Why parallel universes exist

After all, if we're stuck in our own Universe, how can we ever hope to access another one? We have our own laws of physics, but they come along with a whole host of quantities that are always conserved. Particles don't simply appear, disappear, or transform; they can only interact with other quanta of matter and energy, and the outcomes of those interactions are similarly governed by the laws of physics.

In all the experiments we've ever performed, all the observations we've ever recorded, and all the measurements ever made, we've never yet discovered an interaction that demands the existence of something beyond our own, isolated Universe to explain. The Standard Model of particle physics accounts for three of the four forces excepting gravity , Unless, of course, you've read the headlines that came out this week , reporting that scientists in Antarctica have discovered evidence for the existence of parallel Universes.

If this were true, it would be absolutely revolutionary. It's a grandiose claim that would show us that the Universe as we currently conceive of it is inadequate, and there's much more out there to learn about and discover than we ever thought possible. Not only would these other Universes be out there, but matter and energy from them would have the capability to cross over to and interact with matter and energy in our own Universe.

Perhaps, if this claim were correct, some of our wildest science fiction dreams would be possible. Perhaps you could travel to a Universe:. A representation of the different parallel "worlds" that might exist in other pockets of the So what was the remarkable evidence that demonstrates the existence of a parallel Universe?

What observation or measurement was made that brought us to this remarkable and unexpected conclusion?

The ANITA ANtarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna experiment — a balloon-borne experiment that's sensitive to radio waves — detected radio waves of a particular set of energies and directions coming from beneath the Antarctic ice. This is good; it's what the experiment was designed to do!

In both theory and in practice, we have all sorts of cosmic particles traveling through space, including the ghostly neutrino. While many of the neutrinos that pass through us come from the Sun, stars, or the Big Bang, some of them come from colossally energetic astrophysical sources like pulsars, black holes, or even mysterious, unidentified objects.

These neutrinos also come in a variety of energies, with the most energetic ones unsurprisingly being the rarest and, to many physicists, the most interesting. However, most of the high-energy neutrinos that we see aren't produced from far away, but are produced when other cosmic particles also of extremely high energies strike the upper atmosphere, producing cascades of particles that also result in neutrinos.

Some of these neutrinos will pass through the Earth almost completely, only interacting with the final layers of Earth's crust or ice , where they can produce a signal that our detectors are sensitive to.

While cosmic ray showers are common from high-energy particles, it's mostly the muons which make it Tonight's Sky — Select location. Tonight's Sky — Enter coordinates. UTC Offset:. Picture of the Day Image Galleries.

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Groups Why Join? Astronomy Day. The Complete Star Atlas. Parallel universes could exist, whether cosmologists can prove it or not. A multiverse consists of many separate and distinct universes, as depicted in this artist's concept. Do we live in a multiverse? Daydreamers and science-fiction authors have pondered parallel universes for as long as scientists have described our own. Additionally, the quantum possibilities that now exist for our universe are only possible for future events whose outcomes have already been determined.

The idea that multiple histories could overlap to create the reality we now inhabit — often colloquially known as the Mandela effect — is a physically inadmissible example of pseudoscience, unsupported by any evidence at all. At another time in another place, perhaps there was a version of you that made better decisions at a critical juncture, and that version of you, in another universe, is having a better life and inhabiting a better world because of it.

The idea of the multiverse, and specifically of parallel universes that were identical to our own until those critical decisions, offers us the hope that our past decisions are not as immutable as we currently believe. Even if inflation has been ongoing for an infinite amount of time, whatever occurs in the other universes that exist are in no way related to what is occurring or has occurred in our universe.

Our past is fundamentally written. There are no opportunities arising in any multiverse scenario either to rewrite the past or to import, from another universe, an outcome that turned out differently. The multiverse may be inevitable and parallel universes may be possible, but they do not affect our universe is any measurable or observable way. Beyond the limits of science, all we have is speculation. Until the evidence catches up, no further definitive statements can be made.

Skip to content The multiverse idea states that there are large, possibly infinite numbers of Universes like our own, and large, possibly infinite numbers of universes with differences. It all depends on the duration that inflation persisted for prior to the onset of our hot Big Bang.

Ethan Siegel. Share Could there be a parallel universe identical to our own? If we presume that: the hot Big Bang, which gave rise to the observable universe as we know it, was preceded by cosmic inflation all of the particles and fields within the universe are fundamentally quantum in nature Then it follows that the existence of a multiverse is all but inevitable. Galaxies give way to large-scale structure and the hot, dense plasma of the Big Bang at the outskirts.

Credit: Chris Blake and Sam Moorfield Typically, we like to visualize inflation as a simple field: it has certain properties that affect the space over which the field is present. Inflation ends top when a ball rolls into the valley. But the inflationary field is a quantum one middle , spreading out over time.

While many regions of space purple, red and cyan will see inflation end, many more green, blue will see inflation continue, potentially for eternity bottom. Credit: E. While it ended for everything that we can detect from Earth This is called the theory of eternal inflation. And as inflation ends in a particular place, a new bubble universe forms, Vilenkin wrote for Scientific American in Those bubble universes can't contact each other because they continue to expand indefinitely.

If we were to set off for the edge of our bubble, where it might butt up against the next bubble universe over, we'd never reach it because the edge is zipping away from us faster than the speed of light, and faster than we could ever travel.

Related: How many stars are in the universe? But even if we could reach the next bubble, according to eternal inflation combined with string theory , our familiar universe with its physical constants and habitable conditions could be totally different from the hypothetical bubble universe next to our own. The rest of the multiverse remains barren, but no one is there to complain about that. Vilenkin's explanation implies that in some of the infinite bubble universes outside our own, there could be other intelligent observers.

But in every instant that passes, we get farther away from them, and we will never intersect. Some researchers base their ideas of parallel universes on quantum mechanics, the mathematical description of subatomic particles. In quantum mechanics, multiple states of existence for tiny particles are all possible at the same time — a "wave function" encapsulates all of those possibilities. However, when we actually look, we only ever observe one of the possibilities.

According to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics as described by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , we observe an outcome when the wave function "collapses" into a single reality. But the many-worlds theory proposes instead that every time one state, or outcome, is observed, there is another "world" in which a different quantum outcome becomes reality.

This is a branching arrangement, in which instant by instant, our perceived universe branches into near-infinite alternatives. Those alternate universes are completely separate and unable to intersect, so while there may be uncountable versions of you living a life that's slightly — or wildly — different from your life in this world, you'd never know it. The many-worlds theory is the most "courageous" take on the quandary of quantum mechanics, physicist Sean Carroll wrote in his book, " Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime " Dutton, He also argued that it is the most straightforward theory, although not without wrinkles.