Possible worlds, a new frontier

Edgardo E Estavillo Torrellas

Our daily life is based on decisions, every decision have an effect, imagine every possible path one could follow result in the creation of another reality. This argument was first expose in the 50’s by the American physicists Hugh Everett with his proposal of the “Many-Worlds Interpretation,” theory supported by the quantum physics. The physics and also philosophical hypotheses break the precedent perspective of reality as a single unfolding history. The MWI theory states that in every point when there is a possibility regarding to an event the universe divides as branches in a tree. If this statement is true this means there is an infinite number of universes, since every possibility exist.

In terms of quantum theory this hypothesis phenomena could be better explain by the Schrödinger's cat paradox. This thought experiment was first executed by the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935. The test puts a cat under a dangerous situation in which the survivor of the animal will be determine by an earlier random event. The result of this experiment is supported by the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, which predicts a dualistic path for the cat after the event, been simultaneously alive and dead. 

The latest contribution to this powerful and intriguing new perspective of the universe was made by the physicist and cosmologist Alan Guth. This professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology gave a new turn to the (MWI) in a scientific sense, by delivering to the world the inflationary universe theory. This new hypothesis tells that at the beginning of the universe there was a kind of reverse gravitational pull, which instead keeping things together, it repelled everything, this is what Guth call “false vacuum.” Guth states in his theory that when the big bang occur, this false vacuum effect began to decay and that in this process a great amount of particles were created; the same kind of particles which mark the beginning of our universe. These particles became like bubbles which the physicist believe gave birth to our universe. The tendency expose by Guth states that the more the false vacuum effect decayed the more bubbles were created. This theory will explain the existence of many universes, all apparently compose by the same properties and also build within the same laws of physics. If this theory is true the idea of the size of the universe that science community have, would dramatically increase in a way that nobody in history has thought of. Sense at this time there is no available technology that could prove this theory there still and open space for speculation of what these other universes might hold. 

At the moment any suggestion of what might be found in these other universes remains in the philosophical side. Finally, another issue here is that if we hold the universe is infinite this doesn’t necessarily mean that there exist infinite forms of arrangement in particles. So analytically, if in an infinite universe there exists define or finite array of forms in particles this theory would make a lot of sense.