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Breaking News: Multiple Universes Exist!

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Ralf Maximus:
Well, not exactly breaking since it was back in September, but a team of UK mathematicians led by Dr. David Deutsch have "showed mathematically that the bush-like branching structure created by the universe splitting into parallel versions of itself can explain the probabilistic nature of quantum outcomes".


Briefly, events observed (har) at the quantum level really do split into alternate dimensions.  Every decision made results in the opposite decision also being made, repeated with infinite regression.  If you play the lottery and don't win, rest assured that some other version of you has won the lottery.  And yet another you won it twice.  And so on.

Note that this being a work of mathematics, nothing has been really proven.  But if validated, it lays an excellent foundation for experimentation, and finally, building the Time Travel device of my dreams.  I'm coming to kill you, great-great-grandfather!

Article from Breibart & The Press Association here.

Came up dry on finding the actual paper referenced, but the good Doctor's websites are here:
http://www.qubit.org/people/david/
http://www.qubit.org/people/david/David.html

(Lots of dense scientific papers at the 2nd site: Eyes-Crossed Index Rating 8.7)

Interesting related DC thread about Time here.

Cow-related events that can only have occurred in a parallel dimension here (streaming video cartoon thingy).

Eóin:
Devils advocate- A scientific theory must a) agree with observed data, b) be able to make future predictions and c) must be provable or disprovable by experiment.

I'm not saying that this development doesn't meet those criteria, without a more detailed explanation it would be impossible to tell and I'm not knowledegable enough to be able to study the material. But this whole thing strikes me as being yet another notion which has garnered support because of it elegance in explaining what we have already seen rather than actually providing us with some deeper understanding of what the true structure of the universe really is.

It reminds me of the mathematically and geometrically beautiful proposals as to what and how DNA works all of which were nowhere even remotely close to what we later learned about it.

P.S. Ralf this rant was not at all directed at you :)

app103:
Note that this being a work of mathematics, nothing has been really proven.  But if validated, it lays an excellent foundation for experimentation, and finally, building the Time Travel device of my dreams.  I'm coming to kill you, great-great-grandfather!
-Ralf Maximus (November 20, 2007, 09:53 AM)
--- End quote ---

I would hate to shatter someone's dreams, but the type of time travel you imply is probably not possible.

If it were possible, we would know it was already, from the evidence of people from the future doing it and traveling to our time or earlier. How could we not know about it going on? As humans, we are bound to blab our secrets when we shouldn't, so some time traveler would have spilled the beans about it. It's our nature. We screw things up.

The fact we have no proof in our current time that there are time travelers in the future that have visited the past, leads me to believe one of 3 things are true:

A. Time travel, of the type you imply, isn't possible.
B. Humans become extinct before they discover how to do it.
C. The evidence of time travelers is being hidden in the biggest global conspiracy/cover-up of all time.

C is a bit far fetched, because like I said...we can't keep secrets that well.
B...I don't want to think about, even if it is true...so I'll just believe in A.

Of course a 4th possibility could be true:

D. People will someday figure out how to travel to the future but never how to travel to the past. (but then that would mean one-way tickets, we would have no proof that it worked since the traveler could never come back and tell us, and we would assume it just messed up and killed him, and abandon the project before anybody else got hurt.)

f0dder:
Sometimes I wonder if those unified theories etc. could be relevant, or if it's simply the result of mathematicians gone insane. People like Holger Bech Nielsen and Steven Hawking are quite some characters, and I'm simply not smart enough to tell if they're raving mad or geniuses.

Ralf Maximus:
I would hate to shatter someone's dreams, but the type of time travel you imply is probably not possible.

--- End quote ---

Ah, but consider this...

Assume for the moment that the Many Universes theories are true, and that there exists an infinite number of yous making every decision both ways.

Then theoretically, it's possible to locate a universe that is exactly like this one, but at a different point in their timestream.  For example, if I want to videotape the sinking of the Titanic, all I have to do is hop sideways far enough and find a place where 1912 is happening right now.

Then, once there, I heroically save the ship and it makes port in New York.

I've changed history!  Well, there, anyway... our universe still has Titanic at the bottom of the ocean, unchanged.  When I return, the history here remains intact.

Thus it *really is* possible to off great-great-great-granddad, but it won't erase my existence here.  Just piss off great-great-great-grandmom in another universe.

As to the reason why we're not overrun with time-travelling (or dimension hopping) touristas?  Simple... with an infinite number of universes, the probability is infinitely small that we'll actually encounter one.

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