When you are looking at your phone it does seem to exist in just one state a time,right?There are many times I ask myself is there a version of myself that took a bus ride and went to a different destination?Is that even remotely possible?
What our naked eye sees is that objects seem to exist in just one state a time,something only happens if you see it.In quantum theory,an elementary particle such as an electron does not exist in a single state but rather in a superposition(that is multiplicity of locations,velocities and even orientations).
Almost all our sci-fi movies show existence of a multiverse.What are the chances of this mind blowing theory being true?Well….
All these began in 1954 with a great theoretical physicist,Hugh Everett.This guy imagined a multiverse,full of different realms in which all the possibilities dictated by quantum mechanics could exist at once.
I don’t want to make him sound crazy,but an idea he was sharing with his friends in campus,is what he decided he’ll use as his doctoral thesis.I’m sure we all know how that went,he even stopped practicing theoretical physics and joined research team of the pentagon.
Fast forward,Everett’s notion of a multiverse is gradually gaining credibility among physicists.
Yes,there are ways to prove this,may sound crazy but true .
In quantum mechanics,particles do not have set properties when looking at them.Let us use Schrödinger’s cat paradox.If there was a cat in a box,it can either be dead or alive but you only can confirm either by opening the box,just proving how we see a single reality.But with quantum mechanics there’ll be various outcomes.
We don’t know what the shape of space-time is exactly.One prominent theory is that it is flat and goes on forever,this presents the possibility of many universes being out there.
Another theory is that the we exist on a bubble universe.When looking at space-time as a whole,some areas of space stop inflating like the Big Bang inflated our universe.Others however will keep on getting larger.So,if we picture our own universe as a bubble it’s sitting in a network of bubble universes of space.
All this is a popular theme for sci-fi movies and a subject and a subject of fascination for ordinary folks who don’t know or care about the paradoxes of quantum theory.After all ,isn’t it mind blowing to imagine that every choice we make in life-from who we marry,where we live,what color we dye in our hair,what we eat for lunch-spawns a separate universe in which another version of ourselves did something different.
As stated by Hawking “We are not down to a single,unique universe,but our findings imply a significant reduction of the multiverse to a much smaller range of possible universes”All we can do is wait to see if we’ll meet our evil twins.
~Lucille Wanjiku
Techie’s mind 