#29044
05/12/2001 10:23 PM
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,439
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,439 |
Yesterday, I heard a word that I haven't heard before.
The subject was the possibility of sentient life on other planets in this or another universe.
The word is Multiverse meaning all the universes that are "out there" -- an interesting extrapolation on universe.
Is multiverse known to you all?
Am I waaaaay behind the curve?
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#29045
05/13/2001 2:52 AM
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Posts: 10,542 |
the word seems to have been coined in 1895 by philosopher William James. these days it is mostly bandied about by quantam mechanics. 
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#29046
05/13/2001 6:37 AM
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,146
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,146 |
these days it is mostly bandied about by quantam mechanicsOh, yes, I sent my quantam into the shop for repairs yesterday.  "Multiverse" has also figured in an awful lot of science fiction books. It's a simple contraction of "multiple universes", which is always a neat way for sci-fi authors to get around the awful problems they so often create for themselves in the current universe.
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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#29047
05/13/2001 1:34 PM
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,439
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Posts: 3,439 |
Ahhh, 1895. Yes, waaaaay behind the curve.
OTOH, I heard it while wiling away an hour watching an odd Sci-Fi program about a fictitious group investigating scientific phenomena. The "commentator" used the word.
OK, it was a "check your brain at the door" program but I like that stuff once in awhile to give my brain some R&R and a few chuckles.
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#29048
05/13/2001 5:46 PM
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,146
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,146 |
OK, it was a "check your brain at the door" program but I like that stuff once in awhile to give my brain some R&R and a few chuckles.Yes, I like to watch grat-v movies for the same reason.
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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#29049
05/14/2001 1:09 PM
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Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400 |
Well, the amount of quantum physics i know could be written on a pin head-- but from what i do know, it seem the basis of quantum physics is that there are multiple/alternate universes--
the theories of quantum physics are responsible for "OSCARS" --optical scanner and readers, and MRI's.. In Sci-Fi, its quantum mechanics that makes possible "transporters" (like star trek's)-- and they have actually "transported" atoms-- not in sci-fi, but in a lab! (new Mexico? Brookhaven? It one of those sciences that is sufficently advanced enough to seem like magic.
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#29050
05/14/2001 2:07 PM
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 393
enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 393 |
The word is actually used in two entirely different ways.
First, the older sense I think, the idea that instead of there just being our own universe, there could be another one with different laws or configurations somehow attached to it -- or accessible through wormholes -- or whatever, but essentially a different place, comparable in size to "the" (our) universe. And if there are two universes, why not many such "places"? Then the multiverse is the totality of all such -- as a house contains all its rooms, or a solar system all its planets. There might be doorways, stargates, or other such "passages" between one world and another.
Some modern theories allow for the possibility of such disconnected "universes", and perhaps also access between them.
The other sense is rather more technical, and easily confused with the previous, but quite different in implications. It is that there is no such thing as "our" universe, one among many, but rather the explanation for quantum uncertainty is that all possible quantum results are simultaneously real. There is no one universe which "actually" gets observed, compared to those which might have been. David Deutsch is the champion of this, in The Fabric of Reality, but I think it's unfortunate that he uses multiverse to mean all the simultaneous quantum possibilities. In this sense, it is nonsensical to think of connexions "between" universes: the "universes" are those in which you went to France in 1983 and those in which you didn't, and so on for every other possibility. You can't connect two of those: they're either/or.
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