Thoughts of the Mutiverse

What if, the human being and reality is all but a duplication of countless realms.  Of the many Earths and Universes, we have been multiplied within the subatomic or quantum physics.  The observed reality, that we know is broken down into an infinite amount of possibilities – in simpler terms via the mechanics at a quantum level, there is no one determined concept of time and reality. Rather, a multitude of different outcomes, seen with a photon, the particles of light as they split, fall onto an unlimited amount of variants and the more physicists study the outcome, it only gives rise to other versions.  This is the 'Many Worlds Interpretation' or Multiverse, beyond science fiction and the artist's imagination it holds a valid aspect of physics, that was revealed in 1926 with a famous thought experiment by the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1926, that even within classic physics of relativity, there is a subatomic world of quantum machinations that does not conform to the traditional scientific understanding of the Universe and everything in it, rather it creates a paradox. The experiment was known as “Schrödinger's cat”.  

If you are not aware of the experiment, in basic terms, a cat is placed into a sealed box, whilst a decaying radiative compound hangs ominously over a small lever, that will at some point fall onto the switch, causing a hammer to smash a laboratory glass containing a lethal poison. From the observer's point of view, without knowing the outcome, the cat is either both simultaneously alive and dead.  But, if the we are able to peer into the box, the cat, and we see this visually, had either died from the poison or is still alive – depending on that very moment in time.  Hence in a simplistic study, the cat, in this thought experiment, can either be dead and alive.  Giving rise to the equations in quantum physics, particularly utilizing the paradox with the awareness in all of its aspects.  The cat can be in two different points at the same time.

It was until a student by the name of Hugh Everett, after a drinking session at Princeton University in 1954 and from his discussion with fellow students that Quantum physics creates a reproduction of realities, ensuring that there is a constant, as we are split by our causal actions, creating multiple Earths and universes.  One action now, by observing and contributing to our reality creates another action in an alternative reality.  Ad infinitum. This young mathematician, who actually wrote to Einstein when he was 12, completed his ground breaking thesis of how we are living in a multivese, of one the countless universes and Earths, each with a unique copy of ourselves existing within.  Despite Everett's paper being groundbreaking he was heavily critiqued more so by Niels Bohr, one of the founders of quantum physics.  Everett was forced to water down his thesis, frustrated at the physics community, he left the discipline all together, turning his back on physics. It is only now proponents of the multiverses theory have later re-looked at the late Everett, he passed away in 1982, as a genius for his time, noting that his calculations and science to establish the theory of multiple universes are testable within quantum physics.

Yet, Everett left in his wake an idealism that borderlines on the metaphysical and science; the karmic duplication of actions.  He was a staunch atheist, who later, after leaving physics worked as a statistician for the Pentagon, studying the outcomes of nuclear war and the substantial death toll that it would entail.  To which he contributed to the theory of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) that would be the outcome of a global nuclear war.  However, it was Everett's early theories when he was a student at Princeton that our actions contribute to other selfs within the the countless Earths.  His 'Many Worlds' concept based around the science of quantum physics maintains the recurance, from every point of an observable aspect manifests an outcome.  Everett's MAD calculations as an argument against a nuclear war, may have staved off a nuclear destruction not just here but in another parallel Earth or paradoxically, in lieu of the Schrödinger's split outcomes - may have set in motion a mutually assured destruction.

But I think it is importent not to be too confined to the idea that we contribute to the other self of parallel worlds.  Nor was Everett when he started working for the Pentagon.  As we will never, physically, meet our other selves.  Despite over time and further testing of the mutiverse theory it may hold up as a probability.   And if that is the case, what we can do is to know that maybe we are part of a sleepless dream that is infinite of all of its ramifications and temporary in its purpose.