One of the major theories of cosmology — the study of space — is that the universe we live in might not have an endpoint, but instead goes on forever. Scientists theorize it’s possible that if you flew a spaceship trying to reach the end of the universe, it would continue to fly past suns and moons and planets and black holes forever. Not everyone agrees with this idea.
The multiverse theory, advanced by other scientists and physicists, says the spaceship would eventually reach the end of our universe, and then transition into another universe — and then another and another and another, for an infinite amount of time.
If either of these theories is true, the infinite nature of space, combined with the limited way that particles can organize themselves to form matter (which planets and life forms are all made out of), leads to a shocking but inevitable truth: Earth as we know it probably repeats itself, over and over.
“In any one region of space there’s a finite number of atoms and particles, and there’s a finite size,” says Carroll. “If you think about an infinite number of regions spread throughout the universe, everything that can possibly happen in any region will happen an infinite number of times.” (...)
That means it’s entirely plausible that somewhere out in the infinite universe there’s another Earth where you are sitting in front of another Internet reading this article. In fact, it is plausible that there are billions of you’s on billions of Earths that are exactly the same or slightly different or vastly different. The math of infinity makes this repetition not only plausible, but certain.The theory of Many Worlds is the most similar to the circumstances described in Counterpart, and it’s also the most likely to be true, based on experimental evidence. It goes like this: When particles are teeny tiny (smaller than atoms) they act really, really weird. An electron, for example, is always spinning. When you observe it, you can see that it’s spinning either clockwise or counterclockwise. But before you looked at that electron, when it wasn’t being observed, it was very likely spinning in both directions. You may know this better as Schrödinger’s cat, the theoretical parable that says if you have a cat in a box, the cat is both alive and dead until you open the box, at which point the cat must be one or the other but not both.
“Some people think that the act of looking at the electron made it spin clockwise. I think they’re just wrong,” says Carroll. Rather, the Many Worlds theory says that the act of observing the electron created a whole different outcome entirely: “By coming into contact with that electron you have split. Before there was only one of you, afterward there are two of you,” he says. One of you is watching the electron move clockwise and the other version of you is watching it move counterclockwise. In either case, the electron is still moving in both directions.
Image: uncredited
[ed. Sci-fi unless proven.]
