Could It Really Be Like This?
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The September 2001 issue of Discover Magazine has an
interview with physicist David Deutsch of Oxford University in
English, who believes that parallel universes are real. If
Deutsch?s ideas are correct, there is more than one ?you,?
and you are reading this article countless times, in many
different universes. In other universes, the article doesn?t
exist, you don?t own a computer, don?t know how to read. In
still others, you are already dead, haven't been born, will
never exist.
Does it ever end?
In a word, not really.
Quantum physics has shown that a single particle of matter
exists not just in one position, but in several places at once.
It can exist has both a particle and as part of a wave?at the
same time. Because everything in the world, including us, is
made up of these particles, we too, must exist in many
states at once, even if we don?t realize it. All possible events
must exist, says Deutsch.
This theory solves the ancient question of whether or not we
have free will, because we don?t need it?everything that can
happen, does happen, in some universe somewhere. ?The
bottom line is that the universe is open,? says Deutsch. ?In
the relevant sense of the word, we have free will.?
Could you go back in time and kill your grandfather? If you
did, you?d never be born. But if your father was never born
and never married your mother, who gave birth to you, then
you wouldn?t exist and you wouldn?t be able to go back in
time and kill your grandfather in your own universe. The
grandfather you murder in a parallel universe lives in a
universe in which you do not exist, although you could travel
there and even remain there, according to researchers.
Deutsch says that different times are the same as different
universes. ?The universes we can affect we call the future.
Those that can affect us we call the past.?
Can we control what happens to us in the universe we
happen to exist in right now? Deutsch thinks it?s impossible to
control the fate of our other selves in the multiuniverse, but
if we may be able to influence the other copies of ourselves.
What about dangerous driving??we could hit a
child. ?There?s ...the argument that because the child?s death
will happen in some universes, you ought to take more care
when doing even slightly risky things,? he says. But if
someone dies, they can still be alive in other universes.
Physicists may disagree about the existence of parallel
universes, but they work with the quantum physics that
underlie the theory every day. 30% of the United States?
gross national product is derived from technologies based on
quantum mechanics; without it there would be no cell
phones, CD players or portable computers. Yet, ?despite the
unrivalled empirical success of quantum theory, the very
suggestion that it may be literally true as a description of
nature is still greeted with cynicism, incomprehension and
even anger,? says Deutsch.
Christopher Fuchs, a research physicist at Lucent
Technologies? Bell Labs, is one scientist who disagrees with
David Deutsch?s interpretation of parallel universes. ?It
represents our interface with reality,? he says. ?I don?t think
it goes further than that. When a quantum state collapses,
it?s not because anything is happening physically, it?s simply
because this little piece of the world called a person has
come across some knowledge, and he updates his knowledge.
So the quantum state that?s being changed is just the
person?s knowledge of the world, it?s not something existent
in the world in and of itself.?
Deutsch think that ideas like that are just rationalizations?
ways of avoiding the hard truth. And if scientists won?t face
reality, they?ll never achieve their goal of building a quantum
computer. A quantum computer, in theory, could perform a
calculation requiring more steps than there are atoms in the
entire universe. It would do this by utilizing the atoms that
exist in parallel universes.
The theory of parallel universes is frightening at first, but it?s
also comforting. It means there is a world in which we didn?t
make those wrong decisions. Will it some day be possible to
travel to a parallel universe where we?ve won the lottery? But
one of ?us? is already there, living the good life.
If parallel universes are real, it means that a world exists in
which no one has invented a hydrogen bomb and serial killers
do not murder the innocent. Somewhere, Hitler did not try to
destroy a entire race of human beings?and somewhere else,
he succeeded.
For more information, go to
Discover
Magazine.
