Parallel universes, or alternative universes or mirror universes have had a long run of popularity in science fiction and science fantasy, in both print and visual formats. One need only look at an “Alice
Continued from yesterday’s blog…
How do they, parallel universe photons say, actually get here? Well, at the quantum level, all manner of virtual particles pop into and out of existence from what’s called the vacuum energy. At the extremely microscopic level, what’s often called the ‘quantum foam’, is a level seething with activity, including the popping into and out of existence of micro wormholes, wormholes that can connect one universe with another, even if only for nanoseconds. But, that’s enough to allow the transfer of micro objects, like photons, and electrons, etc. from one universe to another. It’s like seeing the ocean from space. It looks really smooth and tranquil. However, at rowboat level, there’s this twenty foot wave about to come crashing down on top of you.
As the collection of all universes is the Multiverse, and since the wave-particle duality is at the heart and soul of quantum mechanics, then it follows that perhaps quantum physics is just the physics of the Multiverse!
The double slit experiment can be (and has been) repeated with electrons, and neutrons and protons, etc. Same results! So, therefore, there must be virtual or shadow or ghost electrons and neutrons (or quark trios) and protons (or again quark trios). Now things get interesting! But before I get to that, David Deutsch never speculated above the level of shadow or ghost protons (or other elementary particles) as proof of parallel universes. The following extrapolations are my doing!
If there are virtual / shadow / ghost protons and neutrons, then there are (let’s just call them) ghost nuclei. Add your ghost electrons and you have ghost atoms, hence ghost molecules and on up the chain to… well, ghosts!
Now these parallel universe ghosts aren’t dead people, but people quite alive in said parallel universe. They could appear to us as dead acquaintances or even dead loved ones, but parallel universes aren’t of necessity identical copies of ours (recall the heads, tails and coin-on-edge example). Just because Mum is deceased in our Universe doesn’t mean she’s yet snuffed it in a parallel one.
These virtual or shadow or ghostly images don’t even have to be living things of course. There’s a long history of apparently sane and sober people seeing, quite unexpectedly, spectral images of non-living ‘things’, like a building appearing in a otherwise verified field-of-grass only.
There’s equally a long list of documented transient phenomena, unfortunately unpredictable and unverifiable - UFOs anyone?
Speaking of UFOs (as intelligently piloted vehicles from elsewhere and/or elsewhen), sceptics often will claim ‘it can’t be, therefore it isn’t’, where the ‘can’t be’ usually refers to the impossibility of interstellar spaceflight which would require faster-than-light velocities to make things practical and viable, blah, blah, blah…. Quite apart from the fact that that assessment is total nonsense as I’ve already elaborated on elsewhere, subluminal interstellar travel doesn’t, of necessity, violate any laws of physics, period. End of discussion. However, nobody, including me, says it will be easy, but that’s a different horse of another colour.
Anyway, if there can be some sort of now and again natural interaction between parallel universes, then it follows that an advanced technological race of beings (call them aliens if you will), might be able to artificially manipulate such ‘gateways’ and go exploring – not so much in time and space but as in crossing over from X-universe to a parallel Y-universe, which in distance terms might be as close to zero kilometres as makes no odds.
Cryptozoology is another ripe area potentially explainable in part at least by parallel dimensions. Take Loch Ness and its alleged monster, one of the most baffling of cases in all of cryptozoology. On the one hand, you’ve lots of seemingly credible witnesses with no axe to grind going back over many decades. Are they all lying, exaggerating, and being fooled or just hallucinating? The odds of that are poor for the collective of all sightings. On the other hand, you have a relatively small and confined area offering little hiding room to a relatively large animal. It’s an area that has been combed many times with all the sophisticated technology we can muster – no animal. However, it doesn’t stretch the imagination to breaking point and beyond to suggest that in some parallel universe(s), plesiosaurs (or equivalent) still exist and that for some reason there is, albeit just a rarely now and again, some sort of harmonic resonance between that world and our world, and presto, a sighting of the elusive Loch Ness Monster.
Perhaps a most likely interaction between parallel universes is evident in our dreams.
We often seemingly invent out of thin air quite unfamiliar people, places, and situations when dreaming, as well as finding ourselves in more familiar surroundings, albeit rarely something exactly parallel down to the Nth detail – at least that’s my experience. It’s maybe 90% familiar territory; never 100%.
If there is some sort of parallel universe interactions, your dreams could be, in a nebulous sort of way, a link with the lifestyle of your counterpart(s), and presumably said counterpart(s) now and again dream slightly unfamiliar scenarios that reflect your actual situations; your world and your lifestyle and relations.
It’s a sort of telepathy perhaps only achievable at the subconscious level when you’re asleep and all those day-to-day routines and constant mental activities can’t overwhelm that incredibly faint signal from a parallel universe(s).
Now that’s not to say all dreams are parallel universe related, but some might be.
Since the double slit experiment with one photon at a time, produces interference patters 100% of the time, yet things like ghosts, UFOs, the Loch Ness Monster, even dreams, aren’t reproducible on demand, I can only conclude that it’s much easier for micro bits like photons and atoms to crossover from X-universe to Y-universe (our Universe) than it is for macro objects. But, that’s not an uncommon experience within our own world. Bacteria are vastly more common than humans – bacteria are everywhere; humans aren’t. Small things or objects can wriggle through small spaces where larger objects can not fit. It takes exceptional circumstances, an exceptional large gateway or hole between universes for a UFO or a Loch Ness Monster to make its ever so brief and unexpected appearance. So, lots of small holes or ‘gateways’ allowing lots of ghost photons (and presumably other particle types – very, very, few large holes or ‘gateways’, so actual sightings of living ghosts, etc. are very, vary rare.
Now more likely as not, it’s only a relatively few parallel universes that have a real resonance with ours. There could be other universes with physics so different that they are totally out of sight, even if not out of mind.
Summary: The concept of parallel universes is a sound, yet novel way of explaining one of the (many) deep mysteries contained in the double slit experiment that illustrates the wave-particle duality of matter. From that, the concept can be extrapolated or expanded to explain possible other, but more macro, anomalous phenomena.
*But with one very, very important caveat. The Copenhagen Interpretation of the quantum requires that Nature makes up Her mind when, and only when an observer or an observer’s measurement is made. Until then all is probability and nothing has reality or actual existence. The Moon has no reality unless someone is observing or measuring it! To me, observers are irrelevant – reality is reality, with or without observers.
**Deutsch, David; The Fabric of Reality; Penguin Books, London
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