Mutiverse: A Fringe Idea

The multiverse is all the rage. In the last several months I watched three blockbuster movies (thanks, local library for providing DVDs) featuring the multiverse: Spider-Man No Way Home; Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness; and Everything, Everywhere, All at Once. (The last of those three, helmed by Michelle Yeoh, was the best in my opinion.) But the multiverse is not a new idea. It was called the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics when first put forward by the physicist Hugh Everett. And although there was a lag before it gained mainstream popularity, it’s now ubiquitous in sci-fi and fantasy.

 

I just started watching the TV series Fringe. It’s old by today’s standards, having debuted in 2008, almost fifteen years ago. I started watching because I’d heard that one of the protagonists, Walter Bishop, was supposedly a biochemist or at least held an endowed chair in biochemistry at Harvard. But at the beginning of the series he’s locked up in a mental institution, and he fits the caricature of a mad scientist in many ways. There’s physics, chemistry, biology, but fitting the theme of fringe science, all sorts of weird unexplained phenomena permeate the series. Chemistry-wise, Walter has a basement lab at Harvard, and once released and working for the FBI, one often sees scenes of glassware, colored solutions, and the occasional Bunsen burner.

 

Turns out I’m not much like Walter Bishop. I don’t have the absent-minded mad professor vibe, I’m not as familiar with the range of weird physics and biology, I don’t dose myself with hallucinogens, and I don’t keep a cow in the lab. Nor do I experiment on humans or animals. (On the other hand, I do share some similarities to Walter White, protagonist of Breaking Bad.) The idea of the multiverse and being able to travel between universes doesn’t faze Walter Bishop. Season One hinted at the multiverse, but I’ve just started Season Two, the multiverse theme has become dominant. There’s a clever explanation for the feeling of déjà vu – you’ve just accessed an alternate universe for a moment – although I think the explanation provided in The Matrix movie is cleverer.

 

I just finished the fourth episode where one of the characters explains the danger of multiverses becoming accessible to each other. She takes two glass globes and smashes them together while talking about the Pauli Exclusion Principle. I’d interpret it in the following way atomistically. Imagine a probability distribution cloud of an electron (an “orbital”) with an up-spin electron. If it comes close to another orbital with a down-spin electron, they can occupy the same space. Their probability waves can have constructive interference (based on superposition of in-phase waves). There’s no problem and they can inhabit the same “space” so to speak. But if the two electrons have the same spin, the Pauli Exclusion Principle kicks in and forces the approaching waves to be out-of-phase and they must destructively interfere, i.e., they will destroy each other. Now that’s a clever fringe idea for the multiverse!

 

The multiverse is no longer considered a fringe idea, despite its prominence in Fringe. Mass media has made it mainstream. But is it true? Is it reality? The many-worlds hypothesis is challenging to test scientifically. It might be impossible to ever know if there are parallel universes adjoining our own, or whether every decision generates newborn ones. Sure, one can dream up fantastical scenarios where alternate-you shows up and tells you the “truth” of the matter. For now, I entertain the idea of a multiverse as entertainment.