Speaker 1: Imagine for a fleeting moment that the life you're living
right now is just one one possibility out of an
infinite number, that every single choice you've ever made, every
path you've thought about taking, well, it actually played out
somewhere else in parallel reality.
Speaker 2: Right with another version of you living that life exactly.
Speaker 1: It sounds like pure science fiction, doesn't it. But you
know this isn't just movie stuff. It's an idea thinkers
have kicked around for ages and now well physicists are
seriously looking at her.
Speaker 2: They really are, And that's what we're diving into today,
this whole mind bending concept of the many world's theory.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: The basic idea, like you said, is that anything that
can happen does happen in some parallel universe. And we're
talking right now coexisting with us.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: So we've got all these sources of articles and research
you pulled together. That's our starting point, and our mission
really is to unpack what they tell us. You know,
how might these parallel universes work, What are the different
ideas and what does it all mean for how we
understand reality?
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's ground ourselves a bit first. This isn't
some brand new idea cooked up last week, not at all.
Our sources showed these ideas actually go way way back,
like ancient Greece sixth century BC. These atomist philosophers, right,
the atomists. They had this idea that reality just came
from atoms bumping into each other randomly.
Speaker 2: Which is pretty radical when you think about it, that everything,
all this complexity just arises from chance collisions. And if
that's the case.
Speaker 1: Then maybe countless other arrangements happened too, creating other universes precisely.
Speaker 2: And then you had Epicurus, another atomists who took it
even further. He speculated about infinite worlds out there.
Speaker 1: Infinite worlds governed by the same natural laws as ours.
Speaker 2: Yeah, imagine thinking that without telescopes or modern physics, just
pure reason, wondering if we're alone, if our world is
unique or just one of many.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't just the Greeks. Our sources mentioned Indian
cosmology too, that's.
Speaker 2: Right, the idea of eternal cycles, verses being created, destroyed,
and then created again like a cosmic heart meat.
Speaker 1: It really does seem like this feeling, this intuition that
maybe our reality isn't the only one pops up across
different cultures different times.
Speaker 2: It does. It suggests this deep human need to figure
out the edges of existence, or maybe the lack of edges.
Speaker 1: Okay, fast forward a bit to the Renaissance Tredano Bruno.
Speaker 2: Ah Bruno, a key figure and a tragic one.
Speaker 1: He was pushing this idea of an infinite universe, countless stars, countless.
Speaker 2: Planets, which sounds totally normal to us now, but back
then it was revolutionary and dangerous.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the sources mentioned the Church didn't exactly approve, led
to his execution.
Speaker 2: Sadly, yes, but his vision, that boundless cosmos, it really
paved the way for how we see the universe now.
And that huge scale gives us one way to think
about parallel universes.
Speaker 1: Right, so let's get into that. How might these parallel
universes actually be? Our sources lay out a few possibilities.
The first one just involved sheer scale, right, yeah, vast
distances exactly.
Speaker 2: I mean, our observable universe is already ridiculously big, ninety
three billion light years across, it's hard to even picture.
Speaker 1: Mind boggling.
Speaker 2: But what if that's just our little bubble? What if
the whole universe is actually infinite, like.
Speaker 1: Our observable bit is just a drop in an infinite ocean.
Speaker 2: Pretty much. And if the universe is infinite, which math
increasingly suggests might be true.
Speaker 1: Then statistically anything could happen again somewhere else.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, there could be an infinite number of other
observable universe patches out there beyond our horizon. And if
you have infinite chances.
Speaker 1: Then eventually you'd get an exact copy or something really close.
Me you this conversation happening somewhere else, light.
Speaker 2: Years away, it becomes statistically probable, even inevitable in an
infinite space. It's like that old thought experiment infinite monkeys,
infinite type.
Speaker 1: Raters eventually one type Shakespeare.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Wow, still unsettling.
Speaker 2: It is a strange thought. But then there's another idea,
the bubble universe theory.
Speaker 1: Okay, does that one work?
Speaker 2: This one ties into the big Bang? What if our
big bang wasn't the only one?
Speaker 1: Ah, like multiple bangs happening.
Speaker 2: Kind of imagine an infinite space like a cosmic foam maybe,
and within that foam, new universes bubbles are constantly inflating,
each starting with its own big bang.
Speaker 1: So potentially infinite universe is floating.
Speaker 2: Around potentially Yes, And here's the really wild part. The
laws of physics might be different in each bubble.
Speaker 1: Different laws like gravity works differently or the speed of
light isn't the same exactly.
Speaker 2: The fundamental constants we take for granted here might not
be constant everywhere. Each bubble could have its own unique
set of rules.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's a lot to process universes with different rules.
But then the sources get into something even weirder, rooted
in quantum.
Speaker 2: Mechanics, the quantum realm where things get really stringed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Mini World's interpretation, this feels like we're really
going down the rabbit hole.
Speaker 2: Now, we definitely are, because when you look at the
very small scales at a electrons, the rules were used
to just break down.
Speaker 1: Particles can be in multiple places at once. Right, It's
all probabilities, that's the essence of it.
Speaker 2: Quantum mechanics is inherently probabilistic, and the Many World's Interpretation
or MWI, takes that seriously. It says, Okay, when a
quantum event has multiple possible.
Speaker 1: Outcomes, the universe doesn't just pick one.
Speaker 2: Nope. According to MWI, the universe splits, it branches off,
creating a separate parallel universe for every single possible outcome.
Speaker 1: Whoa okay, hold on, So if a particle could spin
up or spin down.
Speaker 2: The universe divides in one universe, it spins up. In
another parallel universe, it spins down.
Speaker 1: Both happen. So these infinite copies, they're not far away
in space. They're here.
Speaker 2: Now that's the mind bending part. They're thought to occupy
the same space, maybe in different dimensions, but they branch
off constantly with every quantum.
Speaker 1: Event, like different radio stations existing in the same room,
but we're only tuned to one.
Speaker 2: That's a really good way to put it. Actually, they're
separated quantum outcomes, not by distance, constantly branching invisible to
each other, an ever growing tree of realities.
Speaker 1: And this whole idea comes from trying to solve some
deep mysteries in quantum physics itself, like the observer problem,
the double slit experiment.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, the double slit experiment is the classic example. You
fire electrons at a barrier with two slits.
Speaker 1: And you expect two lines on the screen behind it,
like little particles going through one slit or the other.
Speaker 2: Right, But that's not what happens. You get an interference
pattern like waves passing through both slits and interfering with
each other.
Speaker 1: So the electron acts like a wave even though we
fire them one by one.
Speaker 2: Somehow, Yes, it seems to exist as a wave of
probability exploring all paths. But then when you.
Speaker 1: Try to watch, put a detector there to see what.
Speaker 2: Slit it goes through exactly, and the moment you observe it,
the interference pattern disappears, poof, and.
Speaker 1: You just get the two lines you expected for particles.
Speaker 2: Right, The act of measuring, of observing seems to force
the electron to chew a path, to act like a particle.
Speaker 1: Again, it's bizarre, as if it knows it's being watched.
That's the observer.
Speaker 2: Problem, that's the heart of it. Why does observation change
the outcome? Neil's Bore and the Copenhagen interpretations said, the
particle exists in superposition, all states at once until observed.
Then observation causes a collapse into one state.
Speaker 1: Like flipping a coin, It's neither heads nor tails until
it lands.
Speaker 2: Sort of. Yes, observation forces the landing, which brings us
to Schrodinger's Well, the source called it a crab cat. Huh, Yes,
the Schrodinger's cat thought experiment, or crabcat if you prefer.
Speaker 1: Designed to show how weird this Copenhagen idea is when
you scale it up.
Speaker 2: Precisely, put a cat or crab cat in a box
with a radioactive atom, a detector poison. If the atom
decays a quantum chance event, poison releases, cat dies. If not,
cat lives.
Speaker 1: And according to Copenhagen, until you open the box and look.
Speaker 2: The atom is both decayed and undecayed. So the cat
is both alive and dead simultaneously, which is.
Speaker 1: Obviously absurd in our everyday world. It highlights the paradox
it does.
Speaker 2: But then, however, the third came along in the fifties.
He looked at Schrodinger's equation, the math describing how quantum
states evolve, and.
Speaker 1: He said, wait a minute.
Speaker 2: He said, maybe the equation is right. Maybe all the
possibilities that describes are real. Maybe there's no collapse.
Speaker 1: So instead of collapsing, the universe splits.
Speaker 2: Every possible outcome happens just in a different, newly created universe.
Speaker 1: So for the crabcat, one universe where the Adam decays
Cat's dead, another parallel universe Atam doesn't decay Cat's alive exactly.
Speaker 2: Both are real, Your active opening the box just reveals
which branch you happen to end up on. Another version
of you on another branch sees the opposite outcome.
Speaker 1: Okay, if that's right, then there are infinite versions of
me right now.
Speaker 2: That's the staggering implication doing anything.
Speaker 1: The sources mentioned versions watching different TV shows or building
time machines, or.
Speaker 2: Speak different languages because history went differently. Maybe a reality
where your living room isn't there because the dinosaurs survived.
Speaker 1: Wow, impossible to really grasp that scale.
Speaker 2: It really is, and it connects to ideas like the
butterfly effect, doesn't it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, small changes having huge consequences down the line.
Speaker 2: In MWI, every tiny event, every choice could be a
branching point. Think about how your grandparents meant if one
missed a train.
Speaker 1: A whole reality branches off where Yeah, well where I
don't exist.
Speaker 2: Like this, Or even choosing soup versus salad for lunch.
It sounds trivial, but trace the consequence is far enough.
In a branching multiverse, who knows where it leads.
Speaker 1: It definitely makes you think about choices differently. So if
these other dimensions, these other universes are potentially all around us,
can we detect them? Our scientists actually look.
Speaker 2: At ar, though it's incredibly difficult. Particle accelerators like the
LHC at CERN are one place.
Speaker 1: They're looking smashing particles together at huge energies. What are
they hoping to find?
Speaker 2: One idea involves gravity. Gravity is weirdly weak compared to
other forces right One explanation is that gravity might leak
into extra dimensions that other forces don't experience, So they
look for signs of energy or particles, specifically hypothetical gravitons
disappearing maybe into another dimension, like.
Speaker 1: Trying to catch smoke one source set exactly.
Speaker 2: It's incredibly subtle if it happens at all, very hard
to detect.
Speaker 1: What about tiny black holes connecting universes? That sounds pretty
sci fi.
Speaker 2: It's highly theoretical, but some models suggest tiny primordial black
holes formed right after the Big Bang might act as gateways,
maybe through wormholes.
Speaker 1: So they look for weird patterns in the collision.
Speaker 2: Debris, sort of specific energy signatures that might indicate a
tiny black hole formed and evaporated, potentially interacting with another
dimension or universe. Again, a real long shot, needing tons
of data.
Speaker 1: Okay, Beyond particle colliders, are there other hints anomalies in space?
Maybe like that cold spot, ah.
Speaker 2: The cosmic microwave background cold spot. Yes, that's a fascinating one.
It's this unusually large cool patch in the heat map
of the early universe.
Speaker 1: And one explanation was maybe it's just a big empty
area of space, a supervoid.
Speaker 2: That was the leading idea, but some research suggested maybe not.
A more exotic explanation proposed in twenty seventeen was that
it could be.
Speaker 1: A bruise, a bruise from what a.
Speaker 2: Collision between our nascent universe and another bubble universe way
back near the beginning, like two bubbles bumping into each other.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's wow. Still very speculative, though.
Speaker 2: Highly speculative, yes, but it's the kind of unexplained thing
that makes physicists consider these wilder ideas.
Speaker 1: And then there are wormholes themselves, the classic sci fi
trope for jumping across spacer.
Speaker 2: Universes right usually considered unstable, needing exotic matter to stay.
Speaker 1: Open, but maybe not impossible. Sources mentioned some recent research.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a couple of papers in twenty twenty one revisited
the math. They suggested traversible wormholes might be theoretically possible
without needing quite so much exotic stuff still involves extreme gravity, though,
so you could potentially go through theoretically, but you might
get crushed, and even if the trip feels instant to you,
because of time dilation near the wormhole, billions of years
might pass outside.
Speaker 1: Okay, so not exactly practical for a weekend trip.
Speaker 2: No, probably not anytime soon, but the theory is evolving.
Speaker 1: This leads us to some weirder things people report, like
the Mandela effect, shared false memories. It's strange how widespread
some of these are.
Speaker 2: It really is. The classic example being Nelson Mandela, lots
of people remembering him dying in prison in the eighties.
Speaker 1: When he actually passed away in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 2: Exactly, or Jiffy peanut butter instead of Jeff, or the
monopoly man's monocle which he never had never had. Psychologists
have explanations memory distortion suggestion how we reconstruct things makes sense,
but one fringe theory ties it back to many worlds.
What if those aren't false memories. What if they're bleed
throughs real memories from a parallel universe where Mandela did
die earlier, or jiff was called.
Speaker 1: Jiffy memories leaking across realities.
Speaker 2: That's the speculative idea, a hint that we might be
subtly connected to or influenced by these other branches.
Speaker 1: Which sounds a lot like the ideas of Philip K. Dick,
the science fiction writer.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, for Dick, this wasn't just fiction. He seemed to
genuinely believe realities could overlap or bleed into hours.
Speaker 1: Like in The Man in the High Castle, his book
about the Axis winning WWYI, he claimed he had visions
of that reality.
Speaker 2: He did. He described these intense experiences, feeling like he
was momentarily in that other timeline. He even had this
whole theory about reality being a simulation.
Speaker 1: With glitches like deja vu being a system reset or
a patch.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. And he thought the Mandela effect could be
real memories from slightly different simulation timelines, or feeling like
you know a stranger or a new place feels familiar.
Speaker 1: He thought those could be echoes from parallel lives you're
living simultaneously.
Speaker 2: That was his interpretation of his own strange experiences. He
lived on that edge between realities in a way.
Speaker 1: It really makes you wonder why we're so obsessed with
this stuff. Alternate realities, parallel lives, It's everywhere in stories.
Why does it grab us so much?
Speaker 2: I think it comes down to choices, doesn't it Everett's idea,
Every choice creates a new world. Our lives are the
sum of our choices. And the thought that every road
not taken was actually taken by another version of you
it's powerful.
Speaker 1: It taps right into that what if question We all
ask ourselves, Yeah, what if I had taken that job,
moved to that city, said yes instead.
Speaker 2: Of no exactly? Lets us explore those possibilities mentally. It's
a natural human thing to wonder. The trick is, as
one source pointed out, not to get lost in those
what ifs and regret the reality you're actually in.
Speaker 1: Finding that balance between exploring the fantasy and living your actual.
Speaker 2: Life right, appreciating the path you're on, even while acknowledging
the infinite others that might exist.
Speaker 1: So okay, wrapping this up after exploring all this ancient ideas,
weirdness potential cosmic evidence. The core of the Many World's
theory remains every possibility plays out somewhere in its own universe.
Speaker 2: That's the essence of it, constantly brushing realities.
Speaker 1: And maybe the final thought for everyone listening is think
about your next choice, big or small. If this theory
holds any water, that choice isn't just affecting this reality.
It could be creating a whole new one. Does knowing
that change how you feel about the choice with the
present moment.
Speaker 2: It adds a certain weight, doesn't it. Even if we
can't see those other worlds.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And while it's fun, maybe even temping, to think
about visiting other selves or other realities.
Speaker 2: The reality we can actually influences this one. We're here
right now.
Speaker 1: The choices we make here are the ones that matter
for us. So m yeah, she's wisely