And the universe was imagined to be infinite in all directions. There simply was no measure for it. There was no end to space and to try to think about infinite space was hopeless, a game for fools and poets.
Matter played its game of following exact rules of inertia and movement called equations of motion and nothing in principle was undetermined or for that matter, left for the imagination. All the universe was a giant machine ticking off throughout all eternity and occupying every corner of an infinite space. Such was our thinking prior to 1900 AD.
With the twentieth century, ideas of Einstein and the revolution of scientific thinking brought forward by the theories of relativity, much of pre-modern thinking was changed. Some of the gaps were closed. Space was not as infinite as we had previously thought. It didn't necessarily extend on forever, infinite in all directions. Neither was time as inscrutable as thought earlier. Instead time and space joined together and the two together became a new concept called spacetime. Events were not eternally now. A pair of spatially separated simultaneous events for one observer, became past and future events for another observer simply passing by through space and in time relative to the first.
Matter was also thought of in a new light. It was produced by the universe itself as a knot in the fabric of spacetime. It bent space and it curved time. Naturally this changed our vision of the universe's eternality and made it possible to envision just how the universe could have begun. The finite speed of light and the concept of spacetime made it possible to question just what could have occurred when time itself was now imagined to begin and all space in the universe itself was imagined to be smaller than the period at the end of this sentence.
However, even with relativity theory, gaps in or knowledge concerning matter and spacetime still exist. Our present models of the beginning of time called cosmological theories still carry a Newtonian mechanical tinge. They still ring of clockworks and questions about what happened before the big bang--the so-called beginning of everything--paradoxically ring in our heads. And the present models still are grappling with how to bring quantum physics into the beginning of space, time, and matter.
With the discovery of quantum physics--the physics that governs the behavior of atomic and sub-atomic matter--more gaps in our knowledge were filled. Matter was seen in a very different light. Its properties depended on how it was observed. Thus the actions of observation play a role in the atomic world that was completely unsuspected by the pre-modern scientists. That role is now suspected to even affect macroscopic matter in subtle ways that could change cosmology and indeed our concept of just what a universe is.
The major problem of bringing together quantum physics and relativity is still with us today. We don't know how to do it. We do know that whatever theory that manages it will be quite bizarre for those who still wish a clockwork universe. In this book we will explore one the most bizarre and promising theories to come from the minds and imaginations of today's physicists; that there must be other universes beside our own.
Parallel universes theory was invented by physicists in the hectic period of the 1950's and 1960's. It appeared as a new way to make concrete and rational some of the bizarre findings of quantum physics and general relativity. These findings aren't comprehensible without a new vision of reality. Instead they appear as problems. Nothing in our previous thinking about the physical world will make these problems go away.
In other words, the existence of parallel universes resolves some old and not too easily solvable paradoxes. However, as you will see soon enough, it introduces a very new and apparently paradoxical way of thinking. In essence, parallel universe theory posits the existence of worlds within our technologically-extended senses, that must connect or relate with our own.
What is a parallel universe? Like an everyday universe it is a region of space and time containing matter, galaxies, stars, planets and living beings. In other words, a parallel universe is similar and possibly even a duplicate of our own universe. Not only in a parallel universe must there be other human beings, but these may be human beings who are exact duplicates of ourselves and who are connected to ourselves through mechanisms only explainable using quantum physics concepts.
To see why scientists are now considering parallel universes seriously as a solution to problems in the wide spectrum of thought including modern physics and cosmology we need to consider some new and exciting ideas. Hope of reconciling the ideas contained within this broad spectrum of human knowledge resides in the existence of these other universes--universes that exist side-by-side with our own and even perhaps occupying the same space as our own in some ghostly manner. "
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I'm very interested in this topic personally.
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