The Concept of the Megaverse

Everyone is well aware that they live on a small blue-green planet which goes around an average star which orbits an average galaxy which is one of billions and billions of galaxies that collectively make up our Universe. Is that all there is? Well, you may have heard of the Multiverse concept – a collection of Universes. Then too you are probably familiar with Mirror or Parallel Universes, even if just from watching or reading sci-fi. I’ll use an analogy here we’re all familiar with to illustrate these concepts – money.

Every country has money – coins and bills. Some currencies are more varied and colourful than others. Australia’s currency is one of those IMHO, but I’m probably biased living Down Under and using Australian currency. Still, the currency concept is pretty well established, so non-Australians should have no trouble following the analogy that I hope illustrates the Multiverse and the Parallel Universe, collectively a conglomerate I term a Megaverse.  

The Australian Multiverse Currency Collective

One Cent Piece: A high density copper Universe that was inhabited by the Feathertail Glider, a civilization unable to prevent the End of their Universe which has collapsed, due to high density, into a singularity and disappeared from sight.

Two Cent Piece: A high density copper Universe that was inhabited by the Frill-Necked Lizard which has also now collapsed for similar reasons into a singularity and disappeared from sight.

Five Cent Piece: A high density silver Universe inhabited by Echidnas, a race of spiny anteaters. It’s currently the smallest high density Universe.

Ten Cent Piece: A high density silver Universe inhabited by Lyrebirds.

Twenty Cent Piece: A high density silver Universe inhabited normally by the dominate race of the Platypus but with a few rarer species as well.

Fifty Cent Piece: A high density silver Universe inhabited mainly by a civilization of a very rare species indeed, the Coat of Arms (i.e. - stylized Kangaroos and Emus) but with a few rarer species as well present – they come and they go. This Universe is unique in having evolved over time from round space-time geometry to twelve-sided space-time geometry (Dodecagon). This Universe is the largest of all the high density Universes.

One Hundred Cent Piece: A high density golden Universe inhabited by a very diverse set of entities, though the dominant life form is a civilization of Kangaroos

Two Hundred Cent Piece: A high density golden Universe inhabited by a humanoid race known as the Aboriginals, an alien species if ever there was one. This Universe is the second smallest of all the known high density Universes.

All of the high density Universes is also by the way inhabited by variations of an alien parasitic species known as the Queen Lizzies.

One Dollar Bill: A low density brownish-orange Universe with a flatland space-time topology, but alas this Universe suffered the cosmological Rig Rip. RIP!

Two Dollar Bill: A low density greenish-yellow Universe with a flatland space-time topology which has now suffered a cosmological final Heat Death. A Two Dollar Bill was never all that crash hot to begin with!

Five Dollar Bill: A low density purple or violet-pinkish Universe with a flatland space-time topology. What’s interesting is that this Universe started out as a pale mauve cosmos before morphing into its current appearance. This Universe also hosts a species of the dreaded alien parasite, the Queen Lizzy. How this species made it from the high density Universes to here is a mystery of currency cosmological physics – perhaps she went through the wormhole.

Ten Dollar Bill: A low density Blue Universe with a flatland space-time topology.

Twenty Dollar Bill: A low density orange Universe with a flatland space-time topology.

Fifty Dollar Bill: A low density Yellow Universe with a flatland space-time topology.

One Hundred Dollar Bill: A low density Green Universe with a flatland space-time topology, the largest in size of all the low density Universes. What’s interesting is that this Universe started out as a light bluish-grey cosmos before morphing into its current appearance.

On some substantial note, all of the low density Universes, all those with a flatland space-time topology, are inhabited by various humanoid entities, so one might conclude that this collection or low density part of the Multiverse is older than the high density Universes. That might make sense if the younger high density Universes are expanding (due to ‘cosmic’ inflation?) and therefore density decreases over the long haul - cosmic evolution in action.

Now none of the above Universes coexist in the exact same space-time. They are all separate and unique Universes, even when in your wallet and jingling in your purse or pocket.

So that’s the collective Australian currency/coinage Multiverse comprised of various Universes, all of different colours and sizes; all with various densities and inhabitants.

But note that you can’t have just any old Universe. There’s no currency physics that allows a Three Dollar Bill Universe or a Seven Cent Coin Universe, though cosmic evolution might allow for that in the far distant future. In the meantime however, there’s allowable currency physics and unallowable currency physics when it comes the allowable and unallowable Universes.

The Australian Parallel Universe Currency Collective

A collection of just Twenty Cent Pieces or just Twenty Dollar Bill Universes would be a collection of Parallel Universes. Each Twenty Cent Piece (or Twenty Dollar Bill) Universe is the same in being a Twenty Cent Piece (or Twenty Dollar Bill) Universe. However, Parallel Universes while the same in terms of each being the same Big Picture, differ in the details – that’s what sets them apart as Parallel or Mirror Universes.

For example, in the case of the Twenty Cent Piece Universe, each Twenty Cent Piece has a case of ‘different strokes for different folks’, the ‘folks’ all being the same Big Picture (i.e. – they are just ‘folks’). Each and every Twenty Cent Piece Universe has a different fate – perhaps a differing date stamped on the coin. Some Universes will be mint and un- circulated; others eroded and/or dented and/or tarnished.

A collection of Twenty Dollar Bill Universes is also a Parallel Universe of Twenty Dollar Bill Universes. Again, each Twenty Dollar Bill Universe has a unique history apart from all other Twenty Dollar Bill Universes. Each has a differing and unique serial number; some maybe counterfeit; some are hot off the printing press, others creased, folded maybe torn. They are all Twenty Dollar Bill Universes, but all are quasi-Mirror images of the generic ideal. All exist in parallel with respect to the others - the same, but different.

Now say you have a stack of One Hundred Dollar Bill Universes. Clearly all are the same Universe, yet no two are absolutely identical – you have a Parallel Universe composed of the One Hundred Dollar Bill Universes. New Parallel One Hundred Dollar Universes are still being created as new bills are manufactured (acts of creation). Some Parallel Universes become defunct too (acts of destruction). Universes are dynamic and evolving entities. 

If you say that you are an inhabitant of the Ten Dollar Bill Universe, you’d probably have no way of contacting or exploring or even knowing about other currency Universes in other space-times. There’s probably no way you could know about and explore another Ten Dollar Bill Universe and meet yourself and discover what alternative history your other self lived; what sort of lifestyle and what sort of worldview did they have. As all Bills and Coins are isolated in their own individual space-time niches, so too are you isolated to that one bit and piece of space-time you find yourself in. The possible exception to this, as demonstrated by the Queen Lizzies, is travelling from one Universe to another via some exotic relativistic currency physics, say via currency wormholes.

In fact, since you cannot escape from your coins or bills currency Universe (currency wormholes apart), you could even think of it has being a currency Black Hole, an object from which nothing can escape! A Black Hole and a Universe might just be one and the same thing. On the other hand, a Black Hole that leaks into a White Hole could have that White Hole exit in another Universe in which case the Black Hole is the wormhole. 

Now, that’s the Megaverse in microcosm; now throw into the mix all the rest of the world’s currencies, past, present and future and you have the Big Picture of the macrocosm Megaverse. Is that all there is? Isn’t that enough?

Megaverse: A few notes.

The Australian one and two cent coins, and the one and two dollar bill denominations are no longer manufactured and are no longer in active circulation, though technically still legal tender.

The Big Rip: The density of the [antigravity] Dark Energy in our Universe gets bigger and bigger as time goes by and the Universe evolves. Trillions of years from now the force of Dark Energy should be so strong as to rip apart even the constituent parts of molecules and atoms down to the level of their fundamental particles.

The Heat Death: We live in an expanding Universe. Unlike our ever increasing supply of Dark Energy, our heat supply is and always has been finite. Thus, over time, that finite supply is spreading out into an ever increasing volume and so the Universe is cooling, ever cooling, down. Eventually, as all the stars exhaust their fuel, the Universe will acquire an overall temperature as close to absolute zero as makes no odds. So you have, as the ultimate fate of the Universe, the slow death of heat, or the Big Chill!

The Singularity: If you gather enough mass together, the ever increasing amount of gravity will eventually become so great that mass will implode, perhaps, according to some physicists, down to a dimensionless point  of infinite density. That’s nonsense IMHO. The imploded object, the singularity, is just very, very, very tiny and very, very, very dense. It’s so dense that the intense gravity traps light and keeps even it from escaping. So you have this singularity, or in other words the heart and soul of a Black Hole.

The Wormhole: A theoretical shortcut, a gateway or passageway linking one part of the Universe to another part (or perhaps one Universe to another). Wormholes are common objects in sci-fi scenarios where you need to quickly get from Point A to Point B which is a massive distance away.

Mathematics Are You

You are part of life, the Universe and everything. You and that greater whole have to be grounded in some fundamental bedrock that connects everything into a logical and unified whole. Most would say that’s the role of the laws, relationships and principles of physics. But there’s a deeper level yet. Mathematics are the ultimate foundation that make physics a logical (if not quite yet unified) whole. So ultimately life, the Universe and everything is based on maths. Maths is ultimately your reality. It’s what makes you tick!

The Universe IS just mathematics according to physicist/cosmologist Professor Max Tegmark (Department of Physics, MIT). It’s called the “Mathematical Universe Hypothesis (MUH)” or the “Ultimate Ensemble”, one of those proposals for a ‘Theory of Everything’ (TOE), that ultimate theoretical equation so beloved by physicists that describes life, the Universe and everything. It will be so concise that it can be printed on just the front of a tee-shirt. Tegmark's mathematical universe hypothesis is: our external physical reality is a mathematical structure. All structures that exist mathematically exist also physically. That is, the universe IS mathematics in a well-defined sense. Mathematics has an external reality, and since everything is built from the ground (i.e. – mathematics) up, everything ultimately is mathematics and therefore can be expressed in that ultimate theoretical TOE tee-shirt equation.

Mathematics is the universal language. Whether you’re a Frenchman or a Chinaman; an Englishman or even ufonauts like those alien LGM (Little Grey Men); a Klingon or a Romulan; you understand the Pythagorean Theorem and the quadratic equation; topology and the calculus.

The most fundamental science is physics. That’s the bedrock on which chemistry is formatted. The earth and space sciences are in turn supported and explained by those two building blocks. All of those collectively form the foundations of the biological sciences, which in turn support anthropology, psychology and the other social and behavioural sciences. Even economics and the arts have ultimate foundations in mathematics.

But what supports physics? Mathematics, that’s what. Ultimately that’s where it all begins. The Universe (including life and everything) is mathematics. You exist inside of geometry. You are receiving information about life, the Universe and everything encoded in mathematics; it takes mathematics to reveal the information. You cannot come to terms with understanding space and time, matter and energy, and the four (or more) fundamental forces that govern the Universe, hence ultimately you and your surroundings, without resorting to maths.

Your day is constantly filled with how much, how many, and how fast - mathematical relationships. ‘Where’ is maths; ‘when’ is maths; ‘what’ is often pure maths. You may not be a physicist, but economics probably rules your roost. There’s gambling (even if just on the stock market or getting away with running a red light) involving probability theory. Every day in every way you add and subtract and multiply and divide numbers. You even do fractions! Your calculator may crunch the numbers, but you press the buttons.

Music and sounds in general play a massive role in our lives. Acoustics, harmonics, sound waves, and the like are all expressible in, and based around, mathematics. Ditto for navigation and GPS and related.

Now think of the mathematics supporting the physics (or its applied alter ego, engineering) behind your home, your transport, your entertainment, your comfort conveniences, and what goes into making you able to get through your day. What holds all your bits and pieces together and holds you to the ground yet doesn’t allow you to go through it can be expressed in equations? What mathematical physics fuels the sun that ultimately gives you your daily bread? What mathematical physics keeps your home planet a goldilocks planet, not too far away from, or too close to the sun with an atmosphere over your head? 24/7/52 you are governed by time and space; matter and energy, all of which have reality as mathematical constructs. And where would sports teams*, NASA and the military be without the basic mathematics behind the basic physics that guide and govern their activities?

There’s another kind of mathematical universe apart from the one promoted by Max Tegmark, though maybe they are actually one and the same. That’s my hypothesis. There’s another way of looking at this. There’s another possible, even probable, Mathematical Universe – the Simulated Universe. Could these two universes be one and the same?

Firstly, why is a Simulated Universe our probable Universe? Well, for the exact same reason that while you suspect there is just one real Universe, the one real Universe the really real you lives in, you would be aware that Planet Earth in that really real Universe has an intelligent human population that has evolved computer technologies and has created thousands upon thousands of virtually real simulations, both for the purposes of instruction (say astronaut flight training) as well as for entertainment (video games). The ratio of virtually real landscapes to really real landscapes is therefore multi-thousands to one.

Further, in most cases there are thousands upon thousands of copies of those simulations, a sort of Multiverse, where say a character in one video game has thousands of ‘clones’ because there are thousands of copies of that game. That character of course couldn’t meet any of his or her or its identical copies, which is probably a good thing. However, if you could ask that character whether they felt they were really real or simulated, they would of course answer really real not knowing or suspecting that a human being was their creator and the creator of their simulated landscape.

Go one level up from Planet Earth and humanity’s numerous simulation creations and extrapolate and the odds are high that someone or something out there, a Supreme Programmer, created a simulation that’s our Universe. There are numerous copies of this video game simulation called say “The Life and Times of Planet Earth” created by this unknown and probably unknowable Supreme Programmer, and thus there are really numerous copies of you, but fortunately only one copy per game! Your day-to-day reality is just a virtual reality because you don’t really exist in the way you think you do.

Another way of thinking about the numerous copies of the video game “The Life and Times of Planet Earth” is that this amounts to the concept of Parallel Universes. In another copy of “The Life and Times of Planet Earth” another copy of you has led a different life and lifestyle to the you that exists in your copy or version of “The Life and Times of Planet Earth”.

Now, the interesting bit, IMHO, is what if our Universe or Max Tegmark’s Mathematical Universe which is also our Universe was just a Simulated Universe; a virtual reality computer software generated Universe? Well, what is computer software? Computer software is just bits and bytes, ones and zeros, binary code, or in other words mathematics. You can construct life, the Universe and everything via mathematics by constructing or programming appropriate computer software. Ultimately a video game ‘Universe’ or landscape is just mathematics. An astronaut’s training simulator is just a mathematical construction. If you are a computer software generated, simulated being, inside a virtual reality, then you are a mathematical construction.

What’s the appeal of a Simulated Universe? It explains a lot that’s currently unexplainable.

Why are all electrons (or positrons or up and down quarks, etc.) identical? Because all electrons have the exact same binary code, that’s why. Forget vibrating strings as the reason. String theory isn’t even in the hunt. Any and every anomaly is explained as easily as “run program” as there is no such thing as the concept of impossibility in a simulation or a video game. Joshua can indeed make the Sun and the Moon stand still in the heavens! You can even have a virtual reality afterlife! In fact, for the physicist, a Simulated Universe scenario should be pleasing since in fact there are two separate sets of incompatible mathematical software running the Simulated Universe – gravity software and quantum physics software. I bring this up because physicists have been trying to marry those two branches of physics for decades now into a Theory of Everything, and haven’t scored a run yet.

In conclusion, our Universe is a Mathematical Universe; a Simulated Universe is a Mathematical Universe. Therefore, it’s possible or even probable as I noted above, that our Universe is a Simulated Universe and you therefore live in a virtual reality landscape that exists as a mathematical construct!

*There’s an entire book, for example, devoted to the physics of baseball, and no doubt many “How To Play…” books focus on the physics behind the scenes and the mathematics behind the physics. Baseball can be reduced to pure mathematics apart from the mathematical physics relating to bat and ball, which will come as little surprise to most baseball fans, players and managers. There’s percentages this; statistics that, all of which make baseball about the most mathematical oriented sports on the ground.

A Unified Theory of Time Travel: Part Two

The work of Albert Einstein and the ideas of Stephen Hawking differ when it comes to the even theoretical possibilities of time travel to the past. However, both points of view can be accommodated by invoking the concept of parallel worlds. It’s a case then of having your time travel cake and eating it too but without fear of creating a paradox tummy ache.  

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

What’s to prevent those from a parallel universe meddling and altering our time stream? It’s not enough for them to have a Prime Directive against that – we all know Prime Directives are meant to be broken! So, it looks like Hawking’s Chronology Protection Conjecture must apply to those visitors from parallel universes to our Universe as well. I mean what difference does it make to your existence whether you travel back in time within your own universe and kill your mother before you were conceived, or some serial killer escaping from a parallel universe to our Universe who kills your mother before you were conceived – even though in the latter case there’s no paradox, you still wouldn’t have been conceived of here in anyone’s philosophy!

OK, so relativity allows time travel back in time, but only to parallel universes. The Hawking Chronology Protection Conjecture not only prevents time travel paradoxes in general, but it also prevents parallel universe time travellers meddling and altering our timeline; ditto we humans time travelling to someone else’s parallel universe. But how would the Hawking Chronology Protection Conjecture actually accomplish this? My best guess is that parallel universes aren’t in phase – they aren’t polarized or synchronized in-phase like a laser beam, or the light that passes through your polarized sunglasses – otherwise we’d have some rather hard evidence of them; certainly way more than we do now.

So, if we go to parallel universe B or those from parallel universe B visits us, we’ll, or they’d be respectively out of phase with respect to the universe they are now in. Translated, they, or we, could look, but not touch for all practical purposes. I say for all practical purposes as now and again what’s out of phase (high probability – the usual state of affairs) will sync into phase (that’s rare). But the in-phase times are so few and far between, and last for such a brief duration that it’s unlikely to result in any inadvertent or deliberate timeline alterations. That’s my rendering of the Hawking Chronology Protection Conjecture – he could well have other ways and means in mind.

So another way of putting this is that time travellers would be spectral or ghostlike in their host universe, and maybe that’s where our traditions of ghosts and other things that go bump in the night come from! This is much like the parallel universe ghost or shadow photons that are conjectured to explain some highly mysterious aspects or phenomena contained within the famous quantum double slit* experiment. Now an obvious question is how do all the parallel universe ghost photons get into our physics labs where double slit experiments are carried out? I mean there are no local macro Black Hole or wormhole exits present – are there? Yes in fact there are! Not a macro wormhole, but a micro wormhole – actually wormholes. Theoretically, micro wormholes should exist all around you. It’s just that they are at quantum levels – incredible tiny; way subatomic in size. And they exist for just nanoseconds before collapsing.  They are just part of the quantum foam** reality at super microscopic levels, a reality at the level where all things exhibit the quantum jitters or quantum fluctuations. Thus, every second of every day, everywhere, there are little quantum gateways – quantum sized wormholes connections between universes which quantum sized particles – like photons – can traverse! From the standpoint of the double slit experiment, it doesn’t matter whether the parallel universe’s ghost photons came from the past, future or present – just as long as they are, indeed, present!

Now you may think it would be easy to detect these ghostly photons. Just put a photon detector in a totally dark and sealed room. Well, not quite so easy. Some photons can pass through ‘solid’ matter. X-Ray photons anyone? Radio wave photons pass through the walls of your home. If you look at a bright light, you’ll still see light even if you close your eyes. So, your photon detector in your dark and sealed room could easily detect our local variety.

The ghostly bits aside, parallel universe time travelers (or even ordinary time travelers from within our Universe assuming Hawking is wrong)) might explain the sometimes uncanny, often incredible look-a-likes that we all seem to have. A long shot to be sure, but something interesting to ponder.

There’s still one more problem on the horizon. Just because a macro Black Hole or wormhole plunks you into a parallel universe (and of course you’ve got to be able to survive the trip itself which might be problematical), doesn’t mean you’re going to be with spitting distance of your ultimate destination(s) – say a parallel Earth(s). So, time travelers might also need more conventional transport – like Flying Saucers (okay, forget the saucers – like spaceships with fins and rocket motors). But then what’s really there to distinguish a visiting time traveler from a parallel universe from say a  run-of-the-mill extraterrestrial from within our own Universe? Maybe you could just put out the welcome mat for both options!

One final thought. Could there be a Clayton’s time travel? - Time travel without traveling in time? At the risk of making Einstein turn over in his grave; I’m going to propose a universal NOW across all universes. Now I know that NOW, when it comes to observers, is a relative thing. An observer in Martian orbit sees Mars’ NOW somewhat before you on Planet Earth sees the same Mars’ NOW because the speed of light is finite. And relative motions and velocities complicate what is NOW. But, I propose (a thought experiment remember) to instantaneously freeze-frame the entire collection of universes’ NOW. Everyone and everything everywhere comes to an instant standstill. Right! We now have a universal NOW that we can study at our leisure (the freeze doesn’t apply to you and me – we’re outside the space-time continuum).

Let’s focus on that subset of all parallel universes – all parallel Earths and time travel between them. Now there’s no reason to assume that all parallel Earths are identical in all aspects. Indeed, some parallel universes may not even contain a parallel Earth! There maybe some parallel Earths identical or so close to identical to our Planet Earth as makes no odds – abodes you’d feel right at home in. Other Earths would differ in various ways, some minor, some major. Still others might be really weird and alien, as in having evolved a dinosaur society, civilization and technology. There was no parallel asteroid impact 65 million years ago; thus no human beings around the traps 65 millions later.

Your subset of parallel Earths would show near infinite diversity in infinite combinations. I say ‘near’ because you can only stretch the term ‘Earth’ or ‘Earth-like’ so far and no farther, before it’s not Earth or Earth-like. A 100% oceanic world is not Earth. If a parallel ‘Earth’ has Venus-like temperatures, it is not Earth-like. If it has a density approaching that of a neutron star, it is not Earth-like. If it has no life on it, even though in all other respects it is a near carbon copy of our Earth, it is not Earth-like. 

Now it’s back to the NOW subset of parallel Earths and Earth-like abodes. There’s no reason to assume that evolutionary development; that evolutionary development rates would proceed in each and every case in an identical fashion. Some parallel Earths would still be in the dinosaur era (if they had dinosaurs of course). In some parallel Earths, cavemen and sabre tooth tigers rule. In others, it’s Biblical times, or Medieval times or the era when Britannia ruled the waves. Others in our absolute NOW, on yet other parallel Earths, or parallel earthlings, might have just invented the wireless or landed on their Moon (if they have one). On some parallel Earths it may already be what to us will be the 23^rd or 24^th Century with interstellar warp drive capabilities at hand – and even way beyond that. So, you could seemingly travel to the past and future while actually remaining in our NOW. You’ve travelled in time without really travelling in time, or, time travel without the paradoxes – but maybe that spoils all the intellectual fun of contemplating time travel in the first place!

*The problem solved here is how can you get a classic wave interference pattern behind two slits you fire photons through; even when you fire the photons at say a rate of one per hour? Who you gonna call – ghost photons of course to the rescue.

**Quantum foam – the world may look pretty smooth from a distance, but as you keep magnifying the finer details, the micro world gets ever so slightly bumpier. Close in some more and things get rougher still, until at quantum level everything is a seething cauldron of tumultuous activity. It’s like the sea that looks perfectly smooth and tranquil from Earth orbit, but at rowboat level, you’re terrified as that 50 foot wave comes crashing down on you.

Further recommended readings about time travel:

Gott, J. Richard; Time Travel in Einstein’s Universe: The Physical Possibilities of Travel Through Time; Phoenix, London; 2002:

Hawking, Stephen W. et al.; The Future of Spacetime; W.W. Norton and Company, N.Y.; 2002:

Randles, Jenny; Breaking the Time Barrier: The Race to Build the First Time Machine; Paraview Pocket Books, New York; 2005:

Toomey, David; The New Time Travelers: A Journey to the Frontiers of Physics; W.W. Norton & Company, New York; 2007:

A Unified Theory of Time Travel: Part One

The work of Albert Einstein and the ideas of Stephen Hawking differ when it comes to the even theoretical possibilities of time travel to the past. However, both points of view can be accommodated by invoking the concept of parallel worlds. It’s a case then of having your time travel cake and eating it too but without fear of creating a paradox tummy ache.  

Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity suggests that time travel to the past is possible via rotating wormholes and/or black holes.  The actual technical practicality of actually carrying out such journeys need not concern us since this essay is in the realm of the thought experiment.  Now Stephen Hawking says time travel to the past is not possible because he proposes that there is such a thing as a yet undiscovered Chronology Protection Conjecture that prevents this and thus makes the world safe for historians. I’ve come up with a unified theory of time travel into the past that incorporates Einstein’s general theory of relativity; Hawking’s Chronology Protection Conjecture, along with other assorted bits like parallel universes that are thrown into the mix.

Time travel is a staple in sci-fi stories, novels, films and TV series. And, time travel is possible – in theory. We all know about journeying to the future which we do at the rate of one second per second whether we like it or not.  Apart from that, if one travels at close to light speeds relative to your  place of origin then you can travel to the distant future (with respect to that place of origin) without aging an equivalent number of years (the twin paradox). Travel to the past is apparently allowed too, via the weird physics inherent in rotating worm holes and maybe Black Holes which is where Einstein’s general theory of relativity comes into play.  The problem there is that relativity theory predicts worm holes, if they exist at all, will exist for nanoseconds and be very tiny to boot, and thus not very useful in the foreseeable future for the purposes of time travel. Because we don’t know exactly what the inside of a Black Hole is, and where it leads, if anywhere, current thinking suggests that jumping into Black Holes are a more useful means for committing suicide than for travelling to the past, but the jury is still out on that one.

Anyway, the fun bit about time travel is the various paradoxes that arise, the most famous one being the grandfather paradox. That is, what if you travel back in time and kill your grandfather before he sired your father (or mother). If you did that it means that you could never have been born, but if you were never born you couldn’t go back in time to kill your ancestor. This is the sort of stuff sci-fi authors (and philosophers) love – ditto physicists! My favourite time travel paradox however is the one where you get something for nothing. Say you have this edition of “Hamlet”, and you want Shakespeare to autograph it. So back you go in time to Shakespeare’s era. You knock on his door, but the housekeeper says he’s out for the day but if you leave the book he’ll autograph it and you can come by and collect it next morning. When Shakespeare comes home, he sees the book, reads it, and is so impressed he spends the night making a copy. You come back the next morning, collect your now autographed edition of “Hamlet”, and return to the present day with your now very valuable book.  The question now becomes, where did the original “Hamlet” come from? You didn’t write it; but Shakespeare didn’t either as he plagiarized your copy which he then passed it off as his own work.

Another favourite is you meeting yourself. Say you’re 50 and not all that well off. You get the brilliant idea to travel back in time and convince your younger self to invest in some stocks you know will pay off big time later on down the track. And so it comes to pass that your younger self so invests, and becomes filthy rich, only, in leading such a high life, dies of a heart attack at the age of 45! Or you always regretted not proposing to the love of your life when you were young, and thus go back and convince your younger self to muster up the courage and do so. He does, but as they fly off on their honeymoon, the plane crashes with no survivors. Sometimes you don’t know when you’re well off.

Or if you can travel back in time, then of course others can to. Naturally there’s going to be lots of people interested in particular events, maybe even at the time, seemingly trivial events (yet which turn out in the long run to have had major impact(s)). And so you might have any number of people going back to particular historical focal points, each with their own particular agenda (most of which will be mutually exclusive), and ultimately causing havoc. I mean if person one goes back and influences an event producing a new outcome, then person two might go back and has a go at that result and things get altered again, which will then prompt person three to go back and influence things more to his liking, etc. In other words, history would never be fixed, rather always be fluid. The world is not safe for historians. Since we believe that history (or the past) is fixed, then that what’s written on your history book page today will not alter overnight. Thus, you have probably concluded that time travel cannot happen, will not happen, and has not happened, however much you yourself might wish to go back in time yourself and change something. (Don’t we all really wish some past something, personal and trivial, or perhaps something of major significance could be changed and you’d be that instrument of change?)

Its paradoxes and situations such as the above that prompted Stephen Hawking to postulate that there is as yet an undiscovered law or principle of physics which prohibits time travel to the past – he calls it his ‘Chronology Projection Conjecture’. Since we have never seen, according to Hawking, to the best of our knowledge at least, any time travellers – tourists or historians - from our future, he’s probably right.

So, putting it all together, here’s my theory of time travel: my unified theory of time travel, at least to the past.

Relativity theory has passed every experimental test thrown at it, so the theory isn’t in much doubt and one can have a high degree of confidence in what it predicts, even if that prediction is currently beyond any experimental test. Relativity theory allows for time travel into the past, but, IMHO, only to parallel universes (otherwise known as alternative or mirror or shadow universes) where no paradoxes can happen.

Why only parallel universes? The ways and means by which you can use relativity theory to time travel backwards involves rotating Black Holes or wormholes. There are serious reasons behind the speculation that what’s on the other side of a Black Hole and/or wormhole is another universe. So, therefore it’s relativity’s time travel allowance, but probably to another universe. The Black Hole or wormhole ‘exit’ isn’t within our Universe.

Whatever you do in that parallel universe is predetermined. It’s fate. It’s destiny - all because causality rules. Therefore, there are no unexpected ripple effects other than what was destined to happen. You were meant to be there and do what you do. Therefore, there will be no paradoxes arising.

Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking has proposed his Chronology Protection Conjecture that prohibits time travel to the past within your own universe because of the possible paradoxes that could arise. Why can’t you go back in time in your own universe? That would mean that at a specific time and place you both were not (originally) and were (as a result of going back) present. That’s a paradox. And if you were to travel back in time to a set of time and space coordinates you were actually originally at, then there would be two copies of you occupying the same space at the same time – also a paradox.

But take the grandfather paradox. If you go back in time and kill your grandfather, but your grandfather in a parallel universe, then you don’t prevent your existence, just the eventual existence of yourself, your other self, in that parallel universe.  In the case of Shakespeare and “Hamlet”, you gave your copy to a parallel universe Shakespeare. In your original (our) Universe, Shakespeare is still the legitimate author. 

Once you time travel from your universe A, to parallel universe B, you can’t return again to universe A because of Hawking’s Chronology Protection Conjecture – paradoxes could arise. However, you could go from parallel universe B to parallel universe C, but, hence never return to either universe A or B – Hawking’s Chronology Protection Conjecture again.

Perhaps some people you’ve seen or known or heard about might be time travelers from a parallel universe’s future. If they then time travel to another parallel universe, then that might account for some missing persons’ cases!

In short, we can time travel to other parallel universes but not to our own; entities from other parallel universes can visit our Universe. No paradoxes need arise. Both Einstein (relativity) and Hawking (Chronology Protection Conjecture) are satisfied and happy campers. 

Is that right? No, it’s wrong! There’s still one very nasty loose end here.

To be continued…

Reality: Really Real, Pseudo-Real, or Unreal? Part Six

Reality – It’s all relative; it’s reversible; it’s symmetric; it’s personal; it kicks back when you kick it; it’s conceptual; it’s theoretical; it’s actual; it’s abstract; it’s bio-friendly; it’s unforgiving; it’s emotional; and ultimately the reality of life, the Universe and everything resides in your mind.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Is Your Reality Certainty or A Fluke?

If there is one thing you are absolutely certain of it’s that you exist, and I won’t dispute that (even of you are a figment of my imagination or exist only as the creation of some kind of computer software). Seriously, you exist as a three dimensional, flesh-and-blood, absolutely unique entity inside a three dimensional Universe. However, is your reality something wildly improbable or 100% guaranteed?

On the surface, you are an absolute fluke. Think of those millions of sperm that could have won that race to your mother’s egg, but didn’t. Or that winning sperm could have fertilized some other of your mother’s eggs. Either case, you’re a total nothing in anyone’s philosophy! Now think of all the males and females available at any given time and the odds are against your parents having met, courted, married, etc. Potentially, millions of other males could have married your mother; and potentially millions of other females could have married your father. And of course your mother and father are flukes because a similar argument holds for them via your grandparents, and further backwards for them to your great grandparents, etc, etc. Go back with those sorts of odds a hundred, a thousand, a million, a trillion, generations; back through your mammalian, reptilian, amphibian, etc. ancestry; back through your family tree of invertebrate ancestors (untold generations worth), right down to your unicellular ancestors. What are the odds, all those chance meetings be they sperm and egg, or male and female, of organisms that survived long enough through to a reproductive age (and relatively few, apart from humans do), that you would someday grace the world? Zillions upon zillions to one! You’re an absolute fluke! Or are you?

There appear to be ultimately three sets of either/or conditions which ultimately govern that. The first is, is there one universe, our Universe, or many universes (a Multiverse)? Secondly, is there absolute causality resulting in a deterministic clockwork Universe where once the initial set of relationships were set into play, things evolved with 100% certainty from that point on? Lastly, is there one, and only one possible physics, or could our physics have been different, or are different in another universe?

But first some definitions are in order.  

Universal Physics – One and only one kind of physics is possible, throughout all universes. If you believe in God, She didn’t have any choice in the matter!

Variable Physics – Each universe could have its own individual brand of physics, and the physics that rule our Universe could have turned out differently.

Determinism Rules – There’s 100% causality; there’s absolute certainty.

Chance Rules – Represents less than 100% causality; free will if you will.

Multiverse – Lots of separate and apart universes, perhaps even an infinite number of them.

Universe – The one and only Universe; our Universe. However, if our Universe is near infinite in space and time and stuff, then for all practical purposes it’s the same as the Multiverse since there’s enough space and time and stuff for nearly all possibilities to take place within.

Combining the various possibilities suggests how fluky you really are! But first, let’s deal with the supernatural, instead of natural scenario. If God exists and wanted you to exist, assuming there is a God of course, then you’re Probability One – no contest. You’re no fluke. Seeing however as how there is no evidence for any God (or gods), we’d better get back to all things natural and plough on.

Scenario 1: Universal Physics [+] Determinism [+] Multiverse = the exact same set of outcomes in all universes is predicted. If you exist in one universe, you exist in all universes. You’re not a fluke. But if you don’t, you don’t, full stop. However, you probably don’t since you’re existence would be equivalent to tossing a coin several billion times in a row all billion coming up heads. The assumption here is that the initial set of conditions was identical in each and every single universe within the Multiverse. If not, then they won’t be identical further on down the track. If that assumption is incorrect, you could exist in one or more universes; not exist in one or more other universes.

Scenario 2: Universal Physics [+] Determinism [+] Universe = if you exist, then you were a certainty from the get-go. If you don’t, that too was a certainty. On balance, a betting person would probably bet against your existence ever happening because only one exact set of circumstances gives the universe you, while billions of other sets of circumstances don’t.

Scenario 3: Universal Physics [+] Chance [+] Multiverse = your existence in one universe has nothing to do with your existence in any other universe. You’re a fluke in whatever universe(s) you exist in. But, the saving grace is that you do probably exist in at least one universe.

Scenario 4: Universal Physics [+] Chance [+] Universe = If you exist, you’re a fluke. The probability is extremely high given the odds against your existence such that nobody would have been willing to wager anything on your eventual behalf.

Scenario 5: Variable Physics [+] Determinism [+] Multiverse = assuming one universe has our kind of physics, then you’re existence is a 100% certainty, or 100% against. In all other universes, since the physics are different, nothing remotely like you, or anyone else, will exist. If you exist, you’re not just a fluke, but a super-fluke!

Scenario 6:  Variable Physics [+] Determinism [+] Universe = if there’s only one universe, then there can only be one physics, so assuming that that universe is our Universe, the outcome is the same as Scenario 2.

Scenario 7: Variable Physics [+] Chance [+] Multiverse = in the Multiverse, nearly all possibilities are realised (except in Scenario 1), so in at least one universe, you exist. You’re not a fluke due to the vast number of universes that could contain you. But you’re still a fluke in that you don’t exist in the near infinite other possible universes.

Scenario 8: Variable Physics [+] Chance [+] Universe = again, one universe must equal one physics. Since things however are based on a throw of the dice, if you exist, you’re a fluke.

In short, the betting odds towards your existence are to count on there being a Multiverse. If you’re dealt one hand (one universe), the odds against a royal flush are extreme. Being dealt a near infinite number of hands (the Multiverse) doesn’t ensure a royal flush, but it damn well improves the odds. So, if you exist and there’s one universe, our Universe, you’re a real fluke. In the Multiverse, you might be a fluke in any one universe, but there are so many universes that in that broader context, you’re not a fluke.

Do you want to improve the odds in favor of your existence? There’s a variation that could apply to the Multiverse theme called the Many Worlds interpretation of all things quantum. In the Many Worlds scenario, absolutely all possibilities are realized within any given ‘moment’ within the timeline. In terms of eggs and sperm, at any given moment, the universe splits into as many universes such that all sperm available fertilize all eggs available, and that applies regardless of species (so all possible males that can meet and mate with all possible females do so – or vice versa); all possible seeds that could have been are, and produce viable plants somewhere. 

You might note the subtle combining of both the Multiverse and the Many Worlds concepts. Each universe within the Multiverse has the additional complication (or added attraction) of having to jump through the Many Worlds hoops.

Universes within the Multiverse can have differing timelines. Thus Cleopatra, assuming a Cleopatra, in another universe might have been born into a 21^st Century Egypt, or Australia for that matter (assuming these nations exist or existed in this other universe). Likewise, in another, that other, universe, you may have been born a slave (or as Royalty) in an ancient Egypt, again, assuming such a nation existed. So, who knows, in some other universe (modern or ancient) you and (modern or ancient) Cleopatra (or substitute any modern or historical hunk male of your choice if you’re female) have this thing going! I’m not that likely going to be, in any universe, the one to mate with Cleopatra, any more than you’re (if female) are likely to get your act together with Marc Anthony. But, unlikely becomes Probability One when you merge the Multiverse with Many Worlds. The universe that contains you and Marc Anthony, or you (or me) and Cleopatra, will split when it come to that fork in the road. Many Worlds universe #1 split #1 fork – no pairings; Many Worlds universe #1 split #2 fork – you (we) live happy ever after! That’s because all possibilities are realized; have to be realized.

That’s a real headache inducer! So, to repeat, take a near (or actual) infinity of universes, each with its own unique timeline (which will not of necessity mirror our own). Then, multiply all those existences by all the possible forks in the road encountered by each of those universes since all paths are taken. Anything not forbidden is compulsory. You’re wildest dreams may not come true in this, our Universe, and on this particular pathway you’re experiencing, but somewhere you did, or will – but ditto that your worst nightmares, so perhaps be thankful for what you got in the here and now.

Now let’s reduce that headache somewhat by unmerging again the Multiverse and the Many Worlds ideas. Say in one alternate timeline universe Cleopatra and I get our act together (‘we do’). In another alternate timeline universe we don’t (‘we do not’). In both universes, the Many Worlds forks would now have us respectfully ‘we do not’ and ‘we do’ instead. But that’s already happened in the two universes, so do we now have two universes where ‘we do’ and two universes where ‘we do not’? Rather than accept that, perhaps the Multiverse and the Many Worlds concepts are ultimately, for all practical purposes, the same thing.

Ah, but the ‘we do’ in the first alternate universe took place in an alternate Australia thus the Many Worlds fork had us ‘we do not’ also in an alternate Australia. The original ‘we do not”  in the second alternate universe too place in that alternate ancient Egypt, so that Many Worlds fork now has us as a ‘we do’, also in an alternate ancient Egypt. So the two ‘we do’ universes and the two ‘we do not’ universes aren’t the same after all.

But then again, all those four possibilities could also be catered for in four actual separate and apart universes that are part of the Multiverse, so again there’s no need to bring into consideration the Many Worlds interpretation of all things quantum! Back to square one! And this sort of adding on further qualifiers, isn’t going to ultimately alter the apparently near equivalence of the Multiverse and the Many Worlds.

I’m not however entirely sure this apparent equivalence will sit well with quantum physicists, because I’m not entirely sure this is what quantum physicists mean by the phrase ‘Many Worlds’ (indeed, lots of quantum physicists deny any such interpretation at all exists – it’s too big an ask for them). However, it seems to deal with the issue of That Cat! In two separate physical universes you have Schrodinger’s Cat (in the box) experiment. Identical cats; identical setups; identical observers (and they can be identical because the fundamental bits that make them all up are identical – all electrons (neutrons, protons, etc.) are 100% clones of each other – absolutely identical). In one unverse, the observer observes the cat alive; the other, well it’s the demise of the feline. Neither universe has to split into two. All possibilities have been exhausted without resorting to the requirement of a Many Worlds either/or split. The only real difference I can see between the Multiverse and the Many Worlds interpretation is that with Many Worlds, the outcome (all possibilities realized) is certainty; with the Multiverse it’s only probable or possible.

In conclusion, you may think our planet is an example of total biodiversity, but imagine what things would be like if all the theoretical possibilities had come to pass (the Many Worlds and/or the Multiverse)!!! How many Einstein’s were never born - on the other hand, how many Hitler’s? Then throw in all the plants and animals that never were but could have been, and you could come up with multi-trillions upon trillions of alternative Earths! Ouch!

Perhaps it’s easier to accept that there’s just one Universe (our Universe) and no such a thing therefore as a Multiverse, and no such an animal as the Many Worlds interpretation of all things quantum. You’re therefore a total fluke, and so just enjoy the company of the rest of us total flukes! That’s unless of course our Universe is near infinite enough in extent, all on its lonesome, to allow for a duplicate copy (or three or four) of you – recall those elementary particles that make you, you, can be identically assembled elsewhere to accomplish exactly that.

To be continued…

Time Travel via Parallel Universes: Part Two

Parallel universes, or alternative universes or mirror universes have had a long run of popularity in science fiction and science fantasy, in both print and visual formats. One need only look at an “Alice in Wonderland” or look no further than the “Star Trek” universe (our Universe in less than obvious disguise) to view the near endless plot variations that such parallel / alternative / mirror universes provide our heroes and heroines. While there are some serious reasons to suspect that parallel universes do exist, there’s another, albeit more theoretical proof of the parallel universe concept. Time travel is the name of the game!

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

But there’s also a second catch – and here’s where parallel universes enter the picture. To avoid all those time travel paradoxes sci-fi writers love so well, if you travel back in time you also have to travel between parallel universes!

By all means go back to early April 1912 (I’m ignoring Catch #1 for sake of illustration here) and warn the Captain of RMS Titanic of what’s going to shortly happen. Assuming you convince him of the pending disaster (but more likely as not you’ll be thrown straight into the loony bin), and the disaster is avoided, you’ll have saved the ship and passengers and crew in a parallel universe – not in our Universe. Our RMS Titanic sank. People died. That cannot be changed, at least not by anyone from our Universe.

Because parallel universes don’t have to be carbon copies of ours, you might find, of course, that the ship maybe known as HMS Titan, and she’ll be due to strike a mine instead of a iceberg because the First World War started a decade earlier in that universe.

Maybe one could go back and warn parallel dinosaurs that a parallel asteroid was coming – only I doubt they’d listen (unless of course in this parallel universe they had evolved both an intelligence and technology to deal with the issue).

Or, by all means go back to 1912 and meet (and chat up) your now young and future great grandmother (or great grandfather as the case may be). You both fall in love and get married and thus your real great grandparents never meet and therefore one of your grandparents never was born and thus one of your parents never made it into this world and thus neither did you. So how can you exist therefore to have gone back in time and meet your great grandparent? (Note that this is a more humane version of the grandfather paradox where you kill one of your ancestors before they got their reproductive act together). I assume here that by doing so, that is going back in time and meeting your great grandparent, that you’re not actually going to be able to parent or father or produce your own grandparent, hence parent, hence yourself. You’re not your own great grandparent. Not in this Universe.

If you had done the above in our Universe, you’d have a paradox. You have prevented yourself from being conceived and born. You can’t be your own ancestor. There’s no paradox if you went back to a 1912 in a parallel universe. In that universe you indeed prevented your potential future existence in that universe, but not your actual existence which happened in our Universe.

But maybe you didn’t really travel back in time at all (eliminating Catch #1). If there is such a thing as a universal ‘now’, then our 2012 might correspond to another universe’s 1912 (and our 1912 corresponded to their 1812, and so on). Therefore, that you in our Universe in 2012 can perhaps see the living, albeit ghostly, image of someone/something that exists in that other universe’s 1912 (and maybe vice versa).

Now it doesn’t follow that our Universe of 2012 is actually a century older than a parallel universe whose ‘now’ is 1912. Evolution just developed at an ever so slightly slower pace in our parallel universe – that’s all.

There’s apparently yet another catch in all this. If you do time travel to a parallel universe, whether its real time travel, or pseudo and just apparent time travel, once you go, you’re stuck – there’s no coming home again. Of course you might in turn time travel to a third and fourth, etc. parallel universe, but you can’t come back to our Universe again, for that could mean one universe, our Universe, contains two copies of identical bits of matter – matter (in the form of you) has been created out of apparently nothing, in violation of basic conservation laws.  

Why can’t you go home again? You could conceivably return to the time just before you originally left and therefore there would be two identical copies of you existing at the same time and vicinity. Another universe could of course contain more than one copy of you. A universe can lose matter (you) to another parallel universe. A universe therefore can gain matter (you again), but no universe can have more than one copy of identical matter. That doesn’t mean that 50 parallel universes couldn’t lose their own version of you, and all 50 versions of you ends up in say a 51^st universe. There are no exact duplications, so no problems.

There’s also what’s known as information paradoxes within time travel scenarios that are also resolved via parallel universes. Say, for example, that your name is Richard Wagner (I’m sure there are lots of people in our 21^st Century with that name), and you were named after the famous opera composer. And say, like millions of others, you’re a fan of Wagner’s operatic music and productions, and further say you have the ways and means to travel back in time to the 19^th Century and have a desire to meet your famous namesake. And so off you go to meet the young budding opera composer – maybe get his autograph!

Upon arrival in the 19^th Century however you find that there is no such person! Well, being a fast thinker ready to seize the moment, you figure you won’t be missed in the 21^st Century (you’re an only child, an orphan, unemployed and unmarried). So you decide to step in and fill history’s breach and become somebody famous. You know exactly what to do, and so you become THE Richard Wagner. The operas (which you know so well) are duly composed by you and performed and all’s well with established history and the world – or is it?

The question arises, and remains, where did the operas (music, plots, etc.) actually come from? You learned and eventually knew them by heart when living back in the 21^st Century, yet you apparently composed them yourself based on that knowledge in the 19^th Century. Something is screwy somewhere. Original opera music and productions have apparently been written and created without any creativity or intellect involved.

Of course there is no paradox if you invoke a parallel universe. In our Universe there really was a 19^th Century opera composer known as Richard Wagner, and a 21^st Century enthusiast of his music and productions with the same name. The 21^st Century Richard Wagner does travel back in time to a 19^th Century, but a 19^th Century in a universe where the composer Richard Wagner never existed. Our 21^st Century fan of Richard Wagner brought our 19^th Century’s Wagner’s music to a parallel universe where it hadn’t or wouldn’t otherwise have existed. So, no paradox! There was a point of origin or an original intellect and acts of creativity in our Universe and in our 19^th Century.

And by the way, there are dozens of variations on this theme in the literature, especially books that highlight the paradoxes of time travel.

As you see, you can have a lot of fun with proposals that give credibility to parallel universes, which is all the better as these proposals are thoroughly grounded in hard science. Lastly, we need the concept of parallel universes to help keep our beloved sci-fi authors in a profitable job! 

Summary: Because time travel is allowable in relativity physics, to avoid time travel paradoxes, one requires parallel universes to exist.

Time Travel via Parallel Universes: Part One

Parallel universes, or alternative universes or mirror universes have had a long run of popularity in science fiction and science fantasy, in both print and visual formats. One need only look at an “Alice in Wonderland” or look no further than the “Star Trek” universe (our Universe in less than obvious disguise) to view the near endless plot variations that such parallel / alternative / mirror universes provide our heroes and heroines. While there are some serious reasons to suspect that parallel universes do exist, there’s another, albeit more theoretical proof of the parallel universe concept. Time travel is the name of the game!

Why go back in time at all? Just to observe? That’s okay, as long as you look and don’t touch. Just to get rich? Probably! Just to do good deeds? I’d have to advise against that. Travelling to the past from the future, armed with the knowledge of what that future holds, brings a ‘wealth’ of opportunities – accent on the wealth. I mean go back in time and there’s this new company called IBM or Microsoft just starting to sell shares. You’d make a killing! You know in advance about the Global Financial Crisis. Put that to your advantage! Knowledge is power. Maybe all our billionaires are time travellers from the future who came back to make a killing! Sorry for taking such a cynical view. Actually the danger is the ‘butterfly effect’. Go back in time, be a goodie-goodie two shoes and correct something – kill Hitler in 1935 say – and the ripple effect could have so changed the future from which you came from that you might never have existed. Say that soldier in WWII, killed by the Nazis, lived instead because you assassinated Hitler in 1935 and he married your Mum instead of your Dad. You were then never born. Or say you assassinated Hitler in 1935, and someone else took over the leadership, but that someone started up Germany’s nuclear program almost immediately. Thus, Germany had the A-bomb when she started WWII – Germany won! Of course maybe somebody else goes back in time and assassinates you just before you bump off Hitler! Lesson: You do not muck around by changing the past since you can’t predict the rippling effects on down the line. Ray Bradbury’s excellent short story (also filmed) that illustrates this point nicely is “The Sound of Thunder”.

Be that as it may, I can immediately think of four actual, possible or theoretical ways of doing the time warp – again!

The first is your tried and true traditional time travel into the future, and one which you have no control over – we all travel into the future at the speed of one second per second.

Secondly, there’s a possible albeit highly theoretical equivalent for an antimatter you. You’d have a tried and true traditional time travel into the past, again one which you have no control over, and again (presumably) at a rate of one second per second. That’s because of the idea that antimatter is just normal matter, but normal matter going backwards in time at the rate of one second per second. I don’t rate that too highly on the reality scale. 

Thirdly, when you view any object, you’re time travelling back into the past. That’s because it takes a finite amount of time for light to reach you from whatever it is you’re looking at. What you actually see is how it looked that finite amount of time ago. Since you always view what happened in the past, I guess that’s a form of time travel! By the way, even if you directly touch or taste something, it still takes a finite time to travel on up the nerves to the brain and a finite time to register and be processed.

Fourthly, there’s the concept that if you travel and accelerate outwards at a significant percentage of the speed of light, stop, reverse, accelerate and come home again, when you land, you will have aged less than those stay-at-homes, or translated, you’ve travelled into the future a lot quicker than otherwise would have been the case. You and your stay-at-home twin are now both at the same point in time again; it’s just that you have biologically aged far less. That’s the ‘twin paradox’ of relativity physics, but it’s no paradox – it actually happens.

Interestingly, at the micro, hence macro levels, the laws of physics do not forbid other ways and means of time travel, for example using rotating Black Holes, wormholes, etc. While these are theoretically possible, in practice it would be difficult in the extreme, very energy intensive, and certainly way, way beyond our current, or even projected, level of technology, and may indeed remain forever out of our practical experiences and thus remain a parlour game for physics professors. But maybe, just maybe…

However, for starters, there’s a catch – there’s always a catch! Travelling backwards in time is restricted. You can’t travel back in time beyond the point where the time travel device was first constructed. If we should construct such a device in say the year 2050, nobody will be able to visit 2949 or any earlier date. Thus, since no such terrestrial device yet exists, we’re not overrun by tourists from our future. Our descendents can’t reach us. We cannot have time travelling visitors from the future who can tell us our future because they are not from our future, but from the future of an elsewhere – you guessed it, from the future of a parallel universe where a time travelling devise exists.

The reason, as I understand it, that you can’t time travel in your time travelling device before the device itself existed, is that your device isn’t a machine or a device you sit in – it’s a medium. It’s likely to a natural object, even if manipulated – rotating Black Holes or wormholes. A tunnel allows you to go from one side of the mountain to another, but in doing so you don’t take the tunnel with you. A ship travels through the water – it doesn’t take the water along with it. A tennis ball gets hit by the tennis racket; it doesn’t take the racket along with it. Instead, it relies on finding another racket in its new ‘universe’ or ‘time frame’ or court, able to return it home! You probably get the drift. That’s why you can’t go back in time further than the medium itself you used. If your mountain tunnel was built in 2009, you can’t go through and exit it in 2008! But you could go through and exit it in 2010, so you’re not of necessity stuck in the past if you get the analogy. The tunnel allows travel both ways, but just not before it was constructed. Anyway, forget your time travel movies with machines – no machines allowed. Probably the best movie to illustrate the point that the device is a medium and not a machine is “The Final Countdown”.

That of course says nothing about extraterrestrial intelligence(s) time travellers who may have had a working time travel devices eons ago, so we certainly can’t rule out, or preclude such a possibility – there’s those pesky UFOs again!

To be continued…

Parallel Universes: Part Two

Parallel universes, or alternative universes or mirror universes have had a long run of popularity in science fiction and science fantasy, in both print and visual formats. One need only look at an “Alice in Wonderland” or look no further than the “Star Trek” universe (our Universe in less than obvious disguise) to view the near endless plot variations that such parallel / alternative / mirror universes provide our heroes and heroines. Do they actually exist and do they explain anything?

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

As the collection of all universes is the Multiverse, and since the wave-particle duality is at the heart and soul of quantum mechanics, then it follows that perhaps quantum physics is just the physics of the Multiverse!

The double slit experiment can be (and has been) repeated with electrons, and neutrons and protons, etc. Same results! So, therefore, there must be virtual or shadow or ghost electrons and neutrons (or quark trios) and protons (or again quark trios). Now things get interesting! But before I get to that, David Deutsch never speculated above the level of shadow or ghost protons (or other elementary particles) as proof of parallel universes. The following extrapolations are my doing!

If there are virtual / shadow / ghost protons and neutrons, then there are (let’s just call them) ghost nuclei. Add your ghost electrons and you have ghost atoms, hence ghost molecules and on up the chain to… well, ghosts!

Now these parallel universe ghosts aren’t dead people, but people quite alive in said parallel universe. They could appear to us as dead acquaintances or even dead loved ones, but parallel universes aren’t of necessity identical copies of ours (recall the heads, tails and coin-on-edge example). Just because Mum is deceased in our Universe doesn’t mean she’s yet snuffed it in a parallel one.

These virtual or shadow or ghostly images don’t even have to be living things of course. There’s a long history of apparently sane and sober people seeing, quite unexpectedly, spectral images of non-living ‘things’, like a building appearing in a otherwise verified field-of-grass only.

There’s equally a long list of documented transient phenomena, unfortunately unpredictable and unverifiable - UFOs anyone?

Speaking of UFOs (as intelligently piloted vehicles from elsewhere and/or elsewhen), sceptics often will claim ‘it can’t be, therefore it isn’t’, where the ‘can’t be’ usually refers to the impossibility of interstellar spaceflight which would require faster-than-light velocities to make things practical and viable, blah, blah, blah…. Quite apart from the fact that that assessment is total nonsense as I’ve already elaborated on elsewhere, subluminal interstellar travel doesn’t, of necessity, violate any laws of physics, period. End of discussion. However, nobody, including me, says it will be easy, but that’s a different horse of another colour.

Anyway, if there can be some sort of now and again natural interaction between parallel universes, then it follows that an advanced technological race of beings (call them aliens if you will), might be able to artificially manipulate such ‘gateways’ and go exploring – not so much in time and space but as in crossing over from X-universe to a parallel Y-universe, which in distance terms might be as close to zero kilometres as makes no odds.

Cryptozoology is another ripe area potentially explainable in part at least by parallel dimensions. Take Loch Ness and its alleged monster, one of the most baffling of cases in all of cryptozoology. On the one hand, you’ve lots of seemingly credible witnesses with no axe to grind going back over many decades. Are they all lying, exaggerating, and being fooled or just hallucinating?  The odds of that are poor for the collective of all sightings. On the other hand, you have a relatively small and confined area offering little hiding room to a relatively large animal. It’s an area that has been combed many times with all the sophisticated technology we can muster – no animal. However, it doesn’t stretch the imagination to breaking point and beyond to suggest that in some parallel universe(s), plesiosaurs (or equivalent) still exist and that for some reason there is, albeit just a rarely now and again, some sort of harmonic resonance between that world and our world, and presto, a sighting of the elusive Loch Ness Monster.

Perhaps a most likely interaction between parallel universes is evident in our dreams. We often seemingly invent out of thin air quite unfamiliar people, places, and situations when dreaming, as well as finding ourselves in more familiar surroundings, albeit rarely something exactly parallel down to the Nth detail – at least that’s my experience. It’s maybe 90% familiar territory; never 100%.

If there is some sort of parallel universe interactions, your dreams could be, in a nebulous sort of way, a link with the lifestyle of your counterpart(s), and presumably said counterpart(s) now and again dream slightly unfamiliar scenarios that reflect your actual situations; your world and your lifestyle and relations.

It’s a sort of telepathy perhaps only achievable at the subconscious level when you’re asleep and all those day-to-day routines and constant mental activities can’t overwhelm that incredibly faint signal from a parallel universe(s).  

Now that’s not to say all dreams are parallel universe related, but some might be.

Since the double slit experiment with one photon at a time, produces interference patters 100% of the time, yet things like ghosts, UFOs, the Loch Ness Monster, even dreams, aren’t reproducible on demand, I can only conclude that it’s much easier for micro bits like photons and atoms to crossover from X-universe to Y-universe (our Universe) than it is for macro objects. But, that’s not an uncommon experience within our own world. Bacteria are vastly more common than humans – bacteria are everywhere; humans aren’t. Small things or objects can wriggle through small spaces where larger objects can not fit. It takes exceptional circumstances, an exceptional large gateway or hole between universes for a UFO or a Loch Ness Monster to make its ever so brief and unexpected appearance. So, lots of small holes or ‘gateways’ allowing lots of ghost photons (and presumably other particle types – very, very, few large holes or ‘gateways’, so actual sightings of living ghosts, etc. are very, vary rare.

Now more likely as not, it’s only a relatively few parallel universes that have a real resonance with ours. There could be other universes with physics so different that they are totally out of sight, even if not out of mind.     

Summary: The concept of parallel universes is a sound, yet novel way of explaining one of the (many) deep mysteries contained in the double slit experiment that illustrates the wave-particle duality of matter.  From that, the concept can be extrapolated or expanded to explain possible other, but more macro, anomalous phenomena.