This is a rather far out concept to discuss but I figure why not.

In 2 of my favorite book series, The Dark Tower and His Dark Materials, the story deals with Multi-verses, the idea that there's a whole differen universe you could step into that's almost exactly like yours, just different. Other Examples was the show Sliders and an episode of Star Trek with Warf.

Point is, its talked about a lot for fantasy and scifi shows/films/books. Does anyone ver wonder if it's possible that there are Multipule universes out there, that the old saying "Anything that can happen, does"?

Impossible to discuss. Nothing exists to prove one way or another, everything is pure conjecture.

Well that may be a bit hasty. If it can be shown to be ridiculously unlikely then it can be dismissed. But thats rather hard with the way it is...

There are theories that state that there are an infinite number of universes, that our universe is like a bubble in a pot of boiling water and new universes are being created all the time. If that is true, then if you could travel to an alternate universe, you would be able to find a universe like you described.

The many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics is probably the most reasonable theory of multiverses, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation In that theory travel between the worlds seems unlikely, since you shouldn't have any interaction between worlds of decoherent states. Dumbed down that means that you might theoretically possibly travel to a world that is almost the same as the current, but what's the point then?

If you feel free to speculate, you end up everywhere you want. There are certain string/brane models where you end up with other alternatives, but it is in deed highly speculative.



That's an intriguing part, yes. Essentially in an theory of world splitting, you can never totally die (quantum immortality) - even though an overwhelming majority of observers in an overwhelming majority of world would claim that you are dead.

Trying to discuss this topic, or many like it is like this...

Anything is or may not be while everything is and certainly can be.

So basically anything you can dream up and craft artistically into a interesting little tale could potentially be a reality somewhere. Awesome subject if you are a sufferer of writers block and need some free input to spin a new tale, however the thread will reveal nothing tangible as far as reality is concerned.

I don't understand what this means. Cats and dogs could rain down from the sky but they don't. And what does it have to do with parallel universes?

I believe there is possibly, read the series "The Law of One" a channeling with an ancient astronaut Ra its on the internet for free.

More along the lines of If you could turn right instead of left while walking down a street, you did both. You could of dated that girl you wanted too, you could of never had met her.

The idea is that there are endless possible outcomes from even the most tiny decision and they're all actually acted out. For instance...Christ might of been killed before he even touched puberty and Christianity might not of started. The Titanic might of made it to New York and the problems that cruise liners never knew about due to the accident wheren't fixed cause of it.

Hell, Tony Iommi could never of written Black Sabbath....that's scary.

Point is, there could be a different you with the most minute differences or very major differences involved.

Other possibilities go beyond you or what you want to do. For instance in "The Amber Spyglass" from Dark Materials Trilogy I mentioned, the characters find a universe where some of the animals and creatures instead of developing spines like most creatures on earth have, they evolved with a hard diamond like body shape for a belly that the body is bassed arround.

There are many different theories regarding this topic, but I wouldn't look to fictional books and TV shows to gain insight onto the topic. It is a well discussed topic in the field of quantum cosmology among hundreds of physicists; you should look into Lee Smolin's multiverse theory.

Not only in quantum cosmology but also in string theory. The Elegant Universe series by Nova gives some insight on how to understand the issue of strings and multiple universes. Currently there are also discussion going on regarding the aspect of oscillating universes, to get rid of the problem of the massive singularity; here the problem of Big Bang.

Nova:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/
same on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NWoxdJ1sIk

The Elegant Universe is in deed good, especially in its book form, which is a lot more informative but less immediately accessible. Watching the series first might be a wise move if you are new to the field of modern and/or abstract physics. The book is popular science, but of the non.stultifying kind.

We live in four dimensions. Heigth, width, distance and time. That being said would you not think that moments you experience must exist elsewhere? If time travel were ever possible every moment in time is somewhere out there.

TIme isn't a dimension in the same way those other things are, and there are several other (real) dimensions as well.

It's true that spatial and temporal dimensions behave differently. However, what other real definitely existing dimensions are you referring to exactly? String theory predicts some more, but that's not exactly experimentally validated. Degrees of freedoms do constitute mathematical dimensions in phase space, but that isn't really the kind of apparent physical discussions that the discussion is about. So what do you mean?

He's probably talking about something like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDaKzQNlMFw

It should be obvious what he meant if after you see this clip.

Well I guessed that he meant something like additional spatial dimensions, which is what that video shows. I'm well aware of the concept, but what I wonder about is his basis for saying that there in fact "are several other (real) dimensions as well". Presumably there would be a reason in physics, validated by experiment to support that claim.

If you are interested in the multiverse theory, google/youtube a guy named Nassim Haramein. He has some amazing insights on the fractal nature of existence. If you get a chance, try to get a hold of his DVD called "Crossing the Event Horizon". It's very long, but I downloaded it as a torrent and it was very thought provoking.

Just a caveat, he has some pretty wild theories about aliens, crop circles and religion. He has theories that the arc of the covenant was an anti-gravity device that allowed Moses to part the red sea. He also has a lot of theories about angels in the Bible being aliens (not a particularly new hypothesis). For example, Ezekiel was an extra-terrestrial and his wheel was some sort of spacecraft. I tend to take it all with a grain of salt, but a lot of his conjectures are extremely convincing albeit not fully substantiated.

He recent won a prize for his paper on the Schwartzchild Proton theory, which more or less suggests that there is a generic link between atoms and black holes.

He actually predicted that black holes are at the center of every galaxy before Hawking acknowledged this fact.

If you at at all interested in the multiverse theory as well as aliens/crop circles you should really check this guy out. I know there are tons of skeptics who will debate the stuff Nassim says, but it is hard to ignore some of the theories he proposes. Regardless of any dubiousness, his insights are absolutely fascinating in my opinion.

Edit: Also, if you're interested, I included a lot of his ideas into an album I recently released for my solo black metal project.

http://www.metal-archives.com/band.php?id=110238

www.myspace.com/labyrinthinemetal

I just saw this video and to me it rather sounds like a thought experiment; especially as we have never discovered such 4d-entities; left alone a way to manipulate or even create such objects.

There are more dimensions though and string theory needs them in order to explain the universe; from the atom to the biggest objects.

Its interesting to view theories on this subject.

Myself, I was always of the belief that thought could possibly transcend reality somehow. And in some way perhaps a strong enough thought/belief could ultimately become reality on some level of existence/frequency in the great unknowns. Perhaps the Subconscious works in such a way as creating a continuation of the 'essence' as an automatic mechanism. Why not I say, if its at all possible to create your own afterlife with a strong enough belief or thought, maybe thats the key haha

I was reading about the many-world interpretation, and it was said that it denies that wave functions collapse. And I was pretty sure wave functions do collapse, maybe Im not fully understanding the interpretation

String theory has not been experimentally validated however, so the presence of dimensions beyond the fourth is not known. Actually, the necessity of extra dimensions to make string theory workable is arguably a defect, since it may be impossible to verify their existence (humans may not be able to perceive them).


That being said, if there is one thing the history of physics has taught us, it is simply that there is more than meets the eye---at both the smallest and grandest levels. On the small level, it was thought that atoms were the smallest fundamental particles. But no, the existence of protons, neutrons, and electrons was discovered, particles even smaller than the atom. From there came the discovery of gluons and quarks, and so on. On the largest scales, we went from an understanding of the solar system surrounded by stars, to many billions of stars constituting an "island universe" of one galaxy surrounded by infinite emptiness, to galaxy clusters. From there came the discovery of supergalactic clusters, walls, and filaments. It seems only natural given the history of cosmology that there should be something even larger than our conception of the universe.

Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of strings, but that's good stuff too.

So? S/T seems to point to the right direction and explain how thing work in the universe neatly but not perfect. On the issue of validating it: the Cern will do their part to do this in some respect and once they have the LHC up and running at full energy, we will see what results can be gathered from the experiments and how this fits together with the string theory.

You are getting to the measurement problem, which is the thing I like least about the (common) Copenhagen interpretation. Essentially you have this linear Schrödinger equation that dictates what happens to a particle over time, but at the moment you want to know the current state you "measure" and there is a nonlinear wave function collapse. That's not really a nice combination, which is why people have tried to find interpretations where you don't need that clash or deeper theories that explain why it works so well.

MWI is different in that it doesn't say that the observed state is the real one and the others, which the wavefunction didn't collapse to, do not exist. MWI instead takes into account that you, as the observer, also has a wavefunction and what you ever see is a relative state rather than the absolute state. Now if we assume that all states that the wavefunction describe are in fact real, you'll get branches in the universe tree and you'll only ever measure one state. It looks the same as a waveform collapse to you as an observer, but there was none.