The Multiroads To The Multiverse

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 construe that the existence of our sole Universe cannot explain?

Ways, Means and Mechanisms That generate a Multiverse:

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

The Many Worlds Interpretation of all things measure states that when whatever within our Universe is forced to make an either/or decision, in the middle of two or more pathways or alternatives, each and every pathway or alternative is taken - because mom Nature cannot make up Her mind in the middle of equal probabilities! Thus, to adapt each and every inherent choice, the Universe splits into as many other universes as is necessary to cater for all inherent outcomes. Thus, where there existed initially one universe - our Universe - now there must exist an extra one, or two, or three, or whatever estimate of universes because our Universe had to make a decision in the middle of two, three, or whatever estimate 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 generate or develop baby universes by creating or manufacturing Black Holes. The formula itself is straightforward - take a lump of matter and squeeze it down to such a density that its gravitational fly velocity exceeds that of the speed of light. Such is the text of 'Universe Manufacturing 101'. Of procedure 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 convenient physics that will allow for additional Black Holes, etc.

Bubble Universes via Inflation: To adequately construe varied observational properties of our Universe, the concept of a rapid period of inflation nearby 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 splendid 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, 1/3rd empty bottle of fizzy soft drink and open the top cap. What do you get - rapid inflation, that's what! Bubbles form and advance and give rise to other bubbles which generate 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 convenient conditions. It's inherent for the energy to come together intensely adequate to maybe generate 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 public set of the thousands to maybe hundreds of thousands of personel video games within the marketplace. Each videogame equals one inherent universe. The other is that each personel videogame has hundreds to hundreds of thousands of identical copies. So the videogame Multiverse has both individuality, and sameness. maybe our Universe is one copy of one personel 'video game' or 'computer simulation', within a sea of thousands of identical copies of that game, within a sea of thousands of other personel 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 theory of physics that we know and love (unless you're a physics student at exam time), although the greatest 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 comprise life. Basically, these universes are all variations on a theme of our own Universe.

Simulated / Video Games Universes - Okay, within these universes, whatever goes. A computer agenda does not have to succeed or obey or simulate the existing laws and theory 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 execution - the inpatient survives. You can crash a plane - no casualties. You can make the Sun stand still; accomplish miracles like the resurrection; generate 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 face of Venus (which is the same as Hell only worse).

Bubble / Baby / measure 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 theory of physics could vary to a greater or lesser extent - but vary, well these universes just might. Think of all the laws, relationships and theory 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.

The Multiverse Solves These Puzzles:

In reality, the idea of a Multiverse is more a logical outcome of current thinking and evolving insight of varied discoveries and trends in modern quantum/particle physics and cosmology, relative to being a tool used to construe actual data or anomalies or observations. The basic surmise is that other universes, if existing, will tend to be so far away from us in time and/or in space as to exert no work on on what we observe; what data we collect. That's not to say that the concept of a Multiverse, in one guise or another, can't be used to help list for actual or philosophical anomalies.

For example, if the computer simulation of our and by postponement any Multiverse is correct, that accounts for why there are apparently two sets of independent and incompatible software physics (quantum and classical) running the cosmos.

A computer generated Multiverse (lots of different computer generated simulations coupled with inherent complicated copies of each) is in one sense a copout in that it can be used to construe anything. You can list for all data, all anomalies, all weirdness, all things natural and all things supernatural, all things logical and illogical, all things possible, and for that matter impossible. In a computer generated and simulated universe, you can in fact believe six impossible things before morning meal - 'Alice in Wonderland' or rather 'Through the seeing Glass' rules - Ok? The existence of 'impossible things' does not of necessity invalidate the possibility however.

The concept of a Multiverse does contribute the ways and means of examining other inherent origins for our own Universe, which currently is (the thorough Big Bang event) that first there was nothing and the there was something.

The there's the Anthropic Principle: In order to construe why our Universe is so fine-tuned in terms of the laws and relationships of physics that make our universe life-friendly, it is necessary to either postulate one hell of an startling luck of the draw, or a supernatural originator being who exists face of space-time. The Multiverse solves the quandary by postulating that with so many universes in existence, with so many combinations of inherent laws and relations of physics, that at least one universe, based on sheer chance alone, would be life-friendly. Since we can only exist in a life-friendly universe, the Multiverse helps construe our very existence, without having to resort to bucking startling improbability or relying on the supernatural.

Double Slit Experiment: If you fire one photon, say one every minute, at two parallel slits with a photographic plate behind them, you might expect that plate to show, eventually, two blobs of light - one behind each slit, as each personel photon bullet passed through one, or the other, slit. However, what you get is instead a superior interference pattern - alternating light bands with dark bands. Why is this so? Rather, how can this be? Since the one per small photons aren't apparently acting like personel bullets, and yet since the only thing that can maybe cause superior wave interference is the nearnessy of other, in increasing to these one per small photon bullets, photons, then where did these other photons come from? A logical explanation is that these photons are photons that enter or interact with our Universe from another parallel universe(s).

Time travel Paradoxes: If time travel to the past is possible, and there is only one universe, our Universe, then paradoxes can arise. You can go back in time and murder your mom before you were conceived, which means you were never born, so you couldn't have gone back in time and murdered your mother, which means you were born... However, if you travel back in time to another universe, part of the Multiverse, and kill what for all appearances looks exactly like your real mother, but is in fact a parallel universe copy or look-alike, then there is no paradox, because your real biological mother, in the universe in which you were born and raised, remains alive.

Variations on the Many Worlds Interpretation Theme:

There's a difference that could apply to the Multiverse theme via the Many Worlds Interpretation of all things quantum. In the Many Worlds scenario, in fact all possibilities are realized within any given 'moment' within the timeline. Each universe within the Multiverse has the additional complication (or added attraction) of having to jump through the Many Worlds hoops. So, to use a straightforward example, in one universe (A) within the Multiverse, you flip a coin and its heads. Advent to that fork in the road, a option of heads or tails, that universe then splits into two, and you have flipped tails in the counterpart (B). Both possibilities have been realized. However, it is just as probable that there are adequate universes within the Multiverse such that there was another universe (C) where you performed the identical flipping exercise and the coin came up tails (as in universe B). Postulating a Many Worlds Interpretation where there's a split and you toss heads (universe D), well that's already something that's happened (in universe A) - not in a Many Worlds scenario, but in another actual bodily universe. Therefore, what need for any Many Worlds interpretations at all?

I'm not however entirely sure this apparent equivalence will sit well with measure physicists, because I'm not entirely sure this is what measure physicists mean by the phrase 'Many Worlds' (indeed, lots of measure physicists deny any such interpretation at all exists - it's too big an ask for them). However, it seems to deal with the issue of That Cat! In two separate bodily universes you have Schrodinger's Cat (in the box which has been constructed to have a 50/50 chance of killing it within one hour) experiment. identical cats; identical setups; identical observers (and they can be identical because the fundamental bits that make them all up are identical - all electrons (neutrons, protons, etc.) are 100% clones of each other - in fact identical). In one universe, the observer observes the cat alive after one hour; the other universe, well it's the demise of the feline. Neither universe has to split into two to cater for both possibilities of a living cat, and a dead cat. All possibilities have been exhausted without resorting to the requirement of a Many Worlds either/or split.

While I have small strangeness Advent to terms with an infinite (or as close to infinite as makes no odds) estimate of universes (the Multiverse) that have collectively existed since the get-go in order to cater for all possibilities, I have some trouble Advent to accept the idea that (Many) Worlds are created in an ongoing manner, as spin-offs, in response to evolving events that need this option or that option or the next choice. The difficulty, which I've never seen addressed in any books I've read on the subject is, where does all the additional matter/energy for the extra world - in fact universe - come from? If a whole new universe is created to allow for the existence of both a cat that's alive and a dead cat (in that cat-in-the-box concept experiment), that additional universe (to cater for the other option) seems to be a free lunch - something created from nothing. That seems to be a violation of the conservation of matter/energy. That's much too big an ask for me to swallow! Therefore, I vote solely for the Multiverse, which because of the sheer numbers involved, allows for the incorporation of the Many Worlds Interpretation as a bonus. The only real difference I can see in the middle of the Multiverse and the Many Worlds Interpretation is that with Many Worlds, the outcomes (all possibilities realized) is certainty; with the Multiverse it's only probable or possible.

Further recommended readings:

Carr, Bernard (Editor); Universe or Multiverse?; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge; 2007

Gribbin, John; In hunt of the Multiverse; Allen Lane, London; 2009

Kaku, Michio; Parallel Worlds: The Science of Alternative Universes and Our time to come in the Cosmos; Penguin Books, London; 2005

Rees, Martin; Before the Beginning: Our Universe and Others; Free Press, London; 2002

Vilenkin, Alex; Many Worlds in One: The hunt for Other Universes; Hill & Wang, New York; 2006

Wolf, Fred Alan; Parallel Universes: The hunt for Other Worlds; Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, New York; 1988

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