So, as promised a few days ago, some ruminations on the multiverse; the current buzzword in astrophysics. I must confess to being a little confused about why some astrophysicists would be concerned with multiple universes outside of our own; humans don't understand this one at all well let alone the possibiity of understanding others which might be so totally alien as to be beyond human understanding. However, be that as it may, what is science fiction today might become science fact in the future; just not in my lifetime!
If I understand the big bang theory correctly. this universe originated in a singularity, a point but not a point, which 'exploded' a vast but finite blast of energy which rapidly expanded to form among other things light of multiple wavelengths and 'coalesced energy', matter, although no-one, as far as I know, has been able to work out exactly why the 'rules' or 'laws' that govern the interactions between matter with itself, matter and energy and energy with itself happen to be the way that they are; they just are! The only thing which can be stated with any certainty is that life, as we know it Jim, would not exist, either here or anywhere else in the universe, if the laws governing interactions were not as they are or at least seem to be. Another issue which seems to await a resoution is how this explosion of energy seems to have created time and space all by itsef, which it seems to have done, although time may be a totally human construct which has no 'reality' in so far as anything appears to be real.
When it became clear that there was nothing particularly special about the star we orbit, among so many type G-type stars, or anything special about the galaxy, among the millions of spiral galaxies in the universe, that we inhabit, the trend was begun which prompted the question; is there anything special about our universe? Quite clearly, to all intents and purposes, it seems unlikely if the answer to first two statements is that there is nohing special about our universe outside of the fact that we are in it. And so was born the idea that our universe might be merely one of many. That 'somewhere' out 'there', there might be other singularities performing their own pyrotechnics and forming their own time and space and which we, in our universe, might never see or experience as they are occluded by the very nature of the differing times and spaces which each big bang would engender but which might still exist in some form.
Such ideas don't lend themselves particularly well to evidence-based science but that hasn't stopped some scientists endlessly speculating on the whichness of the why, just look at string and 'M' theory, and some astrophysicists started to wonder about the ramifications of a supersition of states in a quantum mechanical universe.
Supersition of states is merely the property of a quantum 'particle' to behave in such a way as to be only predictable in a statistical manner; as though it has a limitless potentiality which can only be realised when the state is actually measured in some way; and what happens when the quantum particle is not 'measured' and so retains its limitless potentiality? This led some physicists to postulate that there might be an infinitely expanding multiverse in which all of the multiple bifurcations inherent in a quantum particle might be realised in actual physical states; Borges' 'Garden of infinitely forking paths'. Each time the quantum particle is measured, the measurement causes the potentiality to be released creating multiple universes similar to our own but not quite the same; mind-boggling stuff, huh?
Of course this lends itself no better to evidence-based science than does its precursor but it is tantalising stuff nonetheless. That there might be multiple copies of ourselves with different pasts and different furtures but forever inaccessible to us is surely a captivating idea and one in which there is a rich seam of 'story' to be mined, although I know of only one book, Robert Anton Wilson's 'Schrödingers Cat', which has considered this worthy of regard. (There well may be others but I am not an avid fan of sci-fi and usually restrict myself to the more well known and 'golden age' writers like Asimov. Dick, Herbert et al.)
So there you have it; the multiverse in less than 750 words! Is it all poppycock? Does the lack of achievable evidence make it a waste of time? Is it time to stop spending public money on so much rotten tripe? Is it about as useful, or practical, as investigations into a perpetual motion machine? Undoubtedly yes, but 'pure' research or speculation with no real long term goal can often lead to new insights or new techniques which can have a more practical value. I am sure that neither Newton nor Kepler thought that their theories would one day provide the mathematical wherewithall to land a man on the moon or an unmanned probe on Titan no more than Faraday or Maxwell would have considered that their pioneering work in electromagnetism would lead to the iPad or iPhone.
So, to all you scientists and would-be scientists out there; keep coming up with crazy ideas. These are the stuff of dreams and everyone knows that, sometimes, dreams can come true!
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