The Multiverse

Ever wonder if there is another you in some alternate universe? The idea of a multiverse – other universes that lie within “bubbles” of space and time – recently got some additional evidence. As scientists continue to study the glow that is left over from the Big Bang, there appears to be some evidence that several of these “bubble universes” have affected our own universe.

I know this all sounds more science fiction than science, but the multiverse is popular in modern physics. The problem with it is trying to come up with experiments to prove it.

An article on the  BBC News references some early research that scientists hope to test  using data from the Planck telescope.

These bubble universes (more properly called “eternal inflation”) theorizes that such universes pop (like bubbles) in and out of existence. The space between them is always expanding, so they are probably out of reach of one another.

Maybe.

British scientists are looking for signs that we live in a multiverse – with multiple alternative universes existing in their own individual bubbles. They are looking to find disk-like patterns in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation which is left from the Big Bang. This could provide evidence of collisions between other universes and our own.

These disc-shaped signatures were introduced in an earlier paper and the new work adds numbers to how many bubble universes we may be able to see.

All this doesn’t prove or disprove the existence of the multiverse. Maybe the new data currently coming in from the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite will help settle this.

The multiverse is known by many names: “meta-universe” and “metaverse” are alternatives used by scientists. But if you read in religion, philosophy, transpersonal psychology and fiction, you find versions of it called “alternative universes”, “quantum universes”, “interpenetrating dimensions”, “parallel dimensions”, “parallel worlds”, “alternative realities”, “alternative timelines”, and “dimensional planes.”

The term metaverse was coined way back in 1895 by the American philosopher and psychologist William James.