-256 hashes can be produced.
while there are $16^{128}$ just SHA-512 hashes, let alone long texts.
For more clarification:
assume we want MD5 of all the SHA-256 hashes.
we can have $16^{32}$ number of MD5 hashes, while there are $16^{64}$ SHA-256 hashes.
we will have 3.4*$10^{38}$ duplicate MD5 hashes!
And so is for SHA-256 hash, if we calculate SHA-256 of all the SHA-512 hashes, we will have 1.15*$10^{77}$ duplicate SHA-256 hashes!
Edit: This is not limited to a particular hash like SHA-256.