Lately we’ve been hearing a new term: multiverse.
My grown up son was excitedly telling me about the latest Spiderman film entitled Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. It is supposed to be all about the superhero character co-existing or should I say multi-existing in many parallel alternate worlds and banding together with other Spider-men from various parallel universes to save his universe from an evil being.
I told him this concept is nothing new. There’s a film produced in 2001 that also deals with the concept of multiverses and interdimensional travel. In that movie, Jet Li portrays a rogue agent who travels to parallel realities in order to kill other versions of himself to become a mythical super-being known as “The One.”
Coincidentally, Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently introduced the metaverse—defined most simply as a virtual world where people can socialize, work, and play—and believes it is the future of the Internet and of his trillion-dollar company. His metaverse idea is closer to the Matrix concept where nothing is real, everything is virtual.
Look, this is really nothing new to me. My nerd friends and I have been talking about this 30 years ago. It is all rooted in the theory. The multiverse theory suggests that the cosmos contains multiple universes, not just a universe. The universe that we know is just one of them. Are you following me?
Think about this. Mankind, or humanity, is but a tiny speck on a planet, within a galaxy, that itself makes up just a tiny, infinitesimal fraction of the universe we know. Astrophysicists estimate that so far, we’ve explored only 0.1 percent of this ungraspable vastness, more or less!
That being said, isn’t it entirely possible that our universe is just one of many others? Indeed, some scientists believe that there are an infinite number of universes; which means an infinite number of civilizations, histories, and versions of you. Alter egos. In fact, even here in this universe, we can have an alter self or a doppelganger.
A doppelganger is a mysterious, exact double of a living person. It’s a German word that literally translates to “double walker” or “double goer.” A doppelganger isn’t someone who just resembles you, but is an exact double, right down to the way you walk, act, talk, and dress. There is a belief that the doppelgänger phenomenon is caused by people suddenly gaining the ability to tap into another time phase to view alternate versions of themselves or other people. A more scientific explanation is that it is a symptom in schizophrenia and epilepsy, and is considered a possible explanation for doppelgänger phenomena.
How likely is it that you actually have a doppelgänger? According to one study, the likelihood of two people sharing the exact facial features is less than 1 in 1 trillion. Put another way, there is only one chance in 135 that a single pair of doppelgängers exists on our planet of more than 7 billion people. Yet, I know at least two people who have met their doppelgangers.
However, the multiverse theory is still highly controversial, and we’re not likely to be charting parallel universes anytime soon.
To induce a splitting headache in your brain, read more about the so-called string theory, a physics model that says there are many more dimensions that exist out there, at least 10 dimensions that are far more than three dimensions of space that we know—length, width and depth—and one dimension of time.
Then if you want to get confused more, there is this so-called Quantum Entanglement, which is the phenomenon by which two particles in totally different parts of the universe can be linked to one another, mirroring the behavior and state of their partner.
Quantum entanglement is a phenomenon observed at the quantum scale where entangled particles stay connected (in some sense) so that the action performed on one of the particles affects the other, no matter the distance between two particles.
For particles to be connected across such vast distances, they must be sending signals to one another that travel faster than the speed of light: a feat previously considered impossible. What’s more, objects are only supposed to be affected by their surroundings; the notion of a particle being affected by something happening on the other side of the universe is just weird or strange. No wonder a dubious Albert Einstein described it as “spooky action at a distance.”
Albert Einstein colorfully dismissed quantum entanglement—the ability of separated objects to share a condition or state—as “spooky action at a distance.” Over the past few decades, however, physicists have demonstrated the reality of spooky action over ever-greater distances—even from Earth to a satellite in space.
Einstein described quantum mechanics as “spooky” because of the instantaneousness of the apparent remote interaction between two entangled particles. The interaction also seemed incompatible with elements of his special theory of relativity.
Quantum entanglement is a bit of a nuisance for classical physics, because it breaks some fundamental laws that we previously thought unbreakable. Nonetheless, studies suggest that quantum entanglement does indeed exist. And even though we don’t understand it, we could still potentially use it. Because of its spooky characteristics, entanglement could eventually become the bedrock of next-generation computing and communications.
If two particles from different parts of the universe can mirror each other, is it possible that we have a parallel image of ourselves in another universe?
Then there is this thing called antimatter. It sounds crazy, but the sub-atomic particles that make up everything around us—electrons, protons and neutrons—all have evil twins. Antimatter particles are the same mass as normal particles, but the opposite electric charge.
And because of this, antimatter wipes out normal matter on contact. Poof! Both are destroyed in an instant. So antimatter has the potential to destroy us and everything we love. But fear not! There’s very little antimatter roaming around in the cosmos.
What’s more, antimatter could even prove useful. When antimatter and matter meet and destroy each other, energy is released. In a PET scanner, anti-electrons are created and their annihilation in the body allows doctors to create sophisticated images. What’s more, scientists hope to one day use the energy released by antimatter/matter interactions to power spacecraft. So, perhaps antimatter isn’t quite so evil after all.
“Taming the quantum world” is a documentary about the development of quantum computers. Research collaboration worldwide will completely revolutionize global information technology by exploiting the enigmatic quantum physics. Reality Lost explores the profound implications of quantum physics for how we understand the world.
Thinking about all this makes you question the fundamental nature of reality. Is this reality the real thing? Is there a parallel reality? There is a spooky Netflix series called stranger things. It will make you dizzy like something is wrong with your ears. Mind bending stuff.
100 years ago reality was annihilated by quantum physics. Fiddling with single particles, atoms, and electrons is bewildering. Small objects seemed to have a sort of fuzzy properties.
As the movie Reality Lost notes, there is a price to pay. When you get unhinged from reality, can you come back and regain it?
Forget the multiverse theory. Let’s bring ourselves down to earth, to our present situation and reality. Our problem is we seem to be living in our own separate universes. While one half is getting vaccinated, the other half is demonizing vaccines. While the government is mandating mask wearing, many are poopooing it. Let’s not even talk about where we are going as a nation.
Our politics are so fragmented and distorted, no thanks to social media platforms, which are flourishing in their own truth-bending and reality-warping universes.
We are not locked in.
The more we know, the more we don’t know. I guess I will just stick to the verse I know: verses that rhyme and trippingly on the tongue in metered beats. Quoting from one of the songs of a folk singing duet, “Verses out of rhythm, couplets out of rhyme.”
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
Let’s leave it at that. Ignorance can be bliss.