Our universe might be really, really big - but finite. Or it might be infinitely big. Both cases, says physicist Brian Greene, are possibilities, but if the latter is true, so is another posit: There are only so many ways matter can arrange itself within that infinite universe. Eventually, matter has to repeat itself and arrange itself in similar ways. So if the universe is infinitely large, it is also home to infinite parallel universes. Read more
Title: The Many Worlds of Hugh Everett III Authors: Adrian Kent (Centre for Quantum Information and Foundations, DAMTP, University of Cambridge and Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics)
A review of Peter Byrne's biography of Hugh Everett III, "The Many Worlds of Hugh Everett III: Multiple Universes, Mutual Assured Destruction, and the Meltdown of a Nuclear Family", (Oxford University Press, 2010).
Title: Consciousness and the Quantum Authors: Don N. Page
Sensible Quantum Mechanics or Mindless Sensationalism is a framework for relating consciousness to a quantum universe. It states that each conscious perception has a measure that is given by the expectation value of a corresponding quantum "awareness operator" in a fixed quantum state of the universe. The measures can be interpreted as frequency-type probabilities for a large set of perceptions that all actually exist with varying degrees of reality, so detailed theories within this framework are testable. The measures are not propensities for potentialities to be actualised, so there is nothing indeterministic in this framework, and no free will in the incompatibilistic sense. As conscious perceptions are determined by the awareness operators and the quantum state, they are epiphenomenona. No fundamental relation is postulated between different perceptions (each being the entirety of a single conscious experience and thus not in direct contact with any other), so SQM or MS, a variant of Everett's "many-worlds" framework, is a "many-perceptions" framework but not a "many-minds" framework.
Title: Observing other universe through ringholes and Klein-bottle holes Authors: Pedro F. González-Díaz, Ana Alonso-Serrano
It is argued that whereas the Shatskiy single rings produced by the gravitational inner field of a spherically symmetric wormhole and the concentric double Einstein rings generated by a toroidal ringhole could not be used without some uncertainty to identify the presence of such tunnelings in the universe or the existence of a parallel universe, the image which the inner gravitational field of a non orientable Klein-bottle hole tunnelling would leave by lensing a single luminous source is that of a truncated double spiral, which is a signature that cannot be attributed to any other single or composite astronomical object in whichever universe it may be placed. In this report we argue some more reasons to predict that such a signature would imply the discovery of one such non orientable tunnelling in our or other universe. After all, a nonorientable Klein-bottle hole is also a perfectly valid solution to the Einstein equations and the stuff which would make it feasible is becoming more and more familiar in cosmology.
Physics of The Impossible - How to Travel to a Parallel Universe, with Michio Kaku.
How to Travel to a Parallel Universe: Dr. Kaku is on a mission to design a gateway to a parallel universe but which type should he visit? MIT cosmologist Alan Guth explains his recipe for creating your own universe in the lab, and physicist Neil Turok explains how a parallel universe is only an atom's length away from us.
The dusty boxes that line the walls of Jeff Barrett's UC Irvine office mark a high point in his academic career. Their contents: pages and pages of notes, most more than 50 years old, penned by late quantum theorist Hugh Everett III. With $160,000 from the National Science Foundation, Barrett and colleagues are combing through, scanning and preserving documents they hope will shed light on how to understand measurement as a consistent physical process in quantum mechanics - one of physics' most debated puzzles that Everett believed he had solved as a graduate student. Read more
Stick your finger in your ear... Did you do it? If the so-called Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct, there's at least one universe in which you did, one in which you didn't, and universes for everything in between. Physicist Hugh Everett III was just 27 years old when he introduced this interpretationalso known as the theory of parallel worldsin the published version of his 1957 doctoral thesis. According to Everett's theory, every event that could occur in a number of ways, even something as simple as how you decided to respond to the above request, triggers a split that generates multiple universes, which collectively contain every possible outcome. While new to science, the notion of parallel worlds was hardly new to science fiction.