parallel univers

[Bungielad]

Hi all,

I watched a great and fascinating programme the other night on Nat Geo wild about parallel universes, it was stating that a single particle can be in more than one place at one particular time because it travels through waves, (think it was Einstein who first came up with the wave factor after another scientist before him said it was possible for a particle to be in more than one place at any given one time? Please correct me if wrong.)

The above paragraph in its self confuses me in the way that if a particle is travelling along a wave then surly it is moving and not at a stationary position, so there for not in the same place at any same time.

The program then went on to say that every action that the neurons in our mind make us take can reflect in a so called alter us taking a different action in another universe....ie.....parallel universe.

I understand the philosophy behind it but don't get how this could be possible due to the fact of something as simple as....planning a situation, something you set out to do.

If you plan to do something then surly your neurons have already decided on what action you are going to take, the only way a parallel universe could happen is if at that point of decision making of your plans is if the alter you in a different universe decided not to do it!

Today I had decided to go to the cash point, get some money out of the cash point and buy a few things,

Now....if my alter me had decided NOT to go to the cash point and NOT get a few things......I can get my head around that but, what about every step I took whilst walking to the cash point!!?? For every step I took walking to the cash point is there another me walking away from the cash point, walking side ways from the cash point, backwards from the cash point......in every direction possible from the cash point!

Now......this is just me and my decision, what about every other human on the planet and their parallel universe, what about every animal on the planet and there parallel universe,the way the trees sway, the way the moth flew that day, the way the ant moved.....etc etc........

If its true, then it's pretty Damn good and we live in the most amazing structure but, this I feel is very hard to get your head around.

Bungielad.

[Bungielad]

Moving on from the above post.......I have only talked about living things, if we are talking about atoms and particles then surly we should ask the question.......if parallel universes do exist then when scientists have explains the formation of our own moon and the Earth it's self then surly a massive object in a parallel universe did NOT hit the early Earth and wipe out it's crust to form the moon, therefore no Earth would exist today for our selves to be finding out facts about our selves or parallel universes, therefore the thought of parallel universes contradicts its self.

Bungielad.

[Cath]

I realise this may not be very helpful in your quest to try and understand the world/universe you find yourself in but the truth of the matter is that we actually don't have the foggiest idea in anyway what so ever the true nature of what we appear to be a part of or where we appear to be.

Their are certain questions that we will never be able to answer, we just don't have the required view point and mental capability to come up with answers that we can be sure will ressemble the true nature of what really is happening here.

That doesn't mean to say we shouldn't try to find the answers we so deeply desire though, it's in our nature to want to know the truth.

Their is one problem to all this that has recently sprung to mind, and that is, what do we do if we should one day come across an undeniable answer or discovery we really don't like, or an answer or discovery we really weren't mentally equipped (a species as a whole) to deal with?

We are driving blind, can we be sure we will be ready and be able to deal with for what we may one day find?

[Qualia]

I'm none too clued up on this but from my understanding the Multiple World Theory is a given interpretation of possible events within the bounds of Quantum Mechanic Theory.

An Einsteinian may argue that a proper scientific theory must embody the philosophical conceptions of localism, realism and determinism. This is, for the sake of argument, a three-fold interpretation of 'reality' and thus pertains to the philosophical enquiry of Ontology - the way of Being.

Localism is the theory that any event can only initially have effect on events or objects 'local' to it. We can exemplify this position by referring to the speed of light, for example, which guarantees that signals and therefore influences and effects can only be propagated at a finite rate. In other words, the speed of light cannot exceed itself, so it cannot go beyond its locality. Realism is the philosophical thesis that there exists an objective reality independent of human perception or measurement. And Determinism is the idea that future states can be computed from prior states given enough data.

Now, it appears that all three tenets are violated by quantum mechanics.

There is the idea of Quantum Non-Locality, which shows that two particles can influence one another instantaneously across vast astronomical distances. Obviously, this sits uneasily with the speed-of-light limit which no matter how 'fast' is bound by limit and thus cannot influence instantaneously. Again, in QM objects do not have properties prior to observation and measurement and so realism goes out the window. Finally, events or outcomes within QM are computed according to probabilities, and thus are inherently indeterministic and random.

So if QM is 'true', it follows that QM violates all the Einsteinian tenets. When scientific folk talk about a 'grand unifying theory', knowingly or not, they're probably talking about ways to amalgamate these distinct philosophical hypotheses on the nature of reality. Evidently, theories on localism, realism and determinism and their contraries go way back to ancient Greece, a 3,000 year old record of debate that still hasn't ended .

One way to avoid a dilemma that pits QM against Einsteinian thought from which we must either choose only the former or only the latter (to avoid contradiction), we can offer up the hypothesis of Relative State which is commonly known as the Many Worlds Hypothesis, or again, in more dramatic form, the hypothesis of Parallel Universes. 

If we go back to the QM ontology of realism and determinism, we see that an 'event' (light passing through a slit, Schrödinger’s Cat) gains a property (photon or wave, dead or alive) after observation is made and that there can be no definite outcome of these (quantum) measurements. As rich as this sounds, philosophically speaking it raises curious questions such as 'what exactly does the measurement supply so that entities under observation are endowed with given properties or not?'

The Many Worlds Hypothesis tries to get round such questioning by postulating that every time a probaility or more occurs, all of them are realized, in parallel but non-interfering branches of reality. As such, by interpretation, every one of us has virtually infinite copies roaming around other worlds.

If we look at Schrödinger's Cat, for example, in the world of QM the cats ontological state in the box is in a super position (almost deity like) of live cat-dead cat and that the cat’s ontological state (its QM wave function) collapses only when a measurement is made; an observer looks in the box and the cat's properties collapse (randomly, indeterministicaly) to either live or dead. This is just weird, right?

But not within the Many Worlds Theory. In that case, the state of the cat (its wave function) evolves completely deterministically for in this case reality consists of two worlds. One in which the cat is alive and one in which it is dead. There will also be two observers who open the box, one observer with the live cat and the other observer with the dead cat.

As such, the Einsteinian tenets are met. Firstly, every outcome is deterministically real, if we happen to measure one outcome for the cat we can be sure that the other has happened in another world. Secondly, there are real, objective worlds independent of human observation, multiple universes exist independently of any observer and thus human observation does not endow entities with mysterious properties needed to 'collapse' the Cat's QM superposition. Finally, locality is reserved for after all different worlds correspond to different described states of at least one object.

The notion of the Many World Theory is from a philosophical position extremely interesting. It eliminates the indeterminism from QM. It eliminates the mysterious superposition collapse when something is observed which happens without any known mechanism and it eliminates QM non-locality. As such the world, our world, becomes physically classical again and in agreement with common sense.

However, we pay a price for this classical world view for by inference we accept the thesis of Multiple Worlds .

If, on the otherhand, we find such a thesis preposterous and certainly it does seem so, right? How then can we explain the world of Einstein and QM and not run into inherent contradictions, dichotomies, dilemmas and perhaps Einstein's own hatred of those 'spooky actions'?

For further reading, may I suggest this.

I don't pretend to know what I'm talking about but I hope this helped a little

[acey]

The idea has a long history - take a look at this article.

http://www.aeonmagazine.com/world-views/can-the-multiverse-explain-the-course-of-history/

[AlexB67]

Moving on from the above post.......I have only talked about living things, if we are talking about atoms and particles then surly we should ask the question.......if parallel universes do exist then when scientists have explains the formation of our own moon and the Earth it's self then surly a massive object in a parallel universe did NOT hit the early Earth and wipe out it's crust to form the moon, therefore no Earth would exist today for our selves to be finding out facts about our selves or parallel universes, therefore the thought of parallel universes contradicts its self.

Bungielad.

Often it can be a bit hard to appreciate how quantum mechanics follows from classical physics at first. The rules are different, but the ideas discussed above all follow from how quantum mechanics is constructed mathematically using the notion of a wave function and mathematical operators that operate on that wave function ( The cat in the box idea, the so called collapse of a wave function is like asking give me a one of the possible solutions of the equation describing such a system ) .

A simple analogue in school math would simply be something like

d/dx e^x = e^x

d/dx the differential operator, operates on a wavefunction, in this trivial example e^x.

Unfortunately there is a bit of Voodoo, because strictly speaking and a common misconception is that the wave function has no physical analogue with a classical wave, it is a mathematical construct, a weapon if you like to allow one to make experimental observation, this is a large part at least where all the philosophical debates come from. Quantum theory can be hard to understand in terms of what it means, In fact it is a common statement that those that say they understand quantum theory, that they don't understand it at all but as a tool is not as hard to work with and make predictions. In fact some problems are more easily solved mathematically compared to their classical analogues.

As an aside, may  be I'll do a little write up one day, but there is a very elegant theory called  semi classical mechanics that demonstrates in many ways how one theory fades into the other, but it is not often discussed, or never thought at undergraduate level, but it has been used/applied quite successfully to many problems where systems are large enough where there may be some quantum behaviour, but at the same time much of the behaviour is largely classical in nature. Molecules fall into that category, this theory has been applied with some success to explain chemical processes because it is easier to physically interpret compared to the full blown quantum mechanical counterpart and the mind dazzling pictures that come with it.  I mean we all like a good old fashioned classical trajectory  and point like particles instead of torturing the brain right ? we can relate to that

[ronin]

As Cath said it is a theory and we have no idea. Also another assumption made is that in these parallel universes they some how mirror us. Why?

Being as seperate from us as they may be the odds are much higher that they have no connection to us at all and are totally and utterly separate to go through their evolution with no mirroring at all to us. Basically what makes you think there is an Alter variant of you ? If you want to apply a QM aspect try the exclusion principle in which case that would mean there could and would never be an alternative you, or anything else in our universe.

Didn't Einstein dislike QM and did not accept ideas like a partical being in 2 places simultaneously, his quote being God doesn't play dice. So not Einstein I think.

A TV program picking out a theory is fine, just remember it is a theory and nothing more. The Higgs boson started out as 30 to 40 possible theories on where mass came from, so far all except one has been shown to be incorrect. Which gives some idea of the failure rate of a theory.

One thing I recall from one of the programs is that it was reported they are actually still looking to detect a neutrino (bit surprised at that) but if that is correct then we have been wrong on the partical side for a few decades. Since the fusion mechanics of the sun have neutrino's being produced then if no neutrino's we have how the sun works all wrong. Now that is pretty worrying.

At the moment we have no real idea how our universe works, we cannot even see the vast majority of it. In the last 10 years how we think the evolution of our universe will progress has changed 3 times. So we are not actually much good at all this.

Here is a theory: "At any one stage one and only one universe can exist. At the present stage we occupy that single universe."

As I can indicate the presence of this universe and email/phone/write to you to confirm our existance, I would have pretty good evidence to back up my theory. Where is the corresponding evidence for multiple universes? :grin:

[Bungielad]

Thanks for all your info on this topic, it's really good to hear your views. I am by far an expert at QM but as stated above common sense does have to take its place even if common sense does not exist within QM.

I can get my head around the fact of multiverses and wouldn't be surprised if they did exist, I can also get to grips with the fact that at any one time only one universe can exist and we are living in it now....nice theory ronin.

I cannot however, using common sense, get my head around the whole mirror image-Alter you scenario!

In fact I can't believe that scientists that have credible names on these tv shows can actually come up with this kind of theory.

Ok.....we know that QM makes no sense but surely they should know that this particular theory cannot be correct.

If this theory has any meaning what so ever then how can they describe birth!

If everything is mirrored then at the point of a woman giving birth within our planet, is the mirror Alter woman's baby going back inside her tummy??? and if so....how did the baby get out in the first place to go back......no sense what so ever!!

Also if this theory wants to be listened to then the scientists need to explain, why in the Mirror image world would the alter me, you or whomever or whatever want to walk backwards while we walk forwards, biology and natural selection has made animals cope with the environment around them and made animals deal with environmental issues....such as seeing where your going......No sense what so ever!

Bungielad.

[Qualia]

I cannot however, using common sense, get my head around the whole mirror image-Alter you scenario!

I'm not aware of this arguement but is this a mirror image world of married bachelors, or square triangles?

Here is a theory: "At any one stage one and only one universe can exist. At the present stage we occupy that single universe."

That's right in the eyes of a Multiple World Theorist, the place where everything exists is the universe and accordingly, there is only one universe but that this universe incorporates many, many worlds.

[Bungielad]

Qualia.....not a world of square triangles but, yes you do have a point on married bachelor's.....this theory is being told on tv shows about parallel universes and I personally think it's a lot of nonsense that has no evidence what so ever apart from making controversial tv programs.

In my above explanation is my view of a a tv show with many astrophysicists of well known intelligence telling the tv world that this is what a situation could be..........I totally disagree with it and think scientific programs should point out not just the possibility of a situation but also tell the story of how the particular situation can also be totally UN-true with facts they do know and don't know!

Typical tv and media.........making people think other wise when the facts are not there in the first place.......total nonsense!

Bungielad.

[Cath]

Typical tv and media.........making people think other wise when the facts are not there in the first place.......total nonsense!

Yes, that's TV and the media for you.

[symesie04]

I think with these programs such as " through the wormhole" etc you have to listen to the terms being used. Often the ideas are introduced with so and so "believes it might just be possible" blah blah "thinks it could be feasible"  Professor *** "thinks there COULD be" etc etc. These are purely scientists working and exploring ideas at the limit of their field "theoretical physics" and just simply airing them for tv. The ideas are not meant to be bound in stone or even our best accepted theory, they are just ideas that are being explored. 99 times out of a 100 they will go nowhere and the scientist will have u-turn and head in a different direction. But that doesnt mean they shouldnt be explored, that is science after all. In the vast majority of cases they will never lead to any evidence to back them up but just exploring ideas are essential to equipping science in the goals of further understanding. After all when Einstein first explored Special relativity it was theoretical physics.

[Bungielad]

Totally agree with the "wording" on these programs, its one of the things I look (hear) out for whilst watching, but they do tend to push you into believing in what their theory is stating I feel.

I also totally understand that scientists have to explore all avenues to get to a result but, if it weren't for the doubters then the scientists wouldn't have a reason to push forward into finding a truth, both sides of the coin can contribute to a result I feel.

Bungielad.

[Qualia]

 if it weren't for the doubters then the scientists wouldn't have a reason to push forward into finding a truth,

Many would argue that this doubting is at the heart of the scientific endeavour. That in all cases the tenet of a sound scientific theory is that it can in principle be rendered false. In this light, something like evolution is in principle falsifiable but intelligent design is not. In philosophical jargen this feature of a scientific theory being false is termed a virtue of a scientific theory.

On the other hand, it is a mistaken to think that science per se aims for Truth, for after all, how could anyone formulate a measure of Truth without presupposing it in the first place? 

Suppose I ask the question "what is 2 plus 8?" Person A answers "9" and person B gives "12". Here both are wrong but it makes sense to say that A was closer to the correct answer than B; however, this relies upon my knowing that "10" was the true result. Could I assign a degree of correctness, so to speak, if I didn't already know the answer?

The same game arises in science. If we have a theory that accounts for some phenomenon or other, we typically admit that a scientific theory can never be known to be certain but we want to say that it is close enough, or else closer than some other theory that was deposed or left behind. This again involves some conception of Truth and an identical difficulty: how do we measure the relative truth of a theory without knowing the truth in the first place?

As a result of some 3,000 years of debate with some of the best minds ever in existence, many philosophers of science advocate dropping talk of Truth althogether and perhaps humbly accept the idea of verisimilitude. But then that too runs into exactly the same problems

[jetstream]

Simple question from a simple mind......where are all the monopoles??

[ollypenrice]

Bungielad, beware of common sense. Einstein said that common sense was just, 'That set of prejudices accumulated by age eighteen.' 

Common sense told Tycho Brahe that the Earth was, 'A hulking body, unfit for motion.' Wrong!

It told Sir Arthur Eddington not to believe Chandrasekhar and his model of stellar core collapse. Chandra was right!

It tells most people that the term 'now' is meaningful across the universe. It isn't.

It told those who first recognized the possibility of relativisitic time dilation and space contraction that this was just a mathematical game that couldn't be correct. But Einstein was short of common sense, it seems, and realized that the 'game' was correct.

And then later, when Einstein baulked at QM saying, 'God does not play at dice' Neils Bohr, who was even less cluttered up by common sense, simply replied, 'Stop telling God what to do.'

I would also beware of TV prgrammes about subjects not suited to TV. You need to read about these ideas because you need to stop, backtrack, peruse, ponder, backtrack again and then carry on. 

And finally I would beware of telling very clever people what they ought to realize. Very often they know very well what they ought to realize. But they are wary of common sense telling them what they ought to realize because they see that the universe is not answerable to their common sense notion of what is reasonable. It can (and it does) do what it likes.

Olly

[Qualia]

where are all the monopoles??

It's an interesting hypothesis but I really don't know enough to see how the notion bearis on the topic, Jetstream  A little helping hand or insight would be a good thing   

[avtaram]

I can believe that there are other universes besides the one we live in but to say there is a parallel unverse where I also exist is a bit hard to believe. If I existed some where else besides here at the same time then why am I only aware of myself here and not there.

Or is it that I have two bodies but only one mind which moves from one to the other in a random way.

That could explain a lot of the unexpected situations I sometimes find myself in. Now how on earth did that happen, I haven't a clue.

Avtar

[ollypenrice]

I can believe that there are other universes besides the one we live in but to say there is a parallel unverse where I also exist is a bit hard to believe. If I existed some where else besides here at the same time then why am I only aware of myself here and not there.

Or is it that I have two bodies but only one mind which moves from one to the other in a random way.

That could explain a lot of the unexpected situations I sometimes find myself in. Now how on earth did that happen, I haven't a clue.

Avtar

Suppose that on even days you can only remember things that happen on even days and on odd days you can only remember things that happen on odd days. Then ask two questions; One, how many people are you and, two, how do you know this isn't the case?

OK, just a mental game to play, but quite an interesting one!

Olly

[Qualia]

...to say there is a parallel unverse where I also exist is a bit hard to believe. If I existed some where else besides here at the same time then why am I only aware of myself here and not there.

It's a great question and an excellent exercise in thought experimenting. I was writing at the same time Olly posted and this is a similar take just flowing with a different thought experiment. 

There is a great deal of ambiguity in what people commonly refer to as their personal identity. I mean, to what extent are you the same person as you were 5 years ago? On a purely physiological-physical stance you are clearly not the same person, millions of your cells have died and been replaced, your body has been altered as well as your mind by experiences and memories.

But of course, we also have this sense of personal continuity, a personal identity extending through time. It doesn't seem as if people are becoming different from moment to moment - or is that just a useful illusion, another cunning ploy of common sense as highlighted by Olly above? 

But if we do ask whether there is a personal identity/continuity that ties together all the different yous of each moment with the you of today what are we to make of that? What exactly does the tying?

We could say, 'Well, it's all in the neurons.' But does that really make sense? I mean, no matter how hard we look we will never find our personal continuity or identity in a single firing neuron. Personal identity is about something, a firing neuron, or a billion firing neurons aren't about anything other than say, electrical impulses.

If you believe that only now exists, then the issue of a personal continuity is moot, the you of 5 years ago is non-existent.

If you believe that the past and present (and perhaps even the future) are all on equal footing, then you are not wholly located in any particular moment  . The you of 5 years ago was a spacial and temporal part of you on just as an equal footing as the you of now. The whole of you is the totality of your spatio-temporal parts, so the you of today and the you of you five years ago, are parts of the whole of you.

So, in a way we could imagine that each of these yous branch of like an ever growing tree across spacetime The root of that tree is your birth but each of those spatio-temporal parts of you continue to extend through spacetime in an ever blossoming phylogenetic tree. The you that could have gone to university really did go, the you that could have had that date with the gorgeous red-head did so, and to that extent all those other yous are very much different to the you of now.

Pardon the late night ramblings

[Bungielad]

Olly, I am totally with you on the fact that common sense can be over turned with insight to scientific discoveries but as stated above I am only talking about this mirror image world where I find it quite impossible for it to take place.

If everything was in rewind of our world and universe then we (it) would be going back to the singularity.

If the Mirror world for which the tv program was talking about is to be a true theory then, why was it only talking about this planet? Surely it should be speaking of the whole universe, and if so then mirror image would be taking the whole universe back to before the big bang thoery.

Now........if it were saying that our particles can exist in more than one place at any given time but it did not necessarily mean that we or any other function needed to act the same, then I could get my head around that, the whole theory of multiverses to me sounds very plausible and if this is what was ment by "parallel universes" then so be it.

Unfortunately though this was not how the program was telling its story.

I am very aware of how clever these scientists are but, every mind is its own unique of thought.......this was mine.

Bungielad.

[Bungielad]

Qualia, I have to say that reading your posts are like listening to a beautiful lulaby, the way you explain things are fantastic mate!

The words, definitions and the way you write your posts are a pleasure to behold.

Also it's great to hear so many different opinions on a subject, Olly...great advice!

This is a fantastic forum for questions and more important....Learning and understanding.

Thanks SGL.

Bungielad.

[jetstream]

It's an interesting hypothesis but I really don't know enough to see how the notion bearis on the topic, Jetstream  A little helping hand or insight would be a good thing 

G.U.T.,Guth,false vacuum,inflation,monopole dilution,Universe flatness,prolonged inflation,gracefull exit problem,Linde,modified inflation(eternal),lots of big bangs and lots of Universes.If they find(or make) monoploes or continue not to find them it has a big bearing on how the "Big Guns" figure things out.

[jetstream]

If Multiple and possibly parallel Universes are dependent on the Big Bang(s) it would sure be nice to know what banged,what it banged in and what made it bang....Maybe lots of "bubbles" with lots of "mirror" people....I wonder what the theory of probabilty says about this

[Serge]

Olly, I am totally with you on the fact that common sense can be over turned with insight to scientific discoveries but as stated above I am only talking about this mirror image world where I find it quite impossible for it to take place....

...

Bungielad.

Hi Bungielad!

I usually hate responding to smart questions like yours because my answers always come out sounding dumb to me. But, I'm a simple-minded person and I will proceed anyway against all caution  so here is the basic set-up... This idea of mirror or parallel universes could work if the universe is infinite. It boils down to configuring atoms in structures to a finite number of possible combinations. For example, everyone knows what a Rubik's cube looks like. Right, it's a toy! This toy has a finite number of different possible combinations, something like 43 million million million unique combinations. So, if you take a huge number of these cubes, drain all Earth's oceans, and fill them up with these cubes, you are bound to find at least two or more that will look absolutely identical on all sides. OK so far?

So... this idea is the same with other objects that are made of atoms - grains of sand for example. There is a finite number of combinations that you can arrange the atoms in the grain of sand. And if you are on a vast beach someplace, and it's big enough, you are bound to find two or more grains of sand in which the number and the arrangement of atoms is identical. Now, if we imagine a beach that is infinitely long, we will therefore have to conclude that since there is an infinite number of grains of sand and only a finite number of combination of atoms in each grain, we can then find an infinite numbers grains having every permutation possible. But all matter is made from atoms, including you, me, the computer I'm sitting in front of right now, my kids, my house, the earth, solar system, etc. The solar system has a huge number of atoms, that's true, but it's still a finite number nonetheless, and therefore limited to a finite number of possible combinations of atoms. So, extrapolating this idea further, if we live in an infinite universe, and we hop on a spaceship and travel far far away, we are bound to eventually find a star system in which the atoms are arranged exactly the same as in the one where we live, with a duplicate you, me, my computer, my kids, my house, another earth, all in whole new solar system. Finding such a system in an infinite universe is not a question of "if" but of "when." Further, the number of these will be infinite and with similarly infinite number of every possible permutations, and at every instance of time. Kind of like a record that skips.

Anyway, that is the basic principle behind it. All you need is an infinite universe, and Voila! There are actually some studies out there that tested this idea and have some scientific merit to it. I'm sure there are folks on this board that know about this much more than I. See, I told you it will come out dumb