Parrellel universes

Another thought - if there is more than one universe, that is a contradiction in terms. Instead of A and B being separate universes, we should talk of A and B as being the one universe. Or else, talk about a polyverse or something.

In a parallel universe, I know how to work HTML correctly everytime.

Basically: there may be many universes in the "cosmos," exploding and expanding and contracting, etc. We may even be able to detect the others someday.

Bizarro like Cathy!

-- Pleasant Plains

Train tracks on pleasant plains... it's a nice image...makes me come over all Johnny Cash...

Upthread, NA makes the same point as me, but phrases it better.

Anyway, to come back to Pleasant Plains' point, which is a good one, but not quite correct. Train tracks are in the same universe and do, in principle, interact. For example, I could remove a section of one track and bring it over to the other. Even to see one track from the other is an interaction.

If parallel universes were the same, we could, in principle, enter one from the other - in which case they would be no more than different parts of the same universe, by definition.

parallel universe

ultimate building blocks of the universe

the beginning or end of time

cognitive representation / constructivist perception

free will

finite matter

time slowing down or speeding up

Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit! Talk about tying your own shoelaces together. Give me more scientists who observe and report, and fewer who think they can contravene their own definitions.

Even then, consider the implications: you do one thing rather than another, and the thing you don't do spins out into another parallel event. Conceivable, that would create an infinite number of Martin Skidmores, all doing different things - and you could meet them all, as they proliferate.

I think the intent behind the proposition of parallel universes isn't to allow them to interact at all, but to save probability theory.

It's nuts how some scientists go about 'proving' stuff like this by doing some mentalist experiment they reckon supports their theory, then run around blabbing how irrefutable their 'proof' is. Like sticking a clock in an aeroplane, watching it slow down a few seconds, and going 'it's displaced in time!!' effectively disregarding far more salient explanations. To those people I say tish, tosh, and big fat bollocks.

Well, this is a bit fine-grained for ILE, but it relates to parallel universes in this way:

In the universe, either something happens or it doesn't. So, in reality, everything has a 100% or zero chance of happening. Nothing sorta-but-not-quite happens (except my music career). So what do probability statements refer to? Some drunk philosophers claim, 'to other universes, where the thing did happen.' Eg, if it's a 68% probability, and it didn't happen, then that was only in this universe and 32% of the other universes.

If there's only one universe, there's something a bit smelly about probability theory, logically speaking. It doesn't confirm with the everyday observation that things occur actually, not probably. Of course, we could psychologise probability theory (it then becomes a statement about one's confidence) - but though that doesn't necessarily entail parallel universes (hooray!), it does lead to rather confusing problems caused by the relativising of probability.

RJG - unicycles are fine - it's not the 'uni' bit that's the problem, it's the 'verse' -all encompassing, completely exculsive concepts must contain everything. Talking about 'many universes' is the same as talking about 'multiple everythings'.

Interesting stuff.

http://www.bet.com/images/bigbarker/pharrell_bb.jpg

Erm, found this:

\U"ni*verse\, n. [L. universum, from universus
universal; unus one + vertere, versum, to turn, that is,
turned into one, combined into one whole; cf. F. univers. See
{One}, and {Verse}.]
All created things viewed as constituting one system or
whole; the whole body of things, or of phenomena; the ? ? of
the Greeks, the mundus of the Latins; the world; creation.

In that case, I'd like to know the term that refers to all these Very Big Somethings. That's the one I'd prefer to call the universe, as it concords with the standard dictionary meaning best.

What value does a hypostatized state have if we can't know anything about it in principle - even whether it exists? No use at all, I would say. A more useless theoretical construct could not be imagined.

Yes, the metaphor is that the universe can be thought of as a 2D plane and other universes are parallel to the plane never intersecting. (it's just an easier conceptually to think of something in a 2D world then in the reality of a 3D world, because the perception of the 4D would be needed to see the differences between the 'parallel' 3D universes.)

but anyway under that metaphor a image like this could be used:
http://www.people.vcu.edu/~rgowdy/phys591/blackhole.gif
where that is a wormhole connecting the 2 parallel 2D universes. THis is a theortical explination to the disappearance of matter in a blackhole. It leaves our 3D universe and travels through a blackhole into another 3D universe. It used to be thought that it was a different area of space within our universe or a differnt moment in time when the matter comes out, but an easier theortical explination is for it to go into an entirely different universe.

http://cosmology.berkeley.edu/Education/BHfaq.html

I can't see that there's anything in the black hole example that relates in any way to a theory positing parallel universes. It seems to be a construction or interpretation. The example seems to show the operation of parallel systems within the universe - the universe being the space containing the black hole and the areas it connects - and everything else too.

maybe, more like the same room joined by a time machine.

The thing is that the the 3 dimension you see in that picture (metaphor) is in reality a 4th dimension which goes beyond our 3D universe.

"wormholes almost certainly do not exist. ... just because something is a valid mathematical solution to the equations doesn't mean that it actually exists in nature."

The fact that what we call the 'universe' may not be the only one only invalidates the name, if you're terribly fussed about derivations, not the scientific concept.

And "People get a theory, flimsily back it up with experimentation..." is the start of scientific knowledge. It obviously doesn't always lead to anything 'true', but it's the starting point for an awful lot of things that have. I agree that caution is often lacking in the conclusions drawn, but that doesn't make it a bad thing. Just saying "I call bullshit" really gets us nowhere, however often you say it.

I think where we are scientifically is something like this: a number of things we believe we know about the universe can be explained by parallel universes, i.e. other finite but unbounded universes fundamentally separate from our own (this separation theorised in several ways). There seems to be nothing in our scientific knowledge that denies this. There are scientists trying to devise ways to prove it's true. These other universes would almost certainly (we seem to be back to probability here) not resemble our own in any way, right down to fundamental scientific values (we are now even thinking that parts of our universe barely resemble what we know): time, for instance, could run completely differently. I think that open-mindedness is necessary here - we're far from proving it, but no one seems to imagine we can disprove it, and it does seem to fit in interesting ways.