Multiple Universes - And other You's

[PhysicsBurger]

I apologize if this goes in a different forum.

 

 

I don't understand why I keep hearing comments about multiple universes with another "me" in them. The butterfly effect isnt a theory. Its a fact. As a result of that fact, the chances - even with multiple universes - that there is another me, seems almost impossible. Let alone 5, 10, 15, 100 other me's all living in my same apartment, but one ate pizza today and the other is on a diet.

 

 

The probability of there being other me's decreases exponentially with more time. The more time, the more choices, and the more possibilities and variables that would lead circumstance to me, here and now. Given the fact that it has taken literally billions of years for "me" to exist, the insanely miniscule possibility that all circumstances panned out in other universes resulting in a copy of "me" seems pretty much NILL.

 

 

So every time I hear people talking about another me in another universe, I don't understand. I don't get it. The simple fact that my parents had sex is proof enough. In a teaspoon of semen there are tens of thousands of sperm. Unless there is a God conducting how things happen, there is absolutely no way the SAME SPERM got to the egg in all the universes where my parents were having sex!! Impossible! My parents probably don't even exist for the exact same reason!!

 

 

in fact because of that one fact alone, if we went to another universe, there would not be a single "same" person over there. Period!

 

Can someone explain to me why brilliant physicists constantly talk about other "me's" in other universes?

 

Its so funny I watch Fringe and they've got New York city - pretty much 95% the same, but minor differences. WRONGGGGGGGGGG. Try an entirely different city. Shoot - maybe we didnt evolve that far yet and there isnt even a city yet at all !

 

 

In summary: The differences should be unrecognizably dramatic. Not nearly identical.

[mooeypoo]

I actually agree, this is a huge pet peeve of mine as well.

 

Two things, though:

 

1. I let go of this pet peeve in Sci Fi movies/shows a while ago in favor of suspended-disbelief. I mean, let's face it. Having an alternate universe with "alternate us" makes for good television, so I let it go. I liked sliders, despite the blatant physics mistakes (your point was probably the least of their errors btw )

 

2. This is a pop-sci explanation of alternative universes. That is, I doubt many physicists really think what Fringe or Sliders present. That said, if I understand it correctly, the cosmos theories (I never really understood M-theory, so excuse me if I got this part wrong) speak of *infinite* universes.

 

When you talk about infinite universes, the chances that you get an alternate 'you' that is slightly similar to the real 'you' is small, but the 'infinite' part makes the actual number a lot bigger, and plausible. Add to that the idea that many SciFi shows have about "calibrating their equipment" to "find" "viable alternate universes" and this gets from funny and ridiculous to something you might succeed in suspending disbelief over.

 

~mooey

[Mystery111]

I don't think there is any other universes, and I never have, Hawking might believe it, IN FACT, some of the best minds might believe this, butt I certainly don't!! I think it's a load of rubbish.

 

I share the same views Smolin does.

[michel123456]

(...) there is absolutely no way the SAME SPERM got to the egg in all the universes where my parents were having sex!! (...)

 

You should have said spermatozoon.

 

--------------------

I agree for 2 reasons:

1. multiverse corresponds to an infinite energetic expansion, since each of this multiverse would have a certain amount of energy. It is not like a crossroad where you go left or right with a certain amount of energy, no: in Multiverse you go left AND right, energy is doubled.

2. it blows my mind.

 

------------------

Oh. Welcome.

Edited November 14, 2011 by michel123456

[mooeypoo]

This is the same type of problem as with planetary travel, though. Notice how all the SciFi shows like Star Trek, StarGate, etc that have visits to other planets seem to have *very* similar life forms (either to humans or to things we find on Earth) and very similar environment.

 

In StarGate they even started laughing at their own expense at some point when O'Neil (the "army man") asked Carter (the "scientist") if she ever noticed how each planet has green trees and grass, etc. The writers of the show solved this by having her start answering with a semi-coherent answer (something about how the gate-system they're traveling in was built by people who looked for specific planets) but then cut her off mid-thought with an action scene, so it was never *properly* explained. It was, however, amusing, and a point well taken - the show itself hinted at you to suspend your disbelief. I love when that happens, it instantly boosts the show's quality for me.

 

I think it's more or less the same in the other shows with regards to universes. We had a lecture in Campus about universes, M-theory and quite a lot about antropy, etc. It was mentioned there that even the slightest tiniest change in *any* universal constant might make the universe completely unsuitable for life, or matter not be able to form. So we're not just talking about "small change = you went to a different kindergarten". We are talking about "small change = the planets never existed in the first place". That's huuuuge difference for a tiny tiny change.

 

So here's what I love about sci-fi: It makes people *think* about this, and then *talk* about this, and get into the *actual* physics behind things. That's what StarTrek and StarGate did for me, honestly. I know the physics is mostly junk, but it made me think of which parts of it might be true, and made me go out and look, get interested, and eventually get a Physics degree.

 

 

I think we should not expect SciFi shows to be realistic They should have enough 'grain' of realism and enough internal consistency to grab us and keep us watching. They should be honest to their audience in what to expect; you can see that a show like Fringe is scifi and not 'based on a true story' - it's quite obvious. And if it sparks our imagination to go out and look for what *does* make sense in reality? All hail that show.

 

 

 

~mooey

[PhysicsBurger]

Im going to still stick with my opinion - even if there are "infinite" universes. Do you know how big the number gets when you have billions of years of variables? All butterfly effects?

 

The numbers shoot up incredibly high in a very short time.

 

(the carriage return on this forum is irritating the hell out of me. when I hit enter it jumps not 1, not 2, but 3 lines down, yet only sometimes! other times its 2. - and I have to backspace up just to keep my post from looking like it wasn't written by a lunatic)

 

Anyways lets say the first step was a guppy having a mutation that grew it flippers so it could waddle onto the sand and be the first land animal. Did it turn left and get squashed by a rock rolled up onto the sand by a wave? Or did it turn right and go on to eventually make humans? Did it dry out because it was 40% sunny that day, and the clouds above just happend to have enough breaks in them to keep sunlight on him for long enough that he suffered and got too hot? Or did the clouds move a different motion and 39% sunlight hit him and he was fine? Did he walk straight or turn around because he was hungry? was he hungry or did he just eat?

 

Already you've got like 30 possible variables. Maybe he went straight, and a wave washed him back in the water. Maybe the current took him back out to sea and he never happend to hit land again. Maybe he got out to sea and was swept left, or right, or up, or down ... and only one of those ended up taking him back to land.

 

How many variables are we up to in the first 1 hour of this process? 100? 500? a thousand?

 

That's in 1 hour.

 

Now add billions of years.

 

I guess its possible there's another me, as things "tend" to go similar directions in certain situations. But its complete hogwash to say there are infinite me's. If anything, if there are infinite universes (and we assume they all had the same big bang?? with the same materials that expanded in the same directions? HAh! wild assumption!) .... then I'd say there is a 0.00000000000000000001% chance that there is another me.

Edited November 14, 2011 by PhysicsBurger

[imatfaal]

Im going to still stick with my opinion - even if there are "infinite" universes. Do you know how big the number gets when you have billions of years of variables? All butterfly effects?

 

The numbers shoot up incredibly high in a very short time.

 

(the carriage return on this forum is irritating the hell out of me. when I hit enter it jumps not 1, not 2, but 3 lines down, yet only sometimes! other times its 2. - and I have to backspace up just to keep my post from looking like it wasn't written by a lunatic)

 

Anyways lets say the first step was a guppy having a mutation that grew it flippers so it could waddle onto the sand and be the first land animal. Did it turn left and get squashed by a rock rolled up onto the sand by a wave? Or did it turn right and go on to eventually make humans? Did it dry out because it was 40% sunny that day, and the clouds above just happend to have enough breaks in them to keep sunlight on him for long enough that he suffered and got too hot? Or did the clouds move a different motion and 39% sunlight hit him and he was fine? Did he walk straight or turn around because he was hungry? was he hungry or did he just eat?

 

Already you've got like 30 possible variables. Maybe he went straight, and a wave washed him back in the water. Maybe the current took him back out to sea and he never happend to hit land again. Maybe he got out to sea and was swept left, or right, or up, or down ... and only one of those ended up taking him back to land.

 

How many variables are we up to in the first 1 hour of this process? 100? 500? a thousand?

 

That's in 1 hour.

 

Now add billions of years.

 

I guess its possible there's another me, as things "tend" to go similar directions in certain situations. But its complete hogwash to say there are infinite me's. If anything, if there are infinite universes (and we assume they all had the same big bang?? with the same materials that expanded in the same directions? HAh! wild assumption!) .... then I'd say there is a 0.00000000000000000001% chance that there is another me.

But there is the universe in which some complex biochemical interaction that eventually can be thought of in (exceedingly complex) quantum mechanical terms you decided not to bother deleting the extra paragraph returns and looked like a loony for a while. I don't even dream to know enough to refute the many-worlds / parallel universe theories - but I know I do not like them and they do not sit well with human intuition.

[mooeypoo]

When we go into "infinite", almost anything is possible. That means that there *are* other yous out there, because there are *infinite* possibilities. I do agree that there are a whole lot more 'non you' universes, probably a vast majority of 'not even having life' or 'not even having gravity' or 'having weird quantum mechanics' universes (universii?) but the point is that when you go up to "infinite", rules of statistics tend to give you some sort of number of things that up 'till then were almost impossible.

 

Physics' wise, you're probably right. It'd utterly ridiculous. We'd find way more universes with bizarre effects (like lack of gravity or lack of matter or weird universal constants, etc) than anything even remotely resembling us.

 

HOWEVER. For the sake of playing around, I do have a few caveats.

First, not *everything* is luck. That is, even if there are variations in universes, they're not entirely infinite because things go by certain rules. Once you set up those rules, the universe goes by them.

 

So, for example, once the universe has gravity and quantum mechanics, then molecules are attracted, matter is formed, etc. In the absolute majority of universes with gravity and quantum mechanics that allow for them, this will happen. Then, the variations are *relatively* small, though I do agree that they *lead* to big changes eventually. But I think you're expecting more variation than there probably will be; at some point, "similar enough" universes will have more or less similar *basic* structures.

Does that make sense?

 

Second, even if there are infinite number of universes and only a tiny amount of them are close enough to us -- if we already build equipment to "jump" between universes (which I think is much more of a problem here, btw) -- why can't we assume that equipment 'checks' for universes that are similar to ours? We can simply say that the universes we see in StarGate, StarTrek and Fringe are similar due to selection bias. They *chose* the universes that *do* exist and *are* similar to us.

 

We're taking such a big leap by assuming there are other universes, and that there are infinite universes, and that we can 'jump' between them, that this above assumption seems to me to be rather small.

 

 

 

 

 

So let's separate between two things here.

* Physically speaking -- yeah, I agree with you. It's probably ridiculous. Though I would say that there probably are some "type of stuff" that are more likely to be repeated, like the formation of matter and stars and certain gasses and elements, etc, which might lead to other statistically more prevalent stuff.

 

* Entertainingly speaking -- let it go, they do it for the drama

 

~mooey

 

 

 

p.s

I don't have a problem with the reply editor, it sounds like there might be a glitch for you. If you send me a PM with what browser you're using, I'll make sure an admin will take a look and help out.

[TheOnlyMaster]

Although I disagree with the current view on multiple universes, for the many reasons you guys have stated; I do believe that multiple universes exist. I have just started a topic on the Many worlds interpretation and why it ultimately fails so I won't go into detail on that but this is a theory that I believe is onto something.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/04/100409-black-holes-alternate-universe-multiverse-einstein-wormholes/

 

Certainly makes more sense than the current universe splitting theories.

[Flatland]

It looks like you are talking about parallel universes in regards to the "many worlds" interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. The butterfly effect has nothing to do with it. The reason there are other you's has nothing to do with probability. Rather it has to do with the "splitting" of one universe into many universes when a measurement is made. Check these links out:

 

http://science.howst...l-universe2.htm

http://en.wikipedia...._interpretation

[Andeh]

 

 

In summary: The differences should be unrecognizably dramatic. Not nearly identical.

 

Why can't the differences be nearly identical?

If every possible reality exists, then there exists ones that are nearly identical to ours.