If Parallel Universes Are Proven, What Would Happen To Us? | Unveiled

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If Parallel Universes Were Proven, What Would Happen to Us?</h4>

Consider, for a moment, your place in the universe. If you’re watching this video before the advent of deep space travel, before the discovery of alien life, and before the total breakdown of reality itself… then, at the very least, you’re a human being on Earth. Your individual body, your unique mass of cells, takes up very little space on this planet we call home. Zoom just a little further out, and Earth itself accounts for less than one percent of the total mass of the solar system. The solar system is one of potentially billions just like it in our galaxy, and our galaxy is one of billions more just like it in the observable part of the universe. The unobservable universe is all that for which the light hasn’t (and will never) reach us.

It’s already enough to make you feel really rather small. But we are at least still dealing with just the one physical plane of existence. It’s a wide and potentially infinite plane, but in theory if you were only able to travel far enough for long enough, then you should eventually - after billions of light years - cover it all. So now imagine that there were more such planes of existence out there, the likes of which we ourselves don’t even currently reside in. You might picture these extra planes as above or below this one, or as somehow interwoven with the very fabric of this universe, as we know it. However you envision it, the already endless possibilities suddenly skyrocket. Immediately, we enter into a new world that’s many, many orders of magnitude deeper and richer than even the entirety of our cosmos ever could be.

This is Unveiled, and today we’re answering the extraordinary question; if parallel universes were proven, what would happen to us?

From H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine" to Christopher Nolan's "Inception”, the potential for shifting reality has long fuelled our creative minds. In works like Michael Ende's "The NeverEnding Story”, characters traverse alternate realms, completely removed from this one. In movies like "The Matrix" and TV shows like "Stranger Things”, they directly confront the surreal nature of how extra dimensions might work. Really, in fiction, the idea of parallel worlds is one of the most flexible that’s out there, without anything like a firm definition as to what they are or how they’d operate. You might access them while sleeping, you might enter them by taking a pill of a particular color… but however you get there, when you do get there, things get really messy, sometimes quite scary, and always pretty entertaining.

Partway through the twenty-first century, then, and what’s exciting is that, on some level, the general concept of parallel universes is now a topic of serious scientific interest, too. OK, so no-one’s yet suggesting that you might one day pull a Neo and be selected from on high to be “the one”, but plenty of researchers do now believe that some form of alternate dimension (perhaps infinite in number) could, maybe should, exist. 

Science mostly contemplates parallel universes through the lenses of quantum mechanics and cosmology. The many-worlds interpretation, proposed by the US physicist Hugh Everett, is usually held as the starting point. It suggests that every single quantum event spawns a branching of universes, each representing a different outcome. Go right or left at a junction, choose fruit or cereal for breakfast, all options exist along endlessly splitting parallel timelines. More than that, though, the same thing happens whenever even a single atom, anywhere in the universe, is caused to change. As per many-worlds, parallel universes don’t just exist, they’re everywhere.

In the realm of cosmology, there are some other contenders. The inflationary multiverse theory, for example, posits that our universe is just one of many "bubble" universes within a vast (and higher) cosmic landscape. Here, everything we know and can even comprehend - ourselves, our planet, star system, galaxy, observable and unobservable universes - are all ultimately contained within the bubble structure. Were we to somehow break out of that structure, then we’d be one massive step closer to slipping into a parallel world. Perhaps there would be some form of in-between void for us to navigate first, but there would be other bubbles out there, and again perhaps an infinite number of them.

So far, science has yet to prove parallel universes in either field. The murky mysteries of quantum entanglement and superposition do lead some to suggest that we may one day be able to manipulate matter at the macro scale, to the point of uncovering alternate realms. Meanwhile, theory-of-everything candidates such as string theory propose that there should be as many as ten, eleven or even twenty-six dimensions to just this reality. The extras - beyond the four dimensions we know of - are all dependent on the fundamental layer of reality being made up of vibrating strings. But again, while these are interesting avenues to investigate, we are yet to prove parallel worlds beyond doubt. So, what would happen if we did?

First, imagine how you would feel if, say, tomorrow, you received a notification on your phone, or your TV cut out to a breaking news bulletin, and you were informed that parallel universes were real. Especially in the case of a many-worlds multiverse, it would mean that everything you’d ever done, everything you ever would do, would now definitely spark the creation of a new world. You read the news and you sit down in shock, that’s one universe. You read it and ask whoever is next to you to confirm that it isn’t a hoax; that’s another. You read and are instantly plunged into an existential panic attack, and so you run down the street and dive into a nearby swimming pool; in the time it would take for you to do all of that, you’ll have generated thousands of new realities by your actions. Clearly, this is a defining moment in the history of humankind as a whole… but the true and long-lasting effects might take some time to settle in.

So, let’s move forward by a year or so, to a time when the instant reactions have long since died down, and any lingering doubt or suspicion has been removed. At this stage, our species can start planning for (and building) its new future. So, what does that look like?

There would be revolutions underway across almost every aspect of life. In technology, parallel universes might be used to generate limitless energy resources. Which, in turn, means probably better than quantum computing, potentially total ecological restoration, possibly fast-tracked intergalactic travel, et cetera. In the arts, the breakthrough means that there are an infinite number of new creative directions to head down. Cross-world exploration and communication; the inheritance of stories and philosophies from other dimensions; new forms of music, fresh takes on humanity, a sudden general explosion of new ideas. In chemistry, it could mean access to new elements. In politics, it may lead to the founding of the perfect system. In the search for alien life, it should mean that (if they do exist) we will find them.

But, there is a darker side to this hypothetical, as well. For all the glistening utopias that the discovery of parallel worlds might inspire, it’s quite easy to visualize us heading in the opposite direction. As there are with the potential discovery of plain alien planets in just this dimension, there are reams of ethical considerations to take into account. But most are tied into the problem of our place in this new and intricate mesh of realities. First off, the chances that we would be the first timeline or realm to discover the truth are extremely low. More likely, some other version of ourselves, or some other creature entirely, will have long since made that breakthrough, and our “grand achievement” would actually only ever amount to us catching up with the rest who’ve gone before us. At best, this would be chastening. At worst, our arrival into the multiverse could lead to us alerting other, more sinister forces to the fact that we exist.

But, even without the almost inevitable presence of more advanced groups that are further along, if we were to open up parallel worlds and then affect them in any way, then it could spell trouble. In some scenarios, paradoxes similar to those we find with hypothetical time travel could come into play. One small change in a parallel world could destroy it, as per the butterfly effect. One tiny addition could knock it all out of kilter, as per bootstrap theory. If there were a way to keep things generally balanced, then our sudden galavanting through alternate universes perhaps isn’t likely to be welcomed by those who originally inhabited them. Siphon energy from parallel worlds, steal traditions, copy technologies… and we could very quickly make many more enemies than friends. What’s especially bizarre is that those enemies could end up being different versions of ourselves, just a few timelines removed.

Of course, all of the above are only hypothesized outcomes. Until we learn of the true nature of parallel worlds, it’s impossible to know exactly how they would change us. But still, we all can at least travel back, in our minds eye, again to that moment when we first find out the truth. When we first understand that not even the universe contains everything there is. It certainly is enough to make you feel small. But, that moment could also inspire wonder like nothing else before. It would be new information, and pretty significant information, as well… but the multiverse is what you make of it. And that’s what would happen to us if parallel universes were proven.