Parallel Universe: Different Spaces In The Same Time

I recently watched the movie Yesterday on HBO Max (spoiler alert in case you haven’t seen it yet.) The movie is about someone waking up from an accident and discovering that The Beatles never existed. While the movie hand waved the concept of shifting to a parallel universe, it was consistent with the many-worlds interpretation.

Many-Worlds Interpretation

Most avid sci-fi fans are very familiar with the many-worlds interpretation. I’ll just give a brief overview for those of you that may not be familiar with it. Here is a link to the Wikipedia article for those interested in learning more.

According to the many-worlds interpretation, our universe is one of a near-infinite number of parallel universes in a multiverse. As events with multiple outcomes transpire in each universe, that universe branches off, creating a separate timeline according to each possible outcome. In popular fiction, the most well-known example of this would be the way that time-travel works in Avengers: Endgame.

Running In Parallel

The biggest implication of many-worlds is that for every decision made, there is a separate timeline, each identical to the other up to the branching point. So each parallel universe has a version of everything and everyone from that original universe. For every decision point ever reached, there is a seemingly infinite number of different versions of yourself. Of course, there are universes where you don’t exist. Maybe you weren’t born in some universes, and maybe in some, you died earlier in life than in others.

With all of these parallel universes, probability is no longer a measure of whether an event happens or not. It is now a question of does the event happen in our time-space. If the many-worlds interpretation is true, there would be many universes extremely similar to our own. As each divergent timeline moves further from that branching off point, a theoretical outside observer would see the butterfly effect in action. The ramifications of every decision ever made would be apparent to the outside observer.

Quantum Immortality

One supposition that comes up with many-worlds is the concept of quantum immortality. The shorthand is that for each branch that results in your death in one of the branches, your consciousness would slip to the next nearest timeline. As the death of your consciousness occurs in more and timelines, eventually, you would reach a timeline that ends in your ultimate death, as there are no more timelines for your consciousness to slip in to.

The idea of quantum immortality does have some quirky repercussions. For instance, what if there is some event that you have a memory of from your original timeline that is different in your current timeline? This is one of many theories believed to be the cause of the Mandela Effect.

One Of Many Theories

The many-worlds interpretation is one of many ideas in the realm of quantum physics that tries to explain the nature of the universe in a way that doesn’t violate what we currently know about the fundamental rules of physics. Currently, we have no real way of knowing if this idea is true, or if any of the ideas and theories that we have about the nature of the universe is true. All we can do is keep searching until we find an answer.

Housekeeping: I’ve updated my Facebook social media link from my personal page to my blog page. Also, image file updates broke a couple of links on Departed Artists: Only Appreciated After Death, so I’ve repaired those images. The old email form was not responsive, so I’ve also updated that on my Contact Me page.

Teaser: Next time, we’ll take a listen to one of the greatest bands of all time.