# parallel universes - overview



## Jayaprakash Satyamurthy (Nov 19, 2003)

This isn't a new piece, it's an article I found on the Scientific American site some time back. It's one of the best overviews I've seen of the major approaches to the whole parallel universe conundrum.

There's some really odd stuff in there - I just love it when 'real' science out-wierds science fiction!
	

	
	
		
		

		
			





http://sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000F1EDD-B48A-1E90-8EA5809EC5880000&catID=2


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## Brian G Turner (Nov 22, 2003)

That's a very nice article - good find, *knivesout.* 

I haven't got enough time to read it tonight, but I will try to digest something of it tomorrow.


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## littlemissattitude (Nov 22, 2003)

I will have to read the whole article when I have the time to sit and savor it.  But something certainly jumped out at me from the first couple of paragraphs when I scanned the beginning of it:



> In infinite space, even the most unlikely events must take place somewhere.


I've thought for as long as I can remember that everything that anyone could possibly imagine has already happened _somewhere, sometime_.  Maybe I'm not completely crazy after all.


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## Brian G Turner (Nov 23, 2003)

Yes, there's a quote on one of my favourite albums - "It is a mathematical certainty that somewhere...there is another planet where they speak English".

If I remember right, parallel universes is very much the territory of Dr David Deutsch. I believe he was one of Roger Penrose's students - Penrose being the chair of maths at Cambridge, who's written some very interesting books. Deutsch seems to be regarded as somewhat "fringe" in mainstream maths/physics, but his theories are stubbornly appealing.


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## Jayaprakash Satyamurthy (Nov 24, 2003)

What album is that?


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## Incognito (Nov 24, 2003)

It's one of the tracks on "Second Light" by Dreadzone.


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## Michael (May 20, 2004)

Well, if I have to subscribe I won't be reading the whole article, but just first couple of paragraphs have me awed to . . shoot, I'll skip the redundancy (LOL).


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## Ivo (Jun 3, 2004)

I actually read this article when it first appeared.  Fascinating stuff, very well layed out too.

I hope my other selves are doing well.


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## Hypes (Jun 3, 2004)

Mhm, can't read it in its entirety. :|


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## kyektulu (Aug 8, 2005)

Very interesting knivesout.
Me and my partner often discuss the possibility of paralell universes now I have some more info to tell him 
Thank you.


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## lucifer_principle (Aug 8, 2005)

The article isn't very specific or practical. The best way I can understand what its trying to say is "mirrors", hey without our dear mirrors we wouldn't know who we really are would we? So the same goes for our our living universe generaly. Yes, the article sounds more philosophical than scientific to me. However an Italian mathematician once said " infinity is ratios infinitely approaching each other while infinitely move apart from each other" My best example is the number line, since we have + infinity, we must have also have - infinity. Antimatter? parallel universe?...hmm


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## Stalker (Aug 9, 2005)

Hey, are you all subscribed to Scientific American Digital? I'd like to read the full article instead of intriguing annotation but was unable to do that because of paid subscription. Or there's another way?


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## chrispenycate (Nov 3, 2005)

There can be no such thing as a parallel universe- it's a term used by lazy sci-fi writers because the readers are used to it. A "universe" is, by definition, all the matter, energy and space which exists. If we can't detect most of it, if it's got a few extra dimensions, if bits of it work to different physical laws, even if every picosecond each particle generates a whole new layer of spacetime as large and complex as was the entire previous system, it's still semantically one universe.
Neither do we know that it's infinite. Even in that last example, where each photon and quark in the exponential of exponential of exponential of tons has been creating its own version of the whole every unmeasurably short period of time during the few billion years since the big bang there are not an infinity of particles, just an inconceivably large number- and even if the big bang was leakage from a larger continuum, it only pushes the calculation back a stage, increases the number by a few orders of magnitude of orders of magnitude. It's still one universe (that's where the "uni" comes from) Just a slightly more complex and interesting one than we previously considered.


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## Ahdkaw (Nov 4, 2005)

Isn't that why they created the multiverse?


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## chrispenycate (Nov 5, 2005)

Exactly- and I'm a ficton, so you don't have to take any notice of my pedantic rants.
There is no need for the word, or the concept "multiverse"- how long will it be before someone decides that's not big enough and developes a polimutiverse or whatever?


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## littlemissattitude (Nov 5, 2005)

chrispenycate said:
			
		

> A "universe" is, by definition, all the matter, energy and space which exists. If we can't detect most of it, if it's got a few extra dimensions, if bits of it work to different physical laws, even if every picosecond each particle generates a whole new layer of spacetime as large and complex as was the entire previous system, it's still semantically one universe.


 
One of the reasons why I like semantics so much is that it can spur such interesting disucssions. 

Actually I kind of like the word "multiverse", but I do see your point, and I've thought much the same thing.  Then again, of course, I still can't get my mind around the concept of having a finine universe, but with nothing outside of it.  It's like trying to think of "nothing".  Can't do it, and can't conceive of there being some kind of boundary to the universe, but there being nothing outside of it.  That just doesn't make any sense to my poor, mathematically-challenged brain.  I prefer to just thing of the universe still expanding into the available space.  Even though that's probably completely erroneous, scientifically speaking.


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## chrispenycate (Nov 5, 2005)

If the english language (and its transoceanic cousins) is to remain comprehensible across the generations it requires its stick in the mud conservatives as well as its innovators. I see myself as a linguistic Elric, balanced upon the cusp between order and chaos, understanding that neither can be allowed to win seeing that the protean language of total fluidity is universally incomprehensible, while the rigid stasis of an unvarying tongue can never describe a constantly changing universe.

Of course, it would be handy if someone could understand a word I said.


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## littlemissattitude (Nov 5, 2005)

I understood that, Chris.  I think.  Knowing who Elric is and what battles he has fought helped a lot.  And I understand the limitations of language in describing the universe.  My physics-major friends tell me that all I need to do is learn to speak math to understand it all.  Yeah, right.  It's not like I haven't tried.  I also understand the difficulties in translating one language into others, but as much of that is cultural as it is linguistic.  I wish I could learn to speak math so that I could work on more understandable translations into English and other languages.

Oh, and Chris?  Are you calling yourself a stick in the mud? 

*runs and hides before Chris can fling something at me*


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## chrispenycate (Nov 5, 2005)

littlemissattitude said:
			
		

> I understood that, Chris.  I think.  Knowing who Elric is and what battles he has fought helped a lot.  And I understand the limitations of language in describing the universe.  My physics-major friends tell me that all I need to do is learn to speak math to understand it all.  Yeah, right.  It's not like I haven't tried.  I also understand the difficulties in translating one language into others, but as much of that is cultural as it is linguistic.  I wish I could learn to speak math so that I could work on more understandable translations into English and other languages.
> 
> Oh, and Chris?  Are you calling yourself a stick in the mud?
> 
> *runs and hides before Chris can fling something at me*


Yes, actually you could probably translate it like that- though describing me as a "stick" under any circumstances is questionable. "football in the mud" perhaps?  

My subject in university was maths, and I passed the first year exams (just) without going to lectures or anything silly like that, so I presumably speak quite good Math- but I suppose explaining that there can't be nothing outside a finite, bounded universe, since nothing requires dimension, and space time expands at the same rate as the universe (presumable light speed, so there will never be an edge to the universe) and indeed in a positively curved universe there isn't even anywhere where there are no galaxies on one side, wouldn't help at all. (It doesn't sound right in translation, does it?

And I will admit I did deliberately make the previoud definition obscure- Sorry, I'll attempt to stop myself doing that, but no promises.


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## littlemissattitude (Nov 5, 2005)

I figured that, Chris.  I've always just taken that sort of obscurity as a challenge to my abilites at decipherment.  And yours actually said something and made sense.  But its positively amazing how many people do that to hide the fact that they aren't really saying anything.  Politicians and academics, mostly. *shudders*  One of the reasons why I haven't gone on to grad school is the fact that I've figured out from those who have been there that there's so much bs to wade through that I probably wouldn't be very welcome, as I have a very low threshold for that particular substance, and will point it out when I find it.  

And as far as your explanation about the boundaries of the universe - intellectually, that is completely logical.  But, I just can't get my mind around it to the extent that I can imagine it.  And, for all that I am a writer and work with words all the time, I'm also a very visual learner in that I need maps and charts and graphics of all kinds to get the "how" of how something works or is laid out fixed in my mind.  For example, if I'm reading a description of a battle in history, I have to have a map with all of the movements of the troops shown, or I will not be able to picture it and so won't feel like I fully understand how the battle progressed, spatially speaking.  In my anthropology classes (that was my major at university, although my school didn't exactly call it that...long story), people were always looking at me funny because I had all kinds of diagrams and charts in my notes.  Well, people often think I'm a bit odd, anyway, but that's beside my point here.


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## MissGuidedFee (Oct 17, 2006)

Stalker said:
			
		

> Hey, are you all subscribed to Scientific American Digital? I'd like to read the full article instead of intriguing annotation but was unable to do that because of paid subscription. Or there's another way?


I too only got a teaser. I'm very interested in this. Does anyone have access to the full article?


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## Dr.Jackson (Nov 19, 2006)

Just found this thread.
I am of the opinion that parallel universes or alternate realities *do* exist. Despite a lack of tangible evidence and exaggerated fantastical mythology from the realm of overactive sci-fi imaginations, science has suggested that we are mere fractions of a picometre away from parallel existences.

Personally I believe that I have either come from, or experienced an alternate universe. Allow me to ramble and you may decide my sanity after I relate my tale;

Some years ago at school, in English class, we had completed the first section of a required reading. Having completed the homework the day before, and having had it marked and comments left by the teacher in the jotters, we were asked to read the next chapter that night.
The following day I felt light headed upon entering the classroom. We were given questions to answer on the book which did not relate to what I had read. One other student also remarked that the questions were for a different book.
Upon checking, we were the only two people in the class to have this book, called 'Old Mali and the boy'. The teacher was adamant that we had never started that book, and was confused as to how we had copies from the school stocks.
We presented our jotters to see how much work we had done on the 'wrong' book, as we had been covering it for about a week. What confused the teacher most was that the work was undeniably corrected in her handwriting, yet she and the rest of the class knew nothing of the book, even when independantly the other student and myself were able to verify comments on the book made by other students.
Even stranger still, when checked, there were no copies of 'Old Mali and the boy' missing from the schools stores.
To this day, no logical explanation has been mooted, and the other student and myself maintain that we must have switched from a similar universe into this one, where almost everything tallied, but not quite.

If anyone has any theories about this, which is in no way a work of fiction, I would be glad to hear them.


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## heusdens (Feb 25, 2007)

The simple fact is this: apart from a word or concept, we term 'universe', there is no such thing as a universe. This is a fact of reality, since to call something 'existent' this means that it has a reality relative to something else.
Like an apple exist for me because it is a seperate reality from me, and I am a seperate reality for the apple. Me and the apple have objective relations, and because of that I can say the apple exist and since I am distinct from the apple, also I do exist.

The universe has no seperate reality outside of itself, and there is no reality outside the universe that has the universe as a seperate reality. Which is to say, there are no objective relations for the universe.

What just means that the universe does not exist.


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## Dimension Traveller (Mar 10, 2007)

For most of us, or perhaps all of us, it's impossible to imagine a world consisting of more than three spatial dimensions. Are we correct when we intuit that such a world couldn't exist? Or is it that our brains are simply incapable of imagining additional dimensions—dimensions that may turn out to be as real as other things we can't detect?

String theorists are betting that extra dimensions do indeed exist; in fact, the equations that describe superstring theory require a universe with no fewer than 10 dimensions. But even physicists who spend all day thinking about extra spatial dimensions have a hard time describing what they might look like or how we apparently feeble-minded humans might approach an understanding of them. That's always been the case, and perhaps always will be.

Found this via NOVA | The Elegant Universe | Imagining Other Dimensions | PBS


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## Rawled Demha (Jun 6, 2007)

aaaagh! im interested (and i mean seriously interested) in this concept. a short story (which is still bein written) is based on this very idea except the idea is incomplete atm! im not a quantum physicist so i dont know how it works so this teasing article rouses my ire like nothing else, not even women!


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## Interference (Aug 27, 2007)

Dr.Jackson said:


> If anyone has any theories about this, which is in no way a work of fiction, I would be glad to hear them.



I would love, presumably as much as you, to find some verifyable evidence that this happened.  I would love there to be some reason for your transmigration to another world.  Do you keep in touch with your fellow Traveller?  Have you compared medical histories?  What was this _light-headed feeling_ of which you speak?

You see, these things just seem to happen all the time.  I'm betting that you, or possibly your co-student, will be involved in one of the earliest time-travel experiments.  "Let's start with something trivial," one of you will say to the other.  "Remember that class test we both failed that made us look complete and utter fools to the rest of the class for the rest of our lives?"  "Yeah," one of you will respond loquaciously.  "It's why me and Mary Sue never got married," and he will sob, not for the first time, as he recalls those rosey cheeks, that flaxen hair .... "Well, let's go back and change the book!  Boy, will all their faces be red!  Haw-haw-hawwww!"

Little did you realise that it wouldn't be your lives you'd be changing, but everyone elses ...

Plausible?  Wouldn't it just be lovely if it were


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