Multiverse meaning

By definition, the universe seems like it should be the totality of everything that exists. Yet a variety of arguments emerging from cosmology, particle physics and quantum mechanics hint that there could also be unobservable universes beyond our own that follow different laws of nature. While the existence of a multiverse is speculative, for many physicists it represents a plausible explanation for some of the biggest mysteries in science. In this episode, Steven Strogatz explores the idea of a multiverse with the theoretical physicist Listen on Quanta. Transcript Steve Strogatz (00:03): I’m Steve Strogatz and this is The Joy of Why, a podcast from Quanta Magazine that takes you into some of the biggest unanswered questions in math and science today. In this episode, we’re going to ask: Do we live in a multiverse? (00:16) We know that we all live in our own little bubbles, whether it be our family, our friends, our hometown, even our workplace. And if you think about it, animals live in their own little bubbles, too. Fish live in certain parts of the ocean or different lakes or rivers. You won’t find them in ice with a microbe population or flying around in the sky with birds, even though ice and water vapor in the sky are also forms of water. Could the universe be the same way? Maybe we’re not alone, and what we can see with the help of telescopes and infrared cameras isn’t all there is. Maybe space is infinite. Maybe there are multiple universes beyond our own, perhaps ...

Advances in physics over the past 30 years have led some physicists and cosmologists to the mind-boggling conclusion that the universe we inhabit is just one of many in existence — perhaps an infinite number. If these scientists are right, then all the stars and galaxies we see in the night sky are but a tiny fraction of an incomprehensibly vast assemblage that scientists call A multiverse — sometimes called an omniverse — would mean more than just lots of extra real estate. If it exists, Tegmark continued, it includes “ Three arguments for the multiverse While the idea of a multiverse sounds like something straight out of science fiction, physicists have advanced three distinct arguments for its existence. But instead of a single solution to this and other fundamental scientific questions, string theory’s equations seem to have a staggering number of possible solutions (perhaps as many as 10^500 — that’s a one followed by 500 zeros). Some string theorists argue that each of these solutions describes a different universe, each with its own physical properties. The third argument for the multiverse comes from In the upside-down world of quantum theory, for instance, a radioactive particle decays and doesn’t decay during any given period of time — and each result plays out in a separate universe. With such quantum events happening more or less continuously, the argument goes, the number of universes keeps increasing. But is it science? Tegmark is one of several prominent sci...

By most measures, then, GOTG3 is a major Marvel comeback. There must be champagne and high-fives all around over at Marvel Films, am I right? Not if Kevin Feige is as smart as they say. Because what GOTG3 really confirms is that the multiverse—the whole organizing principle behind the still-emergent Marvel Phase Four multi-film story arc—is box office poison. You remember the multiverse. It’s a plot device strip-mined for the MCU from old print comics and launched in the Loki TV series on Disney+. It involves ideas borrowed by way of a seventh-grade education in string theory, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, and quantum physics, and it’s all about parallel universes crowding each other out of existence. If you’re like most viewers, you actively disliked the multiverse in the fulsomely named Dr. Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness and you truly hated it by the time the equally tongue-twisting Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania arrived . Possibly that’s because, in the MCU, the multiverse has approximately two functions: it liberates whatever pickup squad of CG artists Marvel has deployed to treat art direction like something Peter Max dreamed up while lower the dramatic stakes. Think about it: If there’s potentially another Iron Man out there in the multiverse, and he could be played by Robert Downey Jr., how resonant is Tony Stark’s big death scene in Avengers: Endgame? When Ant-Man and company spend an entire movie taking down a Big Bad like Kang the Conqueror, how much ...

This past weekend, a couple of my friends and I went to see Everything Everywhere All at Once. I went in knowing two things about it: The first was that the very talented and fantastic Michelle Yeoh was in it; and the second was that it involved the “multiverse.” As the credits rolled, with tears trickling into my mask, I had a hard time discerning what was making me emotional. I say emotional because it wasn’t just one feeling, but a strange mix of several: joy, wistfulness, catharsis, yearning, hope. Related Without giving too much away, the very simple gist of this maximalist, fantastic tornado of a movie is about the choice to exist, to fully live within the present moment. It’s about finding the beauty in our small, odd lives, even as we constantly compare what we have to our unfulfilled fantasies. The movie also examines how we take solace in the personal disasters we’ve narrowly avoided. But what makes Everything Everywhere All at Once so powerful is the multiverse, a dazzling antidote to the fact that real life these days feels like it’s been designed to blur and pummel our emotions into dullness. Michelle Yeoh in Everything Everywhere All at Once. Courtesy of A24 What is the multiverse? A world full of endless potential; multiple parallel universes spinning in synchronicity; and the possibility of alternate, powerful, seemingly better versions of ourselves. At a time when a pandemic, wars, and political cruelty have become constant, inevitable presences in our dai...

All of space as we know it makes up the two universes? Or five? Or five hundred? We aren’t just talking about the universe anymore. We are talking about the multiverse, the theoretical collection of our universe plus all those other universes out there (including the one that has an evil version of you, but with a goatee—or is clean-shaven if you already have a goatee). Multiverse is a term used both in science and science fiction to refer to the idea of other existing universes. It’s not the only such term, though. We’ve scoured the lexicological multiverse to find a collection of ways that we refer to the possible worlds beyond. parallel universes The term has—in another parallel universe somewhere. megaverse The term megaverse is used, particularly in science fiction, to refer to a humongous universe that contains many multiverses within it. This grandiose-sounding word is often used to refer collectively to all of the parallel universes and multiverses that exist within a given fictional reality or possibly even within our own. omniverse A megaverse isn’t big enough for you? Then, you need an omniverse. The word omniverse is often used in science fiction to refer to all of reality and includes all of the universes, multiverses, pocket dimensions, celestial realms, and anything else that makes up existence. In comic books, Marvel and Marvel fans collectively refer to all universes that have existed and will ever exist (including our reality and other fictional multivers...

Editor's note: In the August issue of Scientific American, cosmologist George Ellis describes why he's skeptical about the concept of parallel universes. Here, multiverse proponents Alexander Vilenkin and Max Tegmark offer counterpoints, explaining why the multiverse would account for so many features of our universe—and how it might be tested. Welcome to the Multiverse By Alexander Vilenkin The universe as we know it originated in a great explosion that we call the big bang. For nearly a century cosmologists have been studying the aftermath of this explosion: how the universe expanded and cooled down, and how galaxies were gradually pulled together by gravity. The nature of the bang itself has come into focus only relatively recently. It is the subject of the theory of inflation, which was developed in the early 1980s by Alan Guth, Andrei Linde and others, and has led to a radically new global view of the universe. Inflation is a period of super-fast, accelerated expansion in early cosmic history. It is so fast that in a fraction of a second a tiny subatomic speck of space is blown to dimensions much greater than the entire currently observable region. At the end of inflation, the energy that drove the expansion ignites a hot fireball of particles and radiation. This is what we call the big bang. The end of inflation is triggered by quantum, probabilistic processes and does not occur everywhere at once. In our cosmic neighborhood, inflation ended 13.7 billion years ago, b...

By most measures, then, GOTG3 is a major Marvel comeback. There must be champagne and high-fives all around over at Marvel Films, am I right? Not if Kevin Feige is as smart as they say. Because what GOTG3 really confirms is that the multiverse—the whole organizing principle behind the still-emergent Marvel Phase Four multi-film story arc—is box office poison. You remember the multiverse. It’s a plot device strip-mined for the MCU from old print comics and launched in the Loki TV series on Disney+. It involves ideas borrowed by way of a seventh-grade education in string theory, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, and quantum physics, and it’s all about parallel universes crowding each other out of existence. If you’re like most viewers, you actively disliked the multiverse in the fulsomely named Dr. Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness and you truly hated it by the time the equally tongue-twisting Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania arrived . Possibly that’s because, in the MCU, the multiverse has approximately two functions: it liberates whatever pickup squad of CG artists Marvel has deployed to treat art direction like something Peter Max dreamed up while lower the dramatic stakes. Think about it: If there’s potentially another Iron Man out there in the multiverse, and he could be played by Robert Downey Jr., how resonant is Tony Stark’s big death scene in Avengers: Endgame? When Ant-Man and company spend an entire movie taking down a Big Bad like Kang the Conqueror, how much ...

By definition, the universe seems like it should be the totality of everything that exists. Yet a variety of arguments emerging from cosmology, particle physics and quantum mechanics hint that there could also be unobservable universes beyond our own that follow different laws of nature. While the existence of a multiverse is speculative, for many physicists it represents a plausible explanation for some of the biggest mysteries in science. In this episode, Steven Strogatz explores the idea of a multiverse with the theoretical physicist Listen on Quanta. Transcript Steve Strogatz (00:03): I’m Steve Strogatz and this is The Joy of Why, a podcast from Quanta Magazine that takes you into some of the biggest unanswered questions in math and science today. In this episode, we’re going to ask: Do we live in a multiverse? (00:16) We know that we all live in our own little bubbles, whether it be our family, our friends, our hometown, even our workplace. And if you think about it, animals live in their own little bubbles, too. Fish live in certain parts of the ocean or different lakes or rivers. You won’t find them in ice with a microbe population or flying around in the sky with birds, even though ice and water vapor in the sky are also forms of water. Could the universe be the same way? Maybe we’re not alone, and what we can see with the help of telescopes and infrared cameras isn’t all there is. Maybe space is infinite. Maybe there are multiple universes beyond our own, perhaps ...

Editor's note: In the August issue of Scientific American, cosmologist George Ellis describes why he's skeptical about the concept of parallel universes. Here, multiverse proponents Alexander Vilenkin and Max Tegmark offer counterpoints, explaining why the multiverse would account for so many features of our universe—and how it might be tested. Welcome to the Multiverse By Alexander Vilenkin The universe as we know it originated in a great explosion that we call the big bang. For nearly a century cosmologists have been studying the aftermath of this explosion: how the universe expanded and cooled down, and how galaxies were gradually pulled together by gravity. The nature of the bang itself has come into focus only relatively recently. It is the subject of the theory of inflation, which was developed in the early 1980s by Alan Guth, Andrei Linde and others, and has led to a radically new global view of the universe. Inflation is a period of super-fast, accelerated expansion in early cosmic history. It is so fast that in a fraction of a second a tiny subatomic speck of space is blown to dimensions much greater than the entire currently observable region. At the end of inflation, the energy that drove the expansion ignites a hot fireball of particles and radiation. This is what we call the big bang. The end of inflation is triggered by quantum, probabilistic processes and does not occur everywhere at once. In our cosmic neighborhood, inflation ended 13.7 billion years ago, b...

All of space as we know it makes up the two universes? Or five? Or five hundred? We aren’t just talking about the universe anymore. We are talking about the multiverse, the theoretical collection of our universe plus all those other universes out there (including the one that has an evil version of you, but with a goatee—or is clean-shaven if you already have a goatee). Multiverse is a term used both in science and science fiction to refer to the idea of other existing universes. It’s not the only such term, though. We’ve scoured the lexicological multiverse to find a collection of ways that we refer to the possible worlds beyond. parallel universes The term has—in another parallel universe somewhere. megaverse The term megaverse is used, particularly in science fiction, to refer to a humongous universe that contains many multiverses within it. This grandiose-sounding word is often used to refer collectively to all of the parallel universes and multiverses that exist within a given fictional reality or possibly even within our own. omniverse A megaverse isn’t big enough for you? Then, you need an omniverse. The word omniverse is often used in science fiction to refer to all of reality and includes all of the universes, multiverses, pocket dimensions, celestial realms, and anything else that makes up existence. In comic books, Marvel and Marvel fans collectively refer to all universes that have existed and will ever exist (including our reality and other fictional multivers...