The common-sense rules of physics that we use every day may make sense to us, but at very small
scales common sense breaks down altogether. At the quantum level, the empty vacuum
of space is boiling with tiny particles constantly popping in and out of existence.
At a quantum level, the vanishingly tiny particles that make up the building blocks of everything,
don’t even have a set location, just a smear of possible positions
dictated by complex rules of probability. Many theoretical physicists hypothesize the fact
that tiny particles like electrons and photons don’t have one set place in the universe is
evidence that there are many parallel universes. But we don’t have any conclusive evidence of the
multiverse… Or, do we? The answer might be
staring at us all this while in plain sight. Welcome to Lab three sixty, it's time to explore.
You might have heard of “Schrödinger’s Cat! Devised in 1935 by the famous Austrian physicist
Erwin Schrödinger, this thought experiment was designed to shine a spotlight on the
difficulty with interpreting quantum theory, which states that any object like an atom or a
particle—that adheres to quantum rules exist in multiple states until they are observed.
Here is a simplified version of the thought experiment:
A living cat is placed into a steel chamber along with a hammer, a vial of hydrocyanic acid and a
very small amount of radioactive substance. If even a single atom of the radioactive
substance decays during the test period, a relay mechanism will trip the hammer,
which will in turn break the vial of poisonous gas and cause the cat to die.
So until we open the steel chamber, the probability
of the cat being dead or alive is 50 50. In other words, as long as we don’t look,
the cat is in a state of Super-position. In the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum law,
the observer and the cat simply exist in two realities, one in which the cat
is dead, and one in which the cat is alive. Yes, two universes run parallel to each other.
While parallel universes might seem like something dreamed up by Doctor Emmet Brown
from Back to the Future, scientists say that not only are other universes likely but they’ve
actually seen evidence of them in the night sky. Leading cosmologist Laura Mersini-Houghton says
that fingerprints of these alternate universes can be identified in the cosmic background radiation
at the very edges of the visible universe. And not only do these universes exist says
Professor Mersini-Houghton, but some could be more habitable than the one we’re currently living in.
She explains that while different physical constants might prevail in another cosmos,
changing the laws of physics by even quite large factors still makes those realities habitable.
“Our universe seems to be only borderline habitable,” she said.
“We are sitting right at the edge between habitable and non-habitable.”
She further stated that The Anthropic Principle in physics states that we could only ever see
a universe that can sustain life, if the universe were any less habitable
we wouldn’t be here to measure it. The professor explained that while
working with astrophysicist Fred Adams a distinguished professor of astrophysics,
she found that you could vary the basic laws of physics “by many orders of magnitude,
by thousands and millions and still have universes where conditions for life to arise were prime”.
Accepting the reality of other universes is
the natural extension of The Copernican Principle – the concept that the Earth
is not unique or special and that many other planets like ours exist.
Once we thought the Earth was the center of the universe and then the solar system and
our galaxy was the center of the Universe. Now we are finding that even our universe is
just one tiny grain of dust in a much more intricate and beautiful cosmos.
Quite where these other universes are and how they might connect to ours is a complicated question.
There could be some universes that form part of the same space-time that are
“entangled with each other”. The idea of a multiverse,
once the subject of fringe scientific theories and wild science fiction stories is now mainstream.
Professor Mersini-Houghton says that several leading physicists
are working on ways of identifying and even peering into the new realities.
“There has been a long prejudice against the multiverse.
“It is an idea that goes back to ancient Hindu and Greek beliefs.
But it took a long time to push the idea into mainstream physics”.
And guess what? A series of predictions
Professor Mersini-Houghton made in 2005 have now been demonstrated to be true.
She said that before the Big Bang, when all of the potential universes were crammed together
in an infinitely tiny space, they would have left marks on each other,
marks that can be observed today in the form of “cold spots” in the cosmic background radiation.
And one of these cold spots, a cosmic void about 900 million light years across – was recently
confirmed by two separate observations. “We were the first to show how you can
actually test the multiverse and that you don’t need to go beyond the universe's
observable horizon-” she said. “You can just see it in our sky”.
While traveling to these “alternate” universes could require an energy source on the scale of the
Big Bang, the Professor said that in the future we might discover a way to communicate with them:
“who is to say that we may not conjure clever ways of communicating in the future,
for example via quantum entanglement?” Not long ago, we thought that due to
the speed of light limit, we may never have evidence for what lies beyond our horizon.
"As I describe in my book, all that changed when I and my collaborators calculated and predicted
how the quantum entanglement among all infant universes at the creation moment, show up in our
present sky as 'fingerprints' of the multiverse”. But don’t rule out jumping into another
reality just yet, because opening gateways to other planes of reality
aren’t impossible, just very very unlikely. The wormholes that Rick and Morty travel through
in the popular series would require approximately 109 billion electron volts of energy.
At today’s energy prices we might be better off staying in our current cosmos,
even if it is only borderline habitable. What do you guys have to say?
Do you think we will ever be able to bump into another universe?
I recently read Dark Matter by Blake Crouch and this is no promotion, I just absolutely loved it.
Do give it a read, it's highly entertaining. And don’t forget to subscribe to Lab
three sixty, because together, we will explore. If you like our videos,
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