Physicists think the infinite size of the multiverse could be infinitely bigger
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| When another universe begins: samsara |
(ScienceAlert) Not only does
God play dice, that great big casino of quantum physics could have far more rooms than we ever imagined -- an infinite number more, in fact.
Physicists from the University of California at Davis (UCD), the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the US, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne have redrawn the map of fundamental reality to demonstrate the way we relate objects in physics could be holding us back from seeing a bigger picture.
For
about a century, our understanding of reality has been complicated by the theories and observations that fall under the banner of quantum mechanics.
Gone are the days when objects had absolute measures like velocity and position. To understand the fabric from which the Universe is made, we need mathematics that breaks down games of chance into likely measures.
This is far from an intuitive view of the Universe. In what has come to be known as the
Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum physics, it seems there are waves of possibility until there isn't.
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Even now, it's not at all clear
what ultimately decides the fate of
Schrödinger's cat. [Is it dead, alive, or both?] That hasn't stopped physicists from considering the options.
American physicist Hugh Everett suggested in the 1950s that all possible measures constituted their own reality. What makes this one special is merely the fact you happen to be observing it.
- Related video: What if the Universe were just an illusion? (What If)
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| Universes are like bubbles; beings mostly stay put |
Everett's "
many worlds" model isn't quite a theory so much as a way of grounding the absolute weirdness of quantum mechanics in something tangible.
We start with an impression of the infinite multiverse of maybes, or what physicists might refer to as the sum of all energies and positions known as a
global Hamiltonian, and then zoom in on what interests us, constraining the infinite within a finite and far more manageable Hamiltonian subsystem.
Yet as a means of comprehending the infinite, could this "zooming in" be holding us back? Or as the researchers behind this latest exercise
frame it, is it "too provincial an approach, born out of our familiarity with certain macroscopic objects?"
To put it another way, we might readily ask whether Schrödinger's cat is alive or dead inside its box but not consider whether the table beneath is warm or cold or if the box is starting to smell.
In an effort to determine whether our tendency to keep our focus on what's inside the box even matters, the researchers developed an algorithm to consider whether some quantum possibilities known as
pointer states might be a little more stubbornly set than others, making some critical properties less likely to entangle.
If so, the box describing Schrödinger's cat is to some degree incomplete unless we're considering a long list of factors that may potentially stretch far across the Universe.
"You can have part of the Earth and the Andromeda galaxy in one subsystem, that's a perfectly legitimate subsystem," UCD physicist Arsalan Adil explained to Karmela Padavic-Callaghan at
New Scientist.
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| Countless worlds in at least 31 categories |
In theory,
there is no limit to the way subsystems could be defined, adding long lists of states near and far that could fence off a reality in subtly different ways.
Starting with Everett's "
many worlds" the team have come up with what they refer to as a "many more worlds" interpretation – taking an infinite set of possibilities and multiplying it with an infinite range of realities that we might not normally consider.
Much as with the original interpretation, this novel take is less a comment on how the Universe behaves but more about our attempts to study it one bite at a time.
The researchers emphasize they haven't attached a lot of conceptual significance to their algorithm but do wonder if it might have applications in developing better ways of probing quantum systems, such as those
inside computers.
No doubt in some other reality, they already have their answer. This research is yet to be peer-reviewed and is available on
arXiv. More:
- Physicists think the infinite size of the multiverse could be infinitely bigger (ScienceAlert)
- The best explanation for this world, which means this universe, was given by an American who went to the Andes to a doorway (portal) carved in stone, near Lake Titicaca. A shaman told him its secrets and taught him the utterances needed to enter. He did it and regretted it. What he found was the beginning of this world. There in a lab along the way, he saw "scientists" trying to control the size of our expanding world so that it did not overtake theirs. Ours started by accident. It's organic and a natural process, not uncommon. Once it gets going, it's inhabited by beings who circle the round of samsara without end. A buddha awakens, discovers the way out. Do we listen?
Multiverse?
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| O, Buddha, tell me the truth so I can do the math |
(Richard Milner/Grunge) So we all know about the
multiverse, right? One day a physicist somewhere thought, "Man, I wish I'd played in the NBA instead of sitting around doing math all day," and bam: instant childhood fantasy fulfillment meets theoretical physics
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| If Einstein asked, the B knew it |
Then there's that Marvel movie, that
other Marvel movie, and the DC one, and the one with like three Spidermen that was actually pretty solid and better than expected, especially Andrew Garfield.
And somewhere in there, drowning in the morass of fictional portrayals, evidence-less reality, the religious zeal of multiversal proponents, and grounded reservations of skeptics rests the truth of the multiverse: It's not a thing.
Okay, it could be a thing, but only in the way that "God" is a thing because its existence can't be disproven -- yet. But how to gather data on the multiverse? Behold the conundrum:
- 1) The universe, by definition, is that which contains everything that is and
- 2) to test for another universe we would have to test outside of all that is; therefore,
- 3) science = impossible.
Yet, some researchers point to the oldest light in the universe -- cosmic background radiation (CBR) -- as holding
multiversal clues, per a
collaborative paper at Cornell University. More:
Is the multiverse actually scientifically possible?
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