• Question: Are there other universes?

    Asked by Ayrton to Ed, Kerrianne, Nina, Oli, yoyehudi on 6 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Yo Yehudi

      Yo Yehudi answered on 6 Nov 2017:

      I think the best answer I can come up with here is “maybe”.
      A lot of sci-fi books I’ve read enjoy using a “multiverse” theory, which suggests that there were infinite big bangs, and infinite different universes, meaning that there are (in the stories) undoubtedly some universes with similar timelines to ours.
      That said, while the theory is well explored in sci-fi, this paper: https://academic.oup.com/astrogeo/article/49/2/2.29/246765 suggests that in the real world the multiverse theory is actually a somewhat controversial topic: we don’t really know if there are other universes, and there are a lot of different theories about how a multiverse could exist and what it might look like. Some of them are listed in the paper I linked to – but I can’t pretend I understand everything in that paper as I’m not a physicist!

    • Photo: Oli Wilson

      Oli Wilson answered on 6 Nov 2017:

      My answer is probably best summed up by Elmo here:
      I haven’t got a clue! I guess maybe there could be, but then again the universe was originally thought to contain everything that exists… and I don’t have enough imagination or a big enough brain to work out how we could possibly work out the answer for definite.

    • Photo: Kerrianne Harrington

      Kerrianne Harrington answered on 7 Nov 2017:

      Other universes are not too crazy of an idea to physicists anymore. Erwin Schrödinger, a very important physicist in quantum mechanics, suggested “not alternatives, but all really happen simultaneously”. For as many physicist who seem to be believe in other universes, there are plenty of skeptics and no evidence yet.

      I think it makes sense, but will wait and see.

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