248
PHVSICS OF THE IMPOSSIBLE
CONTACT BETWEEN
UNIVERSES?
This leaves open some tantalizing questions: If physicists can't rule out
the possibility of several types of parallel universes, would it be possible to make contact with them? To visit them? Or is it possible that perhaps beings from other universes have visited us?
Contact with other quantum universes that have decohered from
us seems highly unlikely. The reason that we have decohered from
these other universes is that our atoms have bumped into countless
other atoms in the surrounding environment. Each time a collision occurs, the wave function of that atom appears to "collapse" a bit; that is,
the number of parallel universes decreases. Each collision narrows the
number of possibilities. The sum total of all these trillions of atomic
"mini-collapses" gives the illusion that the atoms of our body are totally collapsed in a definite state. The "objective reality" of Einstein is
an illusion created by the fact that we have so many atoms in our body,
each one bumping into others, each time narrowing the number of
possible universes.
It's like looking at an out-of-focus image through a camera. This
would correspond to the microworld, where everything seems fuzzy
and indefinite. But each time you adjust the focus of the camera, the
image gets sharper and sharper. This corresponds to trillions of tiny
collisions with neighboring atoms, each of which reduces the number
of possible universes. In this way, we smoothly make the transition
from the fuzzy microworld to the macroworld.
So the probability of interacting with another quantum universe
similar to ours is not zero, but it decreases rapidly with the number of
atoms in your body. Since there are trillions upon trillions of atoms in
your body, the chance that you will interact with another universe consisting of dinosaurs or aliens is infinitesimally small. You can calculate
that you would have to wait much longer than the lifetime of the universe for such an event to happen.
So contact with a quantum parallel universe cannot be ruled out,
but it would be an exceedingly rare event since we have decohered
from them. But in cosmology, we encounter a different type of parallel
PHVSICS OF THE IMPOSSIBLE
CONTACT BETWEEN
UNIVERSES?
This leaves open some tantalizing questions: If physicists can't rule out
the possibility of several types of parallel universes, would it be possible to make contact with them? To visit them? Or is it possible that perhaps beings from other universes have visited us?
Contact with other quantum universes that have decohered from
us seems highly unlikely. The reason that we have decohered from
these other universes is that our atoms have bumped into countless
other atoms in the surrounding environment. Each time a collision occurs, the wave function of that atom appears to "collapse" a bit; that is,
the number of parallel universes decreases. Each collision narrows the
number of possibilities. The sum total of all these trillions of atomic
"mini-collapses" gives the illusion that the atoms of our body are totally collapsed in a definite state. The "objective reality" of Einstein is
an illusion created by the fact that we have so many atoms in our body,
each one bumping into others, each time narrowing the number of
possible universes.
It's like looking at an out-of-focus image through a camera. This
would correspond to the microworld, where everything seems fuzzy
and indefinite. But each time you adjust the focus of the camera, the
image gets sharper and sharper. This corresponds to trillions of tiny
collisions with neighboring atoms, each of which reduces the number
of possible universes. In this way, we smoothly make the transition
from the fuzzy microworld to the macroworld.
So the probability of interacting with another quantum universe
similar to ours is not zero, but it decreases rapidly with the number of
atoms in your body. Since there are trillions upon trillions of atoms in
your body, the chance that you will interact with another universe consisting of dinosaurs or aliens is infinitesimally small. You can calculate
that you would have to wait much longer than the lifetime of the universe for such an event to happen.
So contact with a quantum parallel universe cannot be ruled out,
but it would be an exceedingly rare event since we have decohered
from them. But in cosmology, we encounter a different type of parallel