Saturday 1 December 2007

In a parallel universe, this theory would make sense

If only we could prove that the multiverse was real, we could explain the contradictions of quantum mechanics
Yet another of my pens has just disappeared from where I swear I just left it and is probably already with my smug doppelganger in a parallel universe. We all have our favourite take on the existence of parallel worlds; it's a subject that has been fodder for science-fiction writers for quite a while now. The question is whether the idea has a place in serious scientific discourse.

Well, it seems the only known recordings of a physicist who predicted the existence of parallel universes have been found in his rockstar son's basement. The tapes document how quantum physicist, Hugh Everett III, developed a remarkable idea at the age of 24 while a graduate student at Princeton in 1957. The recordings are believed to have been made at a conference 20 years later, and were discovered during the making of a documentary in which Mark Everett, the physicist's son and singer of the band Eels, attempts to understand the work that consumed his father.

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