Strange World Delight: a Treatise on Parallel Universes

Parallel universes are conceived as self-existing alternative worlds . They have been around in the depths of human imagination for long periods of time that such unfamiliar and strange places as heavens, hell, and Olympus have been classified by many thinkers as alternative universes in parallel to our own.

Photo Credit

In the literary world of fantasy, parallel universes are presented as infinite series of planes, which are at variance with each other and with our actual world. A prominent case of which is found in Hindu mythology that describes such series of planes; each of which is governed by a God. Quiet similarly, the One thousand and One Nights in Arabic literature presents the protagonist Bulukiya in the Adventures of Bulukiya as a learner of alternative and bizarrely strange worlds.

Photo Credit

In recent times, these strange worlds have as well managed to enter the field of modern science fiction – in novels and motion pictures. In these media, parallel universes are employed in many plots in order to accommodate the hard science fiction of time travel. A time traveler in many novels is made to arrive at strange places – parallel universes. And more so often, a travel into the future or past entails the existence of extra dimensions apart from the three-dimensional space that we move through everyday. This other dimension that allows time travel is often equated by many writers as other universes existing independently with our own, albeit govern by different laws of physics.

Photo Credit

Wide span of time have come and go, until recently, in the early decades of the 20^th century that a more scientific and empirical backings did arrive in support for the age-old idea of many universes. The new science of quantum mechanics developed in the early 1920’s by such prominent European physicists as Werner Heisenberg, Neils Bohr, and Max Born had evoked much controversy in the scientific community, even putting Albert Einstein and Neils Bohr in a lifelong but friendly debate; all for the of the advancement of science.

Photo Credit

Einstein did not offer interpretation of the new science himself, but he opposed the what is now popularly known as the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics put forward by Bohr and associates. Quantum mechanics as opposed to classical physics found that the elementary particle – the electron – can be everywhere at the same time. This puzzled many people involved, but the major exponents of the new science altogether attributed this seeming omnipresence of the electron to the dual nature of matter – matter behaves as a particle and a wave simultaneously. The latter is the reason adduced for the non-zero probability of the electron being situated everywhere. And by far, numerous practical applications have been successful. Notwithstanding, some people has offered alternative interpretations of their own.

Photo Credit

Receiving much popularity among them is the many – world interpretation of quantum mechanics. It claims that the electron is everywhere found because of the existence of multi-atomic universes. These advocates of the many – world interpretation easily dragged their idea into providing a good ground for the mind-boggling multi-universe hypothesis. They believe that the subtle natural truths that govern the world of the atoms are by no means similar to the natural laws that mandate the macro-universe of the firmament, that is, parallel universes exist in keeping with the apparently many – world of the atoms.

Photo Credit

As far as modern science is concerned, the idea about parallel universes is no less far from becoming a scientific fact. It is completely bizarre and extremely speculative; however, our speculations afford us a feeling of high triumph that in turn raises our humanity to the Gods. Who knows? Multiple universes exist after all, and in time will just become an ordinary learning of everyone – in as much as the earth’s motion around the sun is understood.