Warped Brains: Brane Worlds and Parallel Universes

There are many kinds of parallel worlds suggested by physics. One of the most interesting might be floating right in front of your face.

This page was last updated 01/21/2012 04:39:34 AM -0000

(STARpod.org) -- Professor "Mad Max" Tegmark at MIT has written about four different kinds of parallel universes, suggested by our best understanding of modern physics.

Level I parallel worlds exist in our universe, at vast distances from the Earth, beyond the edge of the visible universe. These worlds are inaccessible to us because of the limitations of the speed of light compared to the accelerating expansion of space itself, called inflation. According to Tegmark, because there are a finite number of particles and atoms in each pocket of space connected by the speed of light, they must play out all possible combinations and events across a flat, infinite universe. This idea, based upon our best current observations of the visible universe, predicts an infinite number of exact copies of you, elsewhere in the universe.

Level II parallel universes are predicted to be created from the quantum fluctuations thought to have been responsible for the beginning of our own universe. In this picture, our entire universe is merely one bubble in an infinite process behind the creation of universes; with each universe bubbling out of nothingness into existence. Some of the bubbles will be similar, whereas others will be vastly different, with alternative laws of physics.

Level III parallel universes are probably the best known, thanks to an idea of Hugh Everett III, in 1957. These are the parallel universes predicted by taking quantum theory seriously as a picture of nature. Before Everett came upon the scene, quantum physicists were forced by the fundamental quantum theory to add an ad-hoc "collapse" to explain why we see one world, and not an infinite number of worlds. Everett showed that the bare quantum theory was consistent with observing a single universe, once we accepted that the human observer, along with the entire universe, was constantly splitting into an infinite number of copies. For example, given a perfect "quantum coin" standing on end, the coin would fall heads or tails fifty percent of the time: in each universe, the human observer would also split, so that one copy would observe heads, and the other tails. Thus, there was no need for reality to "collapse" into one or the other: both would take place in different parallel worlds.

Level IV parallel worlds are the most controversial of all. Tegmark -- along with other less vocal supporters of Level III quantum "many worlds" -- believes that reality is built from mathematical operations. This point of view takes the parallel universe idea to the extreme: everything is made of mathematics. This solves the question about the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics for predicting our actual experience of the world, as well as "why these mathematics, and not some other." In Level IV, Tegmark sees alternative universes built from different mathematical laws, far beyond the Level II worlds with different laws of physics. "Mad Max, you're not in Kansas anymore!"

Because there are so many different kinds of possible parallel realities that are not forbidden by known laws of physics and actual observations of reality, it is easy to confuse them.

If all of the above was not enough to warp your brain, consider that another possible parallel universe might be right in front of your eyes, perhaps less than a millimeter from your skin.

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This "fifth" kind of parallel world is called a "brane world," and the idea is an extension of string theory.

String theory emerged as an attempt by the physics community to scale a vast "theory of everything" that would unite the very small, governed by Tegmark's Level III quantum rules, with the world of the very large, which obeys Einstein's classical theory of General Relativity. Einstein's theory allows mass and energy to deform, bend and curve space and time. We experience this curvature in the fabric of large-scale reality as gravity. The most extreme example is the black hole, where light itself is trapped.

Mathematical physicists quickly understood the need to introduce extra dimensions to string theory. Just as we normally observe a world of three space dimensions plus one dimension of time to explain our daily experience, string theory required an additional six dimensions. That was OK with the physicists, since the extra dimensions were predicted to be so small they were unobservable.

Eventually string theorists understood that there were other objects besides the strings.

As they explored these new objects, called "branes" (from membranes), they realized higher dimensions might exist at the scale of ordinary objects, including you and me.

In this picture of reality, our world, indeed our entire universe, is a membrane floating in a higher dimensional "bulk" filled with other membranes. Each of the membranes holds an entire universe, running physically parallel to our own.

Brane worlds are, for all practical purposes, unaware of each others' existence in the "bulk." This is because the forces which sustain the world that we experience, and allow us to observe everything around us, are stuck to the brane that holds our universe.

The forces of light, electromagnetism, and the forces of the atom, the strong and weak nuclear forces, cannot leave the brane we are on. It is, for all practical purposes, impossible to see into the bulk of the other worlds.

The exception to the above is gravity. Although gravity is not a true force, since what we experience as the force of gravity is actually the curving of spacetime, there are unobserved particles of gravity called gravitons, which are thought to mediate the force of gravity.

According to the brane worlds idea, gravity is not confined to any single brane. The gravitons are free to spread into the bulk space in which the branes are floating. The result of this freedom "dilutes" the force associated with gravity, which might explain one mystery physicists have been forced to confront since the dawn of the age of the atom: why is gravity so weak compared to the other forces?

If the above idea is right, it may be possible to interact with nearby parallel worlds through intense gravitational sources. If, as in Level II above, there are other laws of physics at play in some of the parallel universes, perhaps other odd effects might influence what we observe in our universe.

It is a well known fact that the U.S. government, in the company of many others, is concerned with a so-called "phenomenology problem" -- observations of phenomena that seem to defy our present understanding of physics -- perhaps someday what appears so mysterious and impossible may become a well understood aspect of nature.

Only time will tell.

For more about the government's paranormal efforts, see SPIES LIES and POLYGRAPH TAPE -- Knowing the Future: The UFO Spy Games Book.

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