This professional scientific paper written in 2003 by physicist Max Tegmark, postulates some of the more famous ideas of parallel universes and their possible implications regarding the scientific view of an expanded Multiverse or Onmiverse. The ideas, while radical, are very interesting and I thought they might be worth reading for those who are looking at what is considered the realm of the possible in their science fiction stories.
The four types included:
Type I - Our universe is similar to a cell in a larger membrane of Universes, with parallel ones being at the edge of our current universe, repeating ad infinitum with copies of everything in our universe potentially being repeated there. Key word potentially. The distances involved ensure we can never know. Ten to the tenth to the twenty-ninth power meters away. Close enough to infinite for me.
Type II - Universes with different universal constants of physics, dimensionality, and particle content. These would be universe where matter and energy behave completely differently and as such, could prevent our existence at all, or allow for physical laws completely alien to our own. Likely most of those parallel universes would be completely unable to support life, matter or energy as we even know them. Nice places to think about, not safe to visit.
Type III - This is the quantum universe, so popular with media today. Whenever you make a decision, you are, in theory, splitting your universe into a parallel universe where one of you makes one decision and one of you makes the other. How this would work with billions of sentients making decisions and bifurcating the Universe further is anyone's guess. Perhaps those parallel universes do not continue to exist forever. At any rate, these parallel universes are the ones we most read about in fiction, i.e. Mirror, Mirror from Star Trek and the like. Universes where things are almost the same, but not quite.
Type IV - These are universes where different mathematical structures give new fundamental equations of physics. This type of universe postulates that our universe and for that matter any other universe is a mathematical structure, that is, it exists only as a series of mathematical formulas in the Great Computer that is the Omniverse and that wherever that layer of the universe exists on whatever the hardware or processor, we are one of many Universal operating systems in existence. Is your mind hurting? Good. So is mine.
An awesome paper if you can survive it distorting your view of the universe.
Enjoy.
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