Like I needed to fill my head with more information, I tuned into the Science Channel last night. After watching a great piece on the Tank on the Moon (about a Russian rover three decades before we had the ones on Mars), one of my favorite documentaries popped on about Parallel Universes.
If you’re not current on physics, M-theory or Multiverses, let me see if I can explain some of the show.
Basically, they have found a way to explain the Big Bang. It wasn’t a really a bang, but a lot of bangs, all because one universe membrane of energy collided with another. The result: KABOOM!
This all became possible because physics guys way smarter than I used math and science to figure out that there are actually 11 dimensions in the universe. For comparisons, we can only detect 3 dimensions of them on our planet. That’s why you can’t go to an 11-D movie, which I think would be pretty trippy.
Having 11 dimensions, though, allows an infinite number of universes to exist and we are in just one. What’s really mind bending, is that in some of these universes, England could have bested the colonists and still have an American colony. In another, you don’t exist but Elvis does. Freaky stuff indeed.
Then it gets a bit crazier. This all started because scientists found that atoms don’t stay in one place. They seemingly disappear and reappear constantly. The idea of other universes and dimensions came about because scientists wanted to explain where they went. They go, it seems, to other universes and dimensions with the ease of us going from the living room to the kitchen.
That’s a lot to explain in an hour, I know. I won’t even get into the fact that our gravity has nothing to do with our planet, but is actually leaking into our world from another universe. Geez, I hope they don’t fix the leak any time soon. Otherwise we’re all in a heep of trouble and will just end up spinning off into the universe.
So, long story short, M-theory suggests that when P-branes collide, new universes are formed. Each new universe can exist on its own, like when you blow a bunch of bubbles into the air. Each bubble is a universe – it’s self-contained. But it can interact with other universes, such as when gravity leaks from another universe into our world so that we don’t float away.
If you’re still trying to catch up, think of the entire sky filled with bubbles of all sizes and shapes. Millions of millions of pretty bubbles. Each is a universe. And in a few of them, Elvis is still performing.
After my brain stopped spinning long enough, it occurred to me how odd it is that I can be in multiple universes at the same time. If my atoms are here one moment and then in another universe the next, but I can’t detect it in my three dimensional, spatially challenged world, what does that really mean?
Does that mean if a physicist is late for a meeting he can claim that he was sorry, but his atoms got caught in traffic in Universe ZX-1? Or if I’m not really “myself” today, does that mean that some of my atoms have gone rogue and are still lazing away on a beach in Universe Y? What if they never come back from vacation, like the atoms of Congressmen’s brains?
I do, however, think that it’s cool that Elvis is still alive in an alternate universe. I only hope it’s the 1968 leather-clad Elvis and not the Elvis in his XXXXL cape days. Too bad it’s so hard to get tickets to a concert.
I think parallel universes are are a godsend to education, though. For example, my 12 year old son can be asked in his history class, “Who won the Revolutionary War?” and he can say the British and be right. Sure, it’s in another universe. But the most brilliant minds in the world say that this is so. How can a lowly junior high school history teacher argue with these math and science wizards who can chalk it out in mere moments on a blackboard? It would be like arguing with Albert Einstein. And hey, if Al said it was so, I would believe him.
It certainly can work wonders in domestic life.
“Honey, did you take out the garbage?”
“Sure did, in another universe.”
Or, “Honey, you’re not going out with the boys again tonight, are you?”
“No honey,” as you mutter under your breath as the door closes behind you, “At least not in some other universe.”
It does leave me with a bit of a conundrum. With all these universes around, I wonder if I am in the right one. Or if I’m the right me in the wrong universe.
I’m pretty sure this is the case. Because I’m certain that I should have been svelte and wealthy and I’m not. At least not in this universe.
Out on the Treasure Coast looking for online Elvis tickets in the 9th dimension,
– Robb