Welcome to my blog post for August. This summer has been a
scorcher so far and there's no sign it’ll cool off till perhaps November!
But, the weeks and months are flying by. I guess that means
I’m enjoying them, because if I weren’t they’d drag by.
Okay — I’m gonna get real geeky with you here, but bear with
me…
Doctors Niels Bohr and Ernest Rutherford, back in 1913,
depicted the atom as a nucleus surrounded by electrons that travel in circular
orbits around the nucleus. Strikingly similar in structure to a solar system.
This simplistic description had the effect of firing the
imaginations of untold numbers of people, and still does. Add a little quantum
physics into the mix — just to insure that everyone is too confused and
befuddled to truly understand, and — well, there is no end to the adventure
that springs to mind in the fertile imagination.
Such has been my plight. The notion that entire worlds, not
dissimilar to our own, may exist at the sub atomic level, or that we ourselves
are just part of the atomic make up of a bit of mustard on some fellows hot dog
in a very much larger, alternative reality has always played about the fringes
of my mind, and as a youth actually haunted my dreams (yes, I was an odd
child).
Then I read some of Cosmologist Max Tegmark’s work. I defy
anyone to read some of his theory’s and not have flights of fantasy.
Dr. Tegmark described four Multiverse levels:
•Level I: A generic prediction of cosmological inflation is
an infinite ergodic universe, which contains Hubble volumes realizing all
initial conditions - including an identical copy of you.
•Level II: In many models, inflation can produce multiple
Level I multiverses that have different effective physical constants,
dimensionality and particle content.
•Level III: In unitary quantum mechanics, other branches of
the wave function add nothing qualitatively new, which is ironic given that
this quantum parallel universes have historically been the most controversial.
•Level IV: Other mathematical structures give different
fundamental equations of physics.
Then, in September, 2008, MIT's Dr. Jacob Bozeman admitted
that "The implications of this deceptively simple hypothesis are
completely blowing my mind. Like, we could all be nothing more than this little
dot in the fingernail of some giant dude.”
Einstein proved that time and space are relative, and by
extrapolation we deduce that size is also, for size is nothing more than a
measurement of space. Let’s take the nucleus of an atom, say you cut in half,
then quarter it, and so on, until eventually you end up with the one millionth
part of a nucleus ... yet that one millionth part can itself be cut in half,
then quartered and so and so on ... never reaching the point of absolute
nothingness.
Now let’s toss in a little String theory. In a nut shell
String theory discounts the uni-verse as we understand it. Rather than one universe,
there are many, perhaps countless systems out there. Collectively this is
called the multiverse or metaverse.
Other scientists say they’ve found something else in the
echo of the Big Bang. These guys start with a different model of the universe called
eternal inflation. In this theory, the universe we see is just a big bubble in
a much larger cosmos. This cosmos is filled with other big bubbles, all of
which are other universes where the laws of physics may be dramatically
different from ours.
These bubbles had a violent past, jostling together and
leaving “cosmic bruises” where they bump into each other. So, these bruises
ought to be visible today in the cosmic microwave background.
Enter now Stephen Feeney from the University College London
who says he found tentative evidence of this bruising in the form of circular
patterns in the cosmic microwave background. In fact, he and his colleagues
have found four of these bruises, implying that our universe must have smashed
into other bubbles at least four times in the past.
The multiverse is the hypothetical set of multiple possible
universes including the one in which we live. Together they comprise everything
that exists and can exist: the entirety of space, time, matter, and energy, and
that includes the laws and constants that govern them. The various universes
within the multiverse are sometimes called parallel universes, yeah — I know
you’ve heard that before.
Is your imagination on fire yet? Think of it, there are as
many adventures in that one millionth part of a half of a half of a nucleus as
in our entire known universe!
Let’s go there — you and me.
Email: Gonzales-scribbler@cox.net
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