Collin R. Skocik

It's certainly a fun possibility and fertile ground for science fiction stories. The farther you delve into the nether world of quantum mechanics, the less the world makes sense. Matter, energy, location, even time and causality, start to crumble. Parallel universes seem to simultaneously make too much sense and too little. They fit too neatly into an understandable niche that any Star Trek fan can appreciate, and yet how can there be more than one universe if all space-time is included in this one?

Many books have been written about parallel universes, both fiction and nonfiction, and I don't pretend to understand all the science. But since an atom is the smallest particle of matter, then a subatomic particle isn't really a particle at all, is it? It's a vibration, a wave in something that hasn't been defined. What is that something? Ether? A universe-wide zero-point field that runs far deeper than merely the energy of an atom resisting absolute zero? String theory suggests six higher dimensions which are wrapped up so tightly that they can't be observed, much as the third dimension of a sheet of paper can't be observed, and that tiny vibrations along that six-dimensional universe are perceptible to us as one dimensional strings, and depending on how a string is observed, it can take the form of any of the elementary particles. In other words, from a certain perspective a string can be observed as an electron, from another perspective a quark, from another perspective a neutrino, or a muon, or a photon, and so on. This is consistent with the principle of quantum indeterminancy, in which conscious observation is a neccesary additive to the establishment of a particle's location-momentum.

That by itself is a head-scratcher, and Irwin Schrodinger himself, who discovered the problem, hated the theory which he himself developed. In order to observe the location or momentum of an electron, you necessarily change the location or momentum of that electron. By observing you alter. Since Occam's Razor forbids unobservable variables in a scientific problem, it is assumed that therefore location and momentum are interchangeable, like space and time, and that therefore an electron exists at any and every point along its probability wave until it is directly observed and therefore collapsed into a particle. It sounds crazy, it even sounds like a lame attempt to cover for what's unknown, yet this principle has borne every scientific test, there are computer functions which would not work without it, and indeed a few years ago, under rigidly controlled conditions, an electron was in fact observed to be in two places at the same time without violating the law of conservation.

So what does that have to do with parallel universes? Well, if the electron is verified to be in one particular location...what happens to the rest of the probability wave? Why is the electron here, where it's being observed, rather than over there where it might have been? And building up from that, since all matter is made of electrons, why am I here at this computer rather than over there reading my book? Why am I male rather than female? Why did I marry who I married rather than that other cute girl? The collective probability wave of all the atoms in my body would suggest any one of these possibilities, but I verify every day through conscious observation that I am who I am, where I am, what I am, married to whom I'm married, and so on. So what about the rest of the probability wave? What happens to that probability? And if it doesn't describe reality, why is it there? It sounds more like philosophy than science, but it holds as long as 1+1=2. You are what you're made of, and if we're not sure what we're made of, where does that leave us?

It would all make sense if the me that I observe, which everyone around me observes...isn't the whole me. If the rest of me is hidden in other universes. If every decision splits the universe in order to house every conceivable possibility.

Here's another example. A simple experiment. Set up the beam of a flashlight to shine against a square of cardboard with two slits in it. How much light shines against the wall beyond the cardboard? Certainly less than hits the cardboard. It's as if the slits are admitting only a small percentage of the light. And yet if you look through the slits at the incoming light, the light is in fact intensified, magnified as it passes through the slits, like water sloshing through the pilings under a pier. The water has to slosh and bend and whirl, but it all gets where it's going. So all of the light is passing through the slits, waving and sloshing and whirling like water -- and yet so little of it strikes the wall beyond the slits. Where is all that light going? Why does it behave like a wave when travleing through space, but like a stream of particles as soon as it hits something? No one really knows the answer, but if there are parallel universes, that would explain it -- other walls, hidden in parallel universes, are receiving the photons that are not visible in this universe. The light wave itself is hyperspatial, multiversal, an absolute. But the individual photons, marking precise peaks and troughs in the wave, marking specific locations in a three-dimensional coordinate system, are isolated and perculiar to one universe.

But there are other possible explanations, any one of which could be more plausible, more mundane, and frankly not as fun. Perhaps fluctuations in vacuum -- zero point energy manifest -- could be enough to "feel" reality and collapse wave function before an observer is necessary. Or maybe we're just all wrong about particles and waves and there's a simpler explanation that some future uber-Einstein is yet to put together. Or maybe there really is an omnicient God observing and deciding reality independent of the universe -- though that sets up an infinite regress, a logical contradiction, and badly violates Occam's Razor.

The most likely scenario, in my opinion, is that zero-point energy, if it is in fact a universe-wide storehouse of energy, is actually a seething, bubbling mass of tiny wormholes, which by their nature would be extremely radiative. This might provide enough "room" in our own universe to absorb the unused energy of light, electrons, and so on. These tiny wormholes may lead to ultra-tiny, superhot universes, or to elsewhere in our own universe. It's not a particularly interesting hypothesis, but maybe for that very reason it rings truer than any other speculation I've read about. After all, zero-point energy indisputably exists, it's simply the energy that prevents a particle from being cooled to absolute zero, and if there is a zero-point field, it may also explain the existence of gravity and inertia. That's a bit hard to resist.

But until we know one way or the other -- which may be sooner than you might think, if the Large Hadron Collider lives up to its potential and leads to bigger and more powerful colliders in the vein of the sadly defunct SSC -- I still gladly embrace parallel universes as a viable possibility. At the very least, some great science fiction can come of the concept.