The Megaverse Concept

Everyone is aware that they live on a small blue-green planet which goes around an average star which orbits an average galaxy which is one of billions of galaxies that collectively make up our Universe. Is that all there is? Well, you may have heard of the Multiverse concept – a collection of Universes. You are probably familiar with Parallel Universes, even if just from watching or reading sci-fi. I’ll use an analogy here we’re all familiar with to illustrate these concepts – money.

Every country has money – coins and bills. Some currencies are more varied and colourful than others. Australia’s currency is one of those IMHO, but I’m probably biased living Down Under and using Australian currency. Still, the currency concept is pretty well established, so non-Australians should have no trouble following the analogy that I hope illustrates the Multiverse and the Parallel Universe, collectively a conglomerate I term a Megaverse.  

The Australian Multiverse Currency Collective

One Cent Piece: A high density copper Universe that was inhabited by the Feathertail Glider, a civilization unable to prevent the End of their Universe which has collapsed, due to high density, into a singularity and disappeared from sight.

Two Cent Piece: A high density copper Universe that was inhabited by the Frill-Necked Lizard which has also now collapsed for similar reasons into a singularity and disappeared from sight.

Five Cent Piece: A high density silver Universe inhabited by Echidnas, a race of spiny anteaters. It’s currently the smallest high density Universe.

Ten Cent Piece: A high density silver Universe inhabited by Lyrebirds.

Twenty Cent Piece: A high density silver Universe inhabited normally by the dominate race of the Platypus but with a few rarer species as well.

Fifty Cent Piece: A high density silver Universe inhabited mainly by a civilization of a very rare species indeed, the Coat of Arms (i.e. - stylized Kangaroos and Emus) but with a few rarer species as well present – they come and they go. This Universe is unique in having evolved over time from round space-time geometry to twelve-sided space-time geometry (Dodecagon). This Universe is the largest of all the high density Universes.

One Hundred Cent Piece: A high density golden Universe inhabited by a very diverse set of entities, though the dominant life form is a civilization of Kangaroos

Two Hundred Cent Piece: A high density golden Universe inhabited by a humanoid race known as the Aboriginals, an alien species if ever there was one. This Universe is the second smallest of all the known high density Universes.

All of the high density Universes is also by the way inhabited by variations of an alien parasitic species known as the Queen Lizzies.

One Dollar Bill: A low density brownish-orange Universe with a flatland space-time topology, but alas this Universe suffered the cosmological Rig Rip. RIP!

Two Dollar Bill: A low density greenish-yellow Universe with a flatland space-time topology which has now suffered a cosmological final Heat Death. A Two Dollar Bill was never all that crash hot to begin with!

Five Dollar Bill: A low density purple or violet-pinkish Universe with a flatland space-time topology. What’s interesting is that this Universe started out as a pale mauve cosmos before morphing into its current appearance. This Universe also hosts a species of the dreaded alien parasite, the Queen Lizzy. How this species made it from the high density Universes to here is a mystery of currency cosmological physics – perhaps she went through the wormhole.

Ten Dollar Bill: A low density Blue Universe with a flatland space-time topology.

Twenty Dollar Bill: A low density orange Universe with a flatland space-time topology.

Fifty Dollar Bill: A low density Yellow Universe with a flatland space-time topology.

One Hundred Dollar Bill: A low density Green Universe with a flatland space-time topology, the largest in size of all the low density Universes. What’s interesting is that this Universe started out as a light bluish-grey cosmos before morphing into its current appearance.

On some substantial note, all of the low density Universes, all those with a flatland space-time topology, are inhabited by various humanoid entities, so one might conclude that this collection or low density part of the Multiverse is older than the high density Universes. That might make sense if the younger high density Universes are expanding (due to ‘cosmic’ inflation?) and therefore density decreases over the long haul - cosmic evolution in action.

Now none of the above Universes coexist in the exact same space-time. They are all separate and unique Universes, even when in your wallet and jingling in your purse or pocket.

So that’s the collective Australian currency/coinage Multiverse comprised of various Universes, all of different colours and sizes; all with various densities and inhabitants.

But note that you can’t have just any old Universe. There’s no currency physics that allows a Three Dollar Bill Universe or a Seven Cent Coin Universe, though cosmic evolution might allow for that in the far distant future. In the meantime however, there’s allowable currency physics and unallowable currency physics when it comes the allowable and unallowable Universes.

The Australian Parallel Universe Currency Collective

A collection of just Twenty Cent Pieces or just Twenty Dollar Bill Universes would be a collection of Parallel Universes. Each Twenty Cent Piece (or Twenty Dollar Bill) Universe is the same in being a Twenty Cent Piece (or Twenty Dollar Bill) Universe. However, Parallel Universes while the same in terms of each being the same Big Picture, differ in the details – that’s what sets them apart as Parallel or Mirror Universes.

For example, in the case of the Twenty Cent Piece Universe, each Twenty Cent Piece has a case of ‘different strokes for different folks’, the ‘folks’ all being the same Big Picture (i.e. – they are just ‘folks’). Each and every Twenty Cent Piece Universe has a different fate – perhaps a differing date stamped on the coin. Some Universes will be mint and un- circulated; others eroded and/or dented and/or tarnished.

A collection of Twenty Dollar Bill Universes is also a Parallel Universe of Twenty Dollar Bill Universes. Again, each Twenty Dollar Bill Universe has a unique history apart from all other Twenty Dollar Bill Universes. Each has a differing and unique serial number; some maybe counterfeit; some are hot off the printing press, others creased, folded maybe torn. They are all Twenty Dollar Bill Universes, but all are quasi-Mirror images of the generic ideal. All exist in parallel with respect to the others - the same, but different.

Now say you have a stack of One Hundred Dollar Bill Universes. Clearly all are the same Universe, yet no two are absolutely identical – you have a Parallel Universe composed of the One Hundred Dollar Bill Universes. New Parallel One Hundred Dollar Universes are still being created as new bills are manufactured (acts of creation). Some Parallel Universes become defunct too (acts of destruction). Universes are dynamic and evolving entities. 

If you say that you are an inhabitant of the Ten Dollar Bill Universe, you’d probably have no way of contacting or exploring or even knowing about other currency Universes in other space-times. There’s probably no way you could know about and explore another Ten Dollar Bill Universe and meet yourself and discover what alternative history your other self lived; what sort of lifestyle and what sort of worldview did they have. As all Bills and Coins are isolated in their own individual space-time niches, so too are you isolated to that one bit and piece of space-time you find yourself in. The possible exception to this, as demonstrated by the Queen Lizzies, is travelling from one Universe to another via some exotic relativistic currency physics, say via currency wormholes.

In fact, since you cannot escape from your coins or bills currency Universe (currency wormholes apart), you could even think of it has being a currency Black Hole, an object from which nothing can escape! A Black Hole and a Universe might just be one and the same thing. On the other hand, a Black Hole that leaks into a White Hole could have that White Hole exit in another Universe in which case the Black Hole is the wormhole. 

Now, that’s the Megaverse in microcosm; now throw into the mix all the rest of the world’s currencies, past, present and future and you have the Big Picture of the macrocosm Megaverse. Is that all there is? Isn’t that enough?

Megaverse: A Few Notes

The Australian one and two cent coins, and the one and two dollar bill denominations are no longer manufactured and are no longer in active circulation, though technically still legal tender.

The Big Rip: The density of the [antigravity] Dark Energy in our Universe gets bigger and bigger as time goes by and the Universe evolves. Trillions of years from now the force of Dark Energy should be so strong as to rip apart even the constituent parts of molecules and atoms down to the level of their fundamental particles.

The Heat Death: We live in an expanding Universe. Unlike our ever increasing supply of Dark Energy, our heat supply is and always has been finite. Thus, over time, that finite supply is spreading out into an ever increasing volume and so the Universe is cooling, ever cooling, down. Eventually, as all the stars exhaust their fuel, the Universe will acquire an overall temperature as close to absolute zero as makes no odds. So you have, as the ultimate fate of the Universe, the slow death of heat, or the Big Chill!

The Singularity: If you gather enough mass together, the ever increasing amount of gravity will eventually become so great that mass will implode, perhaps, according to some physicists, down to a dimensionless point  of infinite density. That’s nonsense IMHO. The imploded object, the singularity, is just very, very, very tiny and very, very, very dense. It’s so dense that the intense gravity traps light and keeps even it from escaping. So you have this singularity, or in other words the heart and soul of a Black Hole.

The Wormhole: A theoretical shortcut, a gateway or passageway linking one part of the Universe to another part (or perhaps one Universe to another). Wormholes are common objects in sci-fi scenarios where you need to quickly get from Point A to Point B which is a massive distance away.

Time Travel via Parallel Universes: Part Two

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 in Wonderland” or look no further than the “Star Trek” universe (our Universe in less than obvious disguise) to view the near endless plot variations that such parallel / alternative / mirror universes provide our heroes and heroines. While there are some serious reasons to suspect that parallel universes do exist, there’s another, albeit more theoretical proof of the parallel universe concept. Time travel is the name of the game!

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

But there’s also a second catch – and here’s where parallel universes enter the picture. To avoid all those time travel paradoxes sci-fi writers love so well, if you travel back in time you also have to travel between parallel universes!

By all means go back to early April 1912 (I’m ignoring Catch #1 for sake of illustration here) and warn the Captain of RMS Titanic of what’s going to shortly happen. Assuming you convince him of the pending disaster (but more likely as not you’ll be thrown straight into the loony bin), and the disaster is avoided, you’ll have saved the ship and passengers and crew in a parallel universe – not in our Universe. Our RMS Titanic sank. People died. That cannot be changed, at least not by anyone from our Universe.

Because parallel universes don’t have to be carbon copies of ours, you might find, of course, that the ship maybe known as HMS Titan, and she’ll be due to strike a mine instead of a iceberg because the First World War started a decade earlier in that universe.

Maybe one could go back and warn parallel dinosaurs that a parallel asteroid was coming – only I doubt they’d listen (unless of course in this parallel universe they had evolved both an intelligence and technology to deal with the issue).

Or, by all means go back to 1912 and meet (and chat up) your now young and future great grandmother (or great grandfather as the case may be). You both fall in love and get married and thus your real great grandparents never meet and therefore one of your grandparents never was born and thus one of your parents never made it into this world and thus neither did you. So how can you exist therefore to have gone back in time and meet your great grandparent? (Note that this is a more humane version of the grandfather paradox where you kill one of your ancestors before they got their reproductive act together). I assume here that by doing so, that is going back in time and meeting your great grandparent, that you’re not actually going to be able to parent or father or produce your own grandparent, hence parent, hence yourself. You’re not your own great grandparent. Not in this Universe.

If you had done the above in our Universe, you’d have a paradox. You have prevented yourself from being conceived and born. You can’t be your own ancestor. There’s no paradox if you went back to a 1912 in a parallel universe. In that universe you indeed prevented your potential future existence in that universe, but not your actual existence which happened in our Universe.

But maybe you didn’t really travel back in time at all (eliminating Catch #1). If there is such a thing as a universal ‘now’, then our 2012 might correspond to another universe’s 1912 (and our 1912 corresponded to their 1812, and so on). Therefore, that you in our Universe in 2012 can perhaps see the living, albeit ghostly, image of someone/something that exists in that other universe’s 1912 (and maybe vice versa).

Now it doesn’t follow that our Universe of 2012 is actually a century older than a parallel universe whose ‘now’ is 1912. Evolution just developed at an ever so slightly slower pace in our parallel universe – that’s all.

There’s apparently yet another catch in all this. If you do time travel to a parallel universe, whether its real time travel, or pseudo and just apparent time travel, once you go, you’re stuck – there’s no coming home again. Of course you might in turn time travel to a third and fourth, etc. parallel universe, but you can’t come back to our Universe again, for that could mean one universe, our Universe, contains two copies of identical bits of matter – matter (in the form of you) has been created out of apparently nothing, in violation of basic conservation laws.  

Why can’t you go home again? You could conceivably return to the time just before you originally left and therefore there would be two identical copies of you existing at the same time and vicinity. Another universe could of course contain more than one copy of you. A universe can lose matter (you) to another parallel universe. A universe therefore can gain matter (you again), but no universe can have more than one copy of identical matter. That doesn’t mean that 50 parallel universes couldn’t lose their own version of you, and all 50 versions of you ends up in say a 51^st universe. There are no exact duplications, so no problems.

There’s also what’s known as information paradoxes within time travel scenarios that are also resolved via parallel universes. Say, for example, that your name is Richard Wagner (I’m sure there are lots of people in our 21^st Century with that name), and you were named after the famous opera composer. And say, like millions of others, you’re a fan of Wagner’s operatic music and productions, and further say you have the ways and means to travel back in time to the 19^th Century and have a desire to meet your famous namesake. And so off you go to meet the young budding opera composer – maybe get his autograph!

Upon arrival in the 19^th Century however you find that there is no such person! Well, being a fast thinker ready to seize the moment, you figure you won’t be missed in the 21^st Century (you’re an only child, an orphan, unemployed and unmarried). So you decide to step in and fill history’s breach and become somebody famous. You know exactly what to do, and so you become THE Richard Wagner. The operas (which you know so well) are duly composed by you and performed and all’s well with established history and the world – or is it?

The question arises, and remains, where did the operas (music, plots, etc.) actually come from? You learned and eventually knew them by heart when living back in the 21^st Century, yet you apparently composed them yourself based on that knowledge in the 19^th Century. Something is screwy somewhere. Original opera music and productions have apparently been written and created without any creativity or intellect involved.

Of course there is no paradox if you invoke a parallel universe. In our Universe there really was a 19^th Century opera composer known as Richard Wagner, and a 21^st Century enthusiast of his music and productions with the same name. The 21^st Century Richard Wagner does travel back in time to a 19^th Century, but a 19^th Century in a universe where the composer Richard Wagner never existed. Our 21^st Century fan of Richard Wagner brought our 19^th Century’s Wagner’s music to a parallel universe where it hadn’t or wouldn’t otherwise have existed. So, no paradox! There was a point of origin or an original intellect and acts of creativity in our Universe and in our 19^th Century.

And by the way, there are dozens of variations on this theme in the literature, especially books that highlight the paradoxes of time travel.

As you see, you can have a lot of fun with proposals that give credibility to parallel universes, which is all the better as these proposals are thoroughly grounded in hard science. Lastly, we need the concept of parallel universes to help keep our beloved sci-fi authors in a profitable job! 

Summary: Because time travel is allowable in relativity physics, to avoid time travel paradoxes, one requires parallel universes to exist.

Time Travel via Parallel Universes: Part One

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 in Wonderland” or look no further than the “Star Trek” universe (our Universe in less than obvious disguise) to view the near endless plot variations that such parallel / alternative / mirror universes provide our heroes and heroines. While there are some serious reasons to suspect that parallel universes do exist, there’s another, albeit more theoretical proof of the parallel universe concept. Time travel is the name of the game!

Why go back in time at all? Just to observe? That’s okay, as long as you look and don’t touch. Just to get rich? Probably! Just to do good deeds? I’d have to advise against that. Travelling to the past from the future, armed with the knowledge of what that future holds, brings a ‘wealth’ of opportunities – accent on the wealth. I mean go back in time and there’s this new company called IBM or Microsoft just starting to sell shares. You’d make a killing! You know in advance about the Global Financial Crisis. Put that to your advantage! Knowledge is power. Maybe all our billionaires are time travellers from the future who came back to make a killing! Sorry for taking such a cynical view. Actually the danger is the ‘butterfly effect’. Go back in time, be a goodie-goodie two shoes and correct something – kill Hitler in 1935 say – and the ripple effect could have so changed the future from which you came from that you might never have existed. Say that soldier in WWII, killed by the Nazis, lived instead because you assassinated Hitler in 1935 and he married your Mum instead of your Dad. You were then never born. Or say you assassinated Hitler in 1935, and someone else took over the leadership, but that someone started up Germany’s nuclear program almost immediately. Thus, Germany had the A-bomb when she started WWII – Germany won! Of course maybe somebody else goes back in time and assassinates you just before you bump off Hitler! Lesson: You do not muck around by changing the past since you can’t predict the rippling effects on down the line. Ray Bradbury’s excellent short story (also filmed) that illustrates this point nicely is “The Sound of Thunder”.

Be that as it may, I can immediately think of four actual, possible or theoretical ways of doing the time warp – again!

The first is your tried and true traditional time travel into the future, and one which you have no control over – we all travel into the future at the speed of one second per second.

Secondly, there’s a possible albeit highly theoretical equivalent for an antimatter you. You’d have a tried and true traditional time travel into the past, again one which you have no control over, and again (presumably) at a rate of one second per second. That’s because of the idea that antimatter is just normal matter, but normal matter going backwards in time at the rate of one second per second. I don’t rate that too highly on the reality scale. 

Thirdly, when you view any object, you’re time travelling back into the past. That’s because it takes a finite amount of time for light to reach you from whatever it is you’re looking at. What you actually see is how it looked that finite amount of time ago. Since you always view what happened in the past, I guess that’s a form of time travel! By the way, even if you directly touch or taste something, it still takes a finite time to travel on up the nerves to the brain and a finite time to register and be processed.

Fourthly, there’s the concept that if you travel and accelerate outwards at a significant percentage of the speed of light, stop, reverse, accelerate and come home again, when you land, you will have aged less than those stay-at-homes, or translated, you’ve travelled into the future a lot quicker than otherwise would have been the case. You and your stay-at-home twin are now both at the same point in time again; it’s just that you have biologically aged far less. That’s the ‘twin paradox’ of relativity physics, but it’s no paradox – it actually happens.

Interestingly, at the micro, hence macro levels, the laws of physics do not forbid other ways and means of time travel, for example using rotating Black Holes, wormholes, etc. While these are theoretically possible, in practice it would be difficult in the extreme, very energy intensive, and certainly way, way beyond our current, or even projected, level of technology, and may indeed remain forever out of our practical experiences and thus remain a parlour game for physics professors. But maybe, just maybe…

However, for starters, there’s a catch – there’s always a catch! Travelling backwards in time is restricted. You can’t travel back in time beyond the point where the time travel device was first constructed. If we should construct such a device in say the year 2050, nobody will be able to visit 2949 or any earlier date. Thus, since no such terrestrial device yet exists, we’re not overrun by tourists from our future. Our descendents can’t reach us. We cannot have time travelling visitors from the future who can tell us our future because they are not from our future, but from the future of an elsewhere – you guessed it, from the future of a parallel universe where a time travelling devise exists.

The reason, as I understand it, that you can’t time travel in your time travelling device before the device itself existed, is that your device isn’t a machine or a device you sit in – it’s a medium. It’s likely to a natural object, even if manipulated – rotating Black Holes or wormholes. A tunnel allows you to go from one side of the mountain to another, but in doing so you don’t take the tunnel with you. A ship travels through the water – it doesn’t take the water along with it. A tennis ball gets hit by the tennis racket; it doesn’t take the racket along with it. Instead, it relies on finding another racket in its new ‘universe’ or ‘time frame’ or court, able to return it home! You probably get the drift. That’s why you can’t go back in time further than the medium itself you used. If your mountain tunnel was built in 2009, you can’t go through and exit it in 2008! But you could go through and exit it in 2010, so you’re not of necessity stuck in the past if you get the analogy. The tunnel allows travel both ways, but just not before it was constructed. Anyway, forget your time travel movies with machines – no machines allowed. Probably the best movie to illustrate the point that the device is a medium and not a machine is “The Final Countdown”.

That of course says nothing about extraterrestrial intelligence(s) time travellers who may have had a working time travel devices eons ago, so we certainly can’t rule out, or preclude such a possibility – there’s those pesky UFOs again!

To be continued...

Parallel Universes: Part Two

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 in Wonderland” or look no further than the “Star Trek” universe (our Universe in less than obvious disguise) to view the near endless plot variations that such parallel / alternative / mirror universes provide our heroes and heroines. Do they actually exist and do they explain anything?

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; 1998:

Parallel Universes: Part One

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 in Wonderland” or look no further than the “Star Trek” universe (our Universe in less than obvious disguise) to view the near endless plot variations that such parallel / alternative / mirror universes provide our heroes and heroines. Do they actually exist and do they explain anything?

There are apparently two theoretical counterparts in our real world, or in our physics. Firstly, there’s the idea that from the beginning, there’s an infinite number of parallel universes where all things that can happen, do happen. Our Universe is just one of that infinite set. In five of those universes, you 1) flip a coin – in one, it’s a heads you flip; in another, tails; in the third, the coin stands on edge! Or, in a fourth universe you decide not to flip a coin at all, or in universe #5 you decide to flip something else instead.

The other theoretical set of parallel universes is a set that ever increases, staring with just one. Universes split whenever an either/or choice is forced upon it, such that all results that can happen, happen. In this (our) Universe you decide not to flip a coin – but that decision results in a division, the universe splits and in that split, in the new universe, you do flip a coin. In that universe it comes up heads. But, that universe then splits into two and yet another universe where your flip has tails comes up. There’s also another universe where the coin lands on edge! There’s also a universe that originally splits off where you decide to flip something other than a coin. This is known as the ‘Many Worlds Interpretation’ theory, (which resulted out of a need to explain certain quantum phenomena). With every passing second, more and more universes branch off (actually trillions per second).

I’ve never been a fan of the Many Worlds Interpretation of all things quantum. That is, the universe keeps splitting each time it comes to a fork in the road. The question of where all the matter/energy comes from – created out of nothing apparently – I’ve yet to see addressed in the texts. But, many top notch scientists adopt it – perhaps as the least of all the evils certain quantum phenomena dish up. As to where they fit, all those extra universes, that’s not as much of a problem. A motel with an infinite number of rooms never has to put out a ‘no vacancy’ sign – if you get the analogy. Oh, the Many Worlds Interpretation also means that there’s no such thing as free will. You may think you have free will in deciding to wear your red dress instead of your green dress, but in the Many Worlds Interpretation, you do both – so no free will.

However, I myself go for the Copenhagen Interpretation* – when you come to a fork in the road, one and only one choice is made – the other possible choice(s) are never realized and ultimately never have any reality. But, if you start out from scratch with an infinite number of universes, or at least a vast number, then the issue of ‘where’ all the universes are is irrelevant, and the creation of all the stuff that makes them up is equally irrelevant. In the beginning, it was so!

You can have an infinite number of universes in an infinite amount of space. An analogy – there are an infinite number of whole numbers like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc. There’s also an infinite number of even numbers such as 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, etc. Ditto an infinite number of odd numbers. Yet the infinite set of even numbers, plus the infinite number of odd numbers, equals the infinite set of whole numbers. Infinity + infinity = infinity! Or, if you like, think of your house (volume) with just one molecule (universe) in it. You’d agree there’s room for one hell of a lot more molecules (universes). If your house had infinite volume, then…

I had always assumed, and followed the assumptions of others infinitely more brilliant than I, that such theoretical constructions, such parallel / alternative / mirror universes, was forever beyond our actual reach – works of fiction aside of course. We could construct them as an intellectual exercise, but could never verify and understand the actual existence of these mental or thought experiments. That’s because these universes, if they exist, would not be part of our space-time continuum and thusly we could never interact with them.

But what if that assumption is wrong? What if parallel / alternative / mirror universes not only exist, but can and do interact with ours, and thereby give some additional credence to the adventures of our “Alice in Wonderland” and “Star Trek” characters, not to mention the reputations of those physicists who propose infinite universes or Many Worlds Interpretation theories. 

Micro & Macro Mysteries: Well, those assumptions just might now be put to the test. I’d love to be able to say I thought of this idea, even independently, it’s just that brilliant. Alas, I didn’t, and I’m kicking myself because it’s just so simple and elegant.  The credit for this goes to physicist David Deutsch, and for a fuller and better outline of his proposals, see his book cited below**. 

The basics are as follows and deals with the paradoxical and famous ‘double slit’ experiment with light – an experiment with photons.

If you shine a light (millions of photons worth) at a slit, you’ll get a blob of light on the surface behind the slit. No problems – the photon ‘bullets’ go through the slit and impact on the surface behind.

Now you shine the light (millions of photons) at two slits. Contrary to expectation, you don’t get two blobs of light – one opposite each slit – but a classic wave interference pattern of alternating light and dark areas on the surface behind. So photons aren’t ‘bullets’; light must be a wave.

Thus is demonstrated the classic wave-particle duality or paradox of light. Is light a continuous wave, or is it a collection of individual ‘bullet’ particles?

Instead of firing millions of photons at these slits at a go, redo the experiment by firing off photons one at a time – say one per hour. That can actually be done. If you fire the one per hour photons at a single slit, the picture that emerges over time is your blob of light behind the slit. Photons are behaving as ‘bullet’ particles as before.

Now, fire the photons – one per hour – at the two slits. Clearly, you’d expect two blobs of light to ultimately form on the (say photographically sensitive) surface that is behind each slit. Sometimes the single photon would go through one slit; sometimes the other. Alas, you still get a wave-like interference pattern! How can this be? What’s interfering in real time with the actual photons that you’re shooting off?

The only object capable of interfering with photons, to cause wave-like interference, an alternating light-dark pattern, is other photons. But there are no other photons in the vicinity if they are shot out at one per hour and your photon source is the only photon source!

The inescapable conclusion is that there must be other photons around that can’t be detected (seen). Call these photons virtual photons, or shadow photons or ghost photons. Where do they come from? The answer is from our parallel / alternative / mirror universes. There is therefore a form of weak interaction between universes.

To be continued...

Multiroads to the Multiverse: Part One

If Mother Nature can create one Universe (ours), Mother Nature can create more than one universe – a Multiverse! The concept of a Multiverse, that there exists more than one universe, that is our Universe – perhaps an infinite number of them existing sequentially in time, or at one go in space, maybe both, is one of the hottest topics in current cosmology.

At the outset, there’s no law of physics (or even of God) that says that there can be (or must be) one and only one universe, our Universe.

Three questions arise – the mechanism for the origin and evolution of other universes; what types of Multiverses can be generated; and what can the concept of a Multiverse explain that the existence of our sole Universe cannot explain?

Ways, Means and Mechanisms That Generate a Multiverse:

In the infinite beginning, there existed from square one, more than one universe. No origin event(s) are required. However, those universes will evolve and ultimately morph into other universes. 

The Many Worlds Interpretation of all things quantum states that when anything within our Universe is forced to make an either/or decision, between two or more pathways or alternatives, each and every pathway or alternative is taken – because Mother Nature cannot make up Her mind between equal probabilities! Thus, to accommodate each and every possible choice, the Universe splits into as many other universes as is necessary to cater for all possible outcomes. Thus, where there existed initially one universe – our Universe – now there must exist an extra one, or two, or three, or whatever number of universes because our Universe had to make a decision between two, three, or whatever number of choices confronted it. Multiply that by how many crossroads our Universe comes to each and every microsecond, and you have the beginnings of a Multiverse in real quick-smart fashion.

Baby Universes via Black Holes: An advanced extraterrestrial technology might be able to create or manufacture baby universes by creating or manufacturing Black Holes. The recipe itself is simple – take a lump of matter and squeeze it down to such a density that its gravitational escape velocity exceeds that of the speed of light. Such is the text of ‘Universe Manufacturing 101’. Of course one doesn’t of necessity need ET. A universe with the sort of physics that permit Black Holes to form will ‘breed’ because those Black Holes will produce baby universes, presumably with the sort of suitable physics that will allow for further Black Holes, etc.

Bubble Universes via Inflation: To adequately explain various observational properties of our Universe, the concept of a rapid period of inflation around the time of the Big Bang event (I’ve seen inflation invoked both just before and just after the ‘bang’ itself) has been proposed. For the briefest of times, the Universe’s expansion accelerated at a fantastic pace before running out of puff. The fly in the ointment is that if inflation didn’t stop at the exact same nanosecond everywhere, then you’d get smaller pockets or bubbles of inflation continuing, and that each separate inflating bubble wouldn’t stop at the exact same nanosecond, creating more bubbles, etc. Each separate pocket or bubble would inflate so fast and break off from the parent inflationary event to form another universe. An analogy is to shake up a say, 1/3^rd empty bottle of fizzy soft drink and open the top cap. What do you get – rapid inflation, that’s what! Bubbles form and expand and give rise to other bubbles which create new bubbles. Each bubble is its own separate universe.

Quantum Fluctuations: The vacuum energy can give rise to virtual particles, which can turn into actual particles under suitable conditions. It’s possible for the energy to come together intensely enough to perhaps create not just a pair of virtual particles, but an entire universe of particles. That could happen again and again, a multitude of times.

Video Games Analogy: There are a Multiverse of videogames within our Universe (i.e. – Planet Earth) – in two ways. One is the collective set of the thousands to maybe hundreds of thousands of individual video games within the marketplace. Each videogame equals one possible universe. The other is that each individual videogame has hundreds to hundreds of thousands of identical copies.  So the videogame Multiverse has both individuality, and sameness. Perhaps our Universe is one copy of one individual ‘video game’ or ‘computer simulation’, within a sea of thousands of identical copies of that game, within a sea of thousands of other individual games/simulations! 

Types of Multiverse:

Parallel / Shadow / Alternative / Mirror / Many Worlds / Higher Dimensional (String Theory’s Branes perhaps) universes – collectively, these universes would have the same laws and principles of physics that we know and love (unless you’re a physics student at exam time), although the ultimate nature and evolution of each and every one might differ. In other words, all these universes will be bio-friendly, though that doesn’t mean of necessity that all will contain life. Basically, these universes are all variations on a theme of our own Universe.

Simulated / Video Games Universes – Okay, within these universes, anything goes. A computer program does not have to follow or obey or simulate the existing laws and principles of physics. You want faster-than-light-travel? You got it! You want antigravity? You can have that too! Do you want your heroine to survive travel through wormholes and Black Holes? Fine! All the terrestrial superheroes and superhero powers – a Superman, a Spiderman, a Green Lantern, the list is near endless – all is possible. You can botch an operation – the patient survives. You can crash a plane – no causalities. You can make the Sun stand still; perform miracles like the resurrection; create new life forms and new civilizations, and boldly go where in our Universe, no one can every go! You can have a Heaven and/or a Hell, or live unprotected upon the surface of Venus (which is the same as Hell only worse).

Bubble / Baby / Quantum Fluctuation Universes / Cyclic or Oscillating Universes (standard Big Bang expansions followed by Big Crunch contractions followed by Big Bang expansions, etc.) – collectively, these universes could be as different as chalk and cheese in that the laws and principles of physics could vary to a greater or lesser extent – but vary, well these universes just might. Think of all the laws, relationships and principles in physics and vary them to your heart’s content. While each universe might be unique, the rules and regulations for each and everyone one is fixed.

To be continued...

Cosmology and the Multiple You: Part Two

The quantum mantra revolves around the theory that in physics, anything not forbidden is compulsory - given enough time and/or space. While there is nothing forbidden about an identical twin(s) of yourself existing elsewhere in the cosmos, how compulsory that is depends on what sort of cosmological model you adopt.

You are unique, aren't you? There never has been a person exactly like you before, there isn't now, and there never will be. Maybe! Depending on what's really real in all things cosmological, the odds that there are identical copies of you out there can range from plausible if improbable, to plausible and probable, to in fact near certainty, even certainty. The key issue revolves around the concept of infinity, or near infinity. If one has an infinite number of universes to play around with, and/or infinite time, then every possible history is, sooner or later, somewhere, compulsory.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Thirdly, could there be another you or multiple copies of you in the Multiverse? That's not only plausible, but much more likely than if only our one Universe exists.

Discussion: We live in a Universe that is very friendly to life-as-we-know-it (life-not-as-we-know-it is another can of worms that need not concern us here). That is, it seems that the various physical laws and physical constants are fine tuned to allow our kind of life. If any of those values were slightly greater or slightly lesser, the biophysics and biochemistry that allow organic life forms to exist wouldn't be possible. For example, if gravity were ever so slightly weaker, atoms/molecules wouldn't coalesce into macro-bodies like galaxies and stars and planets. If gravity were ever so slightly stronger, stars would be far more massive on average, and the more massive a star, the shorter it's lifespan, to the point where there wouldn't be enough time for life in a young solar system to develop before the parent star went poof! So, that fine tuning leads to a trio of possibilities.

The first is that we (meaning the Universe's life forms) are just incredibly lucky that our one and only Universe just happened to meet all the Goldilocks criteria that allow us to exist. The second is that there is indeed, an intelligent designer responsible for those conditions. For want of a better word, let's call this intelligent designer "God". (There's an interesting variation on this theme and that is this Universe was created by an extraterrestrial intelligence in another Universe, a feat which might be relativity simple to a highly advanced technology able to manipulate the basic forces of physics.)

The third possibility is that there is a Multiverse. We can all agree that our Universe is a Goldilocks universe. We can also all agree that we can imagine other universes, while superficially akin to ours (it would at least have space and time), have differing values for some of all of the physical properties we associate with ours - differing values for the physical constants, the types and numbers of physical forces and particles, the physical laws that are part and parcel of physics, etc. It's akin to humans - we're all superficially similar, yet each one of us (past, present and future) is unique (even identical twins differ and the same applies to clones as well as nurture affects us as well as nature). So, like we have a multiverse of humans, we could have a multiverse of universes (the Multiverse), some of which, like ours, will be Goldilocks universes, although most won't be because some critical constant(s) or force(s) or particle(s) or law(s) will be different enough not to allow the complexity we associate with life-as-we-know-it.

In other words, there exist dozens, hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe multi-millions or billions (or more) of universes where the physical laws and constants may well be different. That being the case, most universes will be barren of life because their physics, hence chemistry, aren't compatible with life-as-we-know-it. But a few, by chance, will be Goldilocks Universes. It wouldn't surprise anyone that because we exist, our Universe must be a Goldilocks Universe.

How exactly a Multiverse would come about is neither here or there. But there is at least one theory. To help explain various observational cosmological anomalies that would follow a traditional Big Bang, several decades ago the idea was floated that immediately following the Big Bang came a period of ultra-rapid inflation, before the expansion settled down to a far slower rate. Today, inflation is widely accepted as part and parcel of the Big Bang model. However, inflation need not have ceased at the exact same nanosecond everywhere. That is, if inflation continued on at one point, another Universe would quickly form, and if inflation didn't shut down exactly at the same moment, another bubble or pocket or baby universe would bud off, and so on and so on, resulting in a sort of bubble/foam collective of universes - the Multiverse.

The upshot is that lots of universes (a Multiverse), could mean a lot of you! However, distances separating the various copies of you are now even vaster, so again, getting together for dinner and drinks isn't possible.

Fourthly, could there be another you or multiple copies of you in Parallel Universe(s)? It's plausible, but perhaps not all that probable.

Discussion: We've all seen various sci-fi shows where our heroes get propelled into some sort of parallel or mirror universe. The characters they meet are close to, but not identical to themselves. The history they encounter is similar to, but not identical to the history they know. Of course that's for the sake of the plot. A parallel universe could easily contain a parallel you. Unfortunately, sci-fi aside, while there's theoretical reasons to postulate parallel universes, there's no known way of getting to them (and therefore no way of meeting yourself - assuming another yourself exists). But like in the Multiverse concept, if there are multi-billions of parallel universes, that increases the odds of a duplicate you.

To be continued...

Cosmic Fun: Random Ramblings in Modern Cosmology: The Infinite You: Part One

The following ideas are primarily mine alone, the good, the bad and the ugly, albeit based on and influenced by reading multi volumes of tomes in modern cosmology. However, I’m also quite sure that numerous others have quite independently thought somewhat similar, if not exact, thoughts as well. Therefore, I’ll take no credit for being right, if I don’t get blamed for being wrong!

THE INFINITE YOU

Firstly, some definitions are in order. We have the ‘observable universe’ which is that part of the entire Universe we can actually see in the here and now. Parts of the Universe that exist, but which light hasn’t yet reached us, aren’t part of our ‘observable universe’ – yet. The ‘Universe’ is all that we can ever know about, regions seen, and regions as yet unseen. Then there is the ‘Multiverse’ which, if it exists, are a conglomerate of separate Universes, each of which exists as a discrete entity. An analogy could be the nucleus part of a liver cell (our ‘observable universe’), the entire cell (the Universe), and the grand collection of liver cells – the liver Multiverse as it were.

1) The Infinite You In The Existing Universe: The existing Universe could be as near to infinite as makes no odds. It obviously can’t be infinite, because it would take an infinite amount of time to expand the Universe to an infinite volume, and we know the Big Bang took place less than 14 billion years ago. And, the Universe can’t contain an infinite amount of ‘stuff’, otherwise it would have to have an infinite volume to house it all. The fact that our night sky is dark, suggests that there can’t be an infinite number of stars and galaxies in our observable universe, otherwise, no matter in which direction you looked, you’d see a star or galaxy and the night sky would be as light as the daytime. However, from our point of view, while not infinite, the Universe is still BIG! And it does contain a lot of stuff. It is within the bounds of possibility that within such a vast space, by chance, there could be a duplicate(s) of you, even more identical to you than any identical terrestrial twin you might happen to have. The odds aren’t very high to be honest, but they aren’t zero.

2) The Infinite You In A Cyclic Universe: Current cosmological observations suggest that our Universe began some 13.7 billion years ago in a Big Bang. Alas, the expansion of our Universe appears not only not slowing down, but ever accelerating due to something cosmologists/physicists are calling dark energy – which they admit they don’t really understand. Anyway, many cosmologists cling to the concept that eventually the expansion will slow down, halt, and reverse, resulting in ultimately a Big Crunch billions of years in the future. That Big Crunch leads directly to another Big Bang – expansion – contraction – Big Crunch – Big Bang, etc., etc. Thus one has an ever oscillating/cyclic Universe with no beginning and no end. Ah, the concept of infinity (this case in time) rears its head. Since the Universe has already gone through an infinite number of these cycles, as surely as night follows day follows night, anything that could of happened, has happened, and happened an infinite number of time. That includes in infinite number of you, and you’ve led the life your leading now exactly down to the last detail an infinite number of times, as well as leading differing lives in every possible variation from the major (marriage, career, children, lifespan, etc.) through to the relatively minor, right down to the highly trivial (like an infinite number of lifetimes absolutely identical to the current one except for one morning when you had an ever so slightly different breakfast cereal). Just think, somewhere in the infinite past, there was a you who lived an entire lifetime driving a car and never hit a red light! Again, anything that is within the realm of possibility, even if improbable in the extreme, has happened, and has happened an infinite number of times. Such is the nature of infinity.  The other nice thing about an infinite Universe (whether in time or space) is that all those unsuccessful eggs and sperm, all those failed/un-germinated seeds, all those spores and pollen that never bore fruit, all those lives that never were, all now get their moment in the sun!

There’s an interesting variation on the above theme. Most of us are probably familiar with the sci-fi idea of being caught in a time-loop. You repeat an interval of time over again and again, probably until some weird sense of deja vu alerts you that something’s not quite right. Expand the idea to the grandest scale possible. Big Bang – expansion – contraction – Big Crunch – Big Bang – expansion, etc. but each cycle isn’t a new cycle with a new history and new possibilities rather each cycle is absolutely identical to the one that came before, and the one before that, etc. So, there will be an endless number of you, but there will be no wild new things in your lives, just the same old life, again and again. Maybe that’s where we get our now and again sense of deja vu from. 

3) The Infinite You In A Multiverse: We live in a Universe that is very friendly to life-as-we-know-it (life-not-as-we-know-it is another can of worms that need not concern us here). That is, it seems that the various physical laws and physical constants are fine tuned to allow our kind of life. If any of those values were slightly greater or slightly lesser, the biophysics and biochemistry that allow organic life forms to exist wouldn’t be possible. For example, if gravity were ever so slightly weaker, atoms/molecules wouldn’t coalesce into macro-bodies like galaxies and stars and planets. If gravity were ever so slightly stronger, stars would be far more massive on average, and the more massive a star, the shorter it’s lifespan, to the point where there wouldn’t be enough time for life in a young solar system to develop before the parent star went poof! So, that fine tuning leads to a trio of possibilities.

The first is that we (meaning the Universe’s life forms) are just incredibly lucky that our one and only Universe just happened to meet all the Goldilocks criteria that allow us to exist. The second is that there is indeed, an intelligent designer responsible for those conditions. For want of a better word, let’s call this intelligent designer “God”. (There’s an interesting variation on this theme and that is this Universe was created by an extraterrestrial intelligence in another Universe, a feat which might be relativity simple to a highly advanced technology able to manipulate the basic forces of physics.)

The third possibility is that there is a Multiverse. We can all agree that our Universe is a Goldilocks universe. We can also all agree that we can imagine other universes, while superficially akin to ours (it would at least have space and time), have differing values for some of all of the physical properties we associate with ours – differing values for the physical constants, the types and numbers of physical forces and particles, the physical laws that are part and parcel of physics, etc.  It’s akin to humans – we’re all superficially similar, yet each one of us (past, present and future) is unique (even identical twins differ and the same applies to clones as well as nurture affects us as well as nature). So, like we have a multiverse of humans, we could have a multiverse of universes (the Multiverse), some of which, like ours, will be Goldilocks universes, although most won’t be because some critical constant(s) or force(s) or particle(s) or law(s) will be too different enough to allow the complexity we associate with life.

In other words, there exist dozens, hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe multi-millions or billions (or more) of Universes where the physical laws and constants may well be different. That being the case, most Universes will be barren of life because their physics, hence chemistry, aren’t compatible with life-as-we-know-it.  But a few, by chance, will be Goldilocks Universes. It wouldn’t surprise anyone that because we exist, our Universe must be a Goldilocks Universe.

How exactly a Multiverse would come about is neither here or there. But there is at least one theory. To help explain various observational cosmological anomalies that would follow a traditional Big Bang, several decades ago the idea was floated that immediately following the Big Bang came a period of ultra-rapid inflation, before the expansion settled down to a far slower rate. Today, inflation is widely accepted as part and parcel of the Big Bang model. However, inflation need not have ceased at the exact same nanosecond everywhere. That is, if inflation continued on at one point, another Universe would quickly form, and if inflation didn’t shut down exactly at the same moment, another bubble or pocket or baby Universe would bud off, and so on and so on, resulting in a sort of bubble/foam collective of Universes – the Multiverse.

The upshot is that lots of Universes (a Multiverse), could mean a lot of you!

4) The Infinite You In Parallel Universes: There is a theory (known I believe as the ‘Many Worlds’ theory) that each time anything, from fundamental particle to human being, comes to a fork in the road as it were, has to make a choice(s), both/all forks are taken (something can be, and not be at the same time). To accommodate both/all alternatives, this quantum (in the case of the micro), or decision making (in the case of the macro), the entire Universe splits, and where we had one Universe, we now have two (or more), one for each fork. Of course when you consider the number of forks that the Universe encounters, well it’s been calculated that every second, some 10 to the 100^th power of Universes need to be created. (Just think how many hundreds, perhaps thousands of decisions (usually quite trivial, often subconsciously) you make every day. There has to be a new Universe to accommodate every alternative. Of course that means that when you add up all these collected Universes, there must be a lot of you, and a lot of everything else, each one ever so subtly different. In the case of Schrodinger’s Cat, there are now two Universes – one with a dead cat; one with the cat alive and well and doing its cat thing.

To be continued...