Do I understand this right? Re: Parallel Universes.

Some scientists believe that there are an infinite number of Parallel Universes. In these universes the very laws of nature may be completely different. In these universes you may or may not exist, and if you do exist you may be completely different from who and what you are now.

If the theory of infinite Parallel Universes holds true, then does that mean everything ever imagined really happened somewhere? That every book of fiction ever written is a reality, somewhere? That every dream ever dreamt, no matter how bizarre, really happened, somewhere? This seems true simply due to the infinite number of possibilities. In some universe, somewhere, I could rip up a sheet of paper, put it in a box, shake the box and then pull out a banana. In some universe, somewhere, I could walk across the street, and then suddenly end up on the other side of the Universe - instantly. In some universe, somewhere, I am exactly as I am now, but my genes are slightly altered and I have gigantism, and my alter-self is 7 feet tall. In another universe, the same is true, but I am 7 feet 1 inches tall. Then in another, the reverse is true and I am a dwarf, instead. Even stranger, in another universe I am 8 feet tall, but by comparison to other humans I am a dwarf.

I could go on and on… but my point is… are there limits to the infinite possibilities? Just what is possible and what is not possible? In a universe of infinite and unlimited possibilities, then everything we could ever imagine would have happened somewhere. The Lord of the Rings, therefore, would be a non-fiction book because the events written took place, somewhere. The Greek and Roman deities really exist as depicted, somewhere. Somewhere, every word written in the Bible is so accurate that it is used as a history book. Somewhere, every dream and daydream every human being has dreamt on earth has taken place.

Just how infinite is infinite and just what type of possibilities are possible?

proves pararell universes.

For the life of me I cant remember anything more about it.

the experiment proves that one atom can be in two places at the same time.
Think about that and let your imagination run wild.

I've read a few books by Paul Davies about the new physics.
I'm sure there are more up to date books on the subject
but "God and the new physics" is a good starting point.
Amazon??

...when I try and think about this stuff. :P

"Dude... it just hit me... we're living in a giant collideascope. Look at all the colors!"

In addition to all the above, if everything possible is possible then every opinion ever held is technically fact!

As all the possible realities collide, many more are created and born anew...

Reality as the collision of dream vs waking state...

There is something to that. I wish I were still in college...that would be a great topic for a paper.

It's not about made-up stories; it's about infinite outcomes.

Every moment in our lives and in the lives of others represents a kind of crossroads. The notion of parallel universes (as I understand it) suggests that each possible outcome is realized. But we're talking about actual outcomes, not fictions that some author or filmmaker has simply dreamed.

If you come to an intersection and turn left, there's a parallel universe out there where you turned right. Now extrapolate that to include every possible scenario.

...the very laws of nature itself (as we understand them) are subject to change in those universes as well. If the very laws of nature change in those universes then what is to stop literally ANYTHING from happening? And if anything can happen, as a result, then anything we could imagine would have happened. That doesn't mean, of course, that we are somehow accessing thoughts/memories from alternate universes. I mean it in the sense that this would be a side effect of the theory.

Plus, don't kill my dream of shipping off the bible thumpers to Bible World. (A place where every word in the Bible is true.) :P

To take the example of torn up pieces of paper in a box, pulling out a banana could only be the result of laws of nature which not only allow torn paper to convert into a banana, but also allow paper-ness and banana-ness in the first place. Those qualities are likely mutually exclusive.

I've heard infinite universes refered to largely in terms of the initial conditions of the universe following the Big Bang. In that moment, the groundworks for all of our laws of our universe were laid out. Perhaps in other universes the bang was more powerful, and things flew apart so quickly that nothing interesting could congeal out of it. In another the blast was so weak that everything stayed close together, forming a sort of static plasma stew.

Or perhaps some of the founding rules of physics differ, with results that effect nuclear weak and strong forces, or gravities strength, in greater or lesser degrees. Those things, while seemingly small, have huge effects, like whether electrons can be captured in atomic orbits, or whether they can be easily shared between atoms to allow chemical reactions, etc... Those rules determine whether the underlying mechanics of our matter based universe can even function at all.

But, once a universes rules are set, they are likely to stay fairly consistent. So paper spontaneously changing into a banana seems unlikely.

Something that seems more likely to happen would be to place torn paper into a box, shaking it, and opening it to find the paper whole again. In some universes 2 or more of the many pieces rejoined, but in most the pieces all stayed separate, because that is by FAR the most likely outcome.

exist somewhere, yeah. So in one reality my parents never met. In another they met, but they didn't have me. In another they had me, but I never had the eating disorder and bipolar issues. In another, they had me and I was a junkie. Etc etc etc

Actually, it brings me some comfort to think about this. Somewhere out there is a more successful version of me on a much healthier planet in a much happier world.

Several of his last books experimented with the exact concept of time you ask about.

Peace.

His characters had the ability to walk between infinite universes, which our Earth was merely a "shadow" of the one true universe. Trippin'

Instead of every possible outcome having to be manifestly 'real' in the 'multiverse' somewhere, I think it's more a state of superposition... all these possibilities exist but are not manifest, as our universe appears to be.

Of course, if our idea of 'reality' is flawed then the flaw in the 'multiple universes' idea isn't that multiple universes exist, it's the concept that WE exist - we may not exist at all.

Solipsism is delicious.

An example often used is the "flip of a coin". There are two "possibilities" - heads or tails. So the "alternative universes" in this scenario are two. But there really aren't two "possibilities", there is only one. Because a calculation that included the type and weight of the coin, the strength of the flipper's thumb, the condition of the coin and the thumb, the condition of the environment of the experiment, the power put into the flip, etc. would give you the exact face that the coin would land on - ergo, no other possibility. "Possibilities" assume that "things" can "happen" in any one of numerous ways. If the "alternative universes" do exist, they may have absolutely nothing to do with the one which we inhabit or with each other. The idea of connecting the various universes as in some way variations on this one, is not founded in any science that I know of. The presence of "other universes" is suggested by string theory, think, and is derived from the postulation of "membranes" constituted from formations of "strings"...

How can this be? Black Holes have no mass.
Some stars are moving much faster in their Galaxy caused by the sling-shot effect when coming close to a massive black-hole.To much to comprehend.

Their standards seem to be plummeting. A few months ago I watched a show touting as a "scientific" explanation of the "Bermuda Triangle" the existence of a black hole under the sea.

The universe is mysterious enough without making things up.

One of those special kind of black holes that doesn't suck up water!

I'm sure I read about that somewhere...

(just in case: :sarcasm:)

And - I'm not making this up! - the dude saying this (identified only as a "theoretician") also says there's wormhole from this black hole to a white hole deep in the Marianas Trench. So I guess Flight 19 is resting deep under the Pacific.

http://www.history.com/shows.do?episodeId=221446&action=detail">The show was called "Earth's Black Hole Looks like they're airing it tonight! :puke:

And encouraging it should be a capital crime

See, for instance, the comments on a TV blog.

And your right, there "oughta be a law..." This garbage only contributes to the dumbing of America that is leading to so many devastating consequences. How many people will die because Steve Milloy and his Faux News ilk are doing everything possible to prop up extreme skepticism about global warming? Morally, this is at least manslaughter, if not outright murder...

My favorite: "micro black hole + Earth = slightly larger black hole (burp!)"

I fell back to sleep and had a dream that lasted a hundred years.
In that dream, my nose smelled, my skin felt, my tongue tasted etc.
As far as my brain was concerned, I was really there. I woke up in a cold sweat.
A hundred years in the span of nine minutes....time to hit snooze again.

You brain has no concept of reality. thats something your boss, landlord, spouse etc.
demands from you. Left to its own devices, your brain would allow you to disappear
completely. It doesnt know about time. It has no idea when your asleep and dreaming.
As far as the old gray one is concerned, your awake all of the time.

If the reality of reality is real, and my brain (which is the only thing about me that knows what real really is) doesnt respect time and has no concept of dreaming, as far as I'm concerned,
dreams are real and every thought that goes through my head happens, for real, in some other reality.

Reality seems to me, to be an agreement between you and I, at any given moment, about what is real.
Nothing else.

spirituality.

Science is like a flowering garden. Some things grow. Some things die. Some trunks have many branches. Others none. And there is a myriad of colors in that garden.

Sprituality and/or Religion is a rock garden. What you see is what you get. Alpha and Omega. Never changing, never growing, never impacted by it's environment. And too often, too many pick up that rock to bash in the skulls of others. <wink>

made...by any living animal... a new universe is created...where that choice's reality is manifested...so the number of universes would be infinite....

It is a very interesting proposition....and mathematically it seems to solve some current problems in the Quantum physics world.

However, for me personally.... it is just too mind-blowing....

"Hooray! Mittens saved the penguin! If Mittens chose to save the penguin based on his beliefs, and Mittens' beliefs are not in his direct control, does Mittens really have free will?"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8I_oS9v_rQ
(around 4:10)

What you do have are speculations that, if true, might account for some of the stranger features of the physical world. The older ones are ways to cope with the fact that quantum mechanics gives probabilistic predictions, as sort of a reaction against the idea that there could be any truly random processes in nature. (I'd sum up this, in oversimplified form, as saying, "I'd rather believe everything that can happen must happen, without chance entering into it, than that God does indeed play dice with the universe.")

The main thing is that if truly parallel universes exist, almost by definition we would have no experimental access to them. (Otherwise we'd regard them as heretofore undiscovered parts of THE universe!)

It's also worth remembering that there are plenty of theories positing the existence of additional spatial dimensions, signs of which could be experimentally observed. Most of these are motivated by attempts to reconcile gravity and quantum field theory. One observation extra dimensions might help explain is the weakness of gravity. A highly oversimplified argument is this: Suppose gravitational fields propagate not only in the usual 3D space but in "hidden" dimensions as well. If the fields associated with other interactions only propagate through the 3 ordinary spatial dimensions, there's a sense in which gravity can be thought of as, in some sense, "diluted" by propagation into these hidden dimensions.

The way I understand this is it is wrong to think of parallel universes in terms of events that occur in ours. Parallel universes would arise following the rules governed by the conditions of their own creation. They would have their own set of rules and we or anything in any other universe probably would not be present. They would have their own time-lines and history. Also in most matter would not exist as it does in ours. It took a very narrow set of initial conditions for our universe to come about the way it has. Be thankful though, if those tight constraints didn't occur in just the way they did, we wouldn't be here...

Scuba

Many use the 'parallel universe' possibility to create a world in which they want something to exist. But the thing is 'imaginings' in this universe are still imaginings in all others. There is no The Simplson's family living anywhere else except in the minds and celluloid of the creators and Hollywood.

Nature, no matter how UN-natural it might appear to us, would still be in control of what circumstances and processes that start the proverbial ball rolling in each 'evolutionary' universe.

But I think I'll disagree politely in the arising from their own rules, etc.

There should be very similar universes where we mostly all exist, even being very similar to what we see and do today.

I think of it more like an ancestral line over an infinite number of generations. From hundreds of thousands of people, it slowly progresses down to one, ME! YAAAAAA. But in any of those hundreds of thousands of people, the possibility of them not meeting, birthing my great-distant direct ancestor, that ancestor living to adulthood, etc. adds even more infinite worlds in which I would never exist, but then again, I would still be existing in various universes.

Kinda like L (Lives lived) = I (infinity) - n (number of universes I dont exist in).

And then the headache starts..... and it's time to get a beer! LOL!

and truly worth a thousand words!

and the collapse of the wave-function?

Schroedinger's cat, and all that? So that every possibility (parallel universe) is equally viable until a choice/observation is made. Then, the wave-function collapses into reality so that only the one universe exists?

I like to think that there are an infinite number of possible universes, because after all, space is *big* and infinite is even bigger, but then it gets into the troublesome question of how our consciousness figures into it all -- so, what factor determines that my consciousness is *here* in this particular universe, and not the one that split off a minute ago where I didn't make this post?

So, it looks like consciousness/observer has something important to do with everything.

Fun stuff to think about eh? :D

But let's remember, based on the observation, in one universe somewhere, the Cat NEVER is killed during the experiment, since each outcome is equally possible! So Universe 1, Dead Cat. ..... Universe 2, Live Cat, Dead Cat, ....... Universe 3, Live Cat, Live Cat, Dead Cat ..... Universe n-1, Live Cat*n, Dead Cat ... until you reach ... Universe n, LiveCat*Infinity.

Ouch, head hurts