Ever since we have become rational we have explored to find new sentient beings; first we explored to find new civilizations on Earth and after exhausting that option we are looking increasingly at the cosmos to find signs of life. This stems from the fact that we have realized that we may not be the only living beings in such an extensive area of space. That there may be other nations in our part of the universe or even other universes. The latter concept is mostly defined by the term multiverse which is quite an interesting theory.
The multiverse theory is an approach that assumes the existence of various universes, each with different physical laws compared to ours. Among the trillions and trillions of universes that can be imagined, a few may possess conditions that would suite life. It is only the law of probability.
Proponents of the theory state that everything in the multiverse started as a vacuum that was brimming with dark energy. Dark energy is basically the energy of a vacuum and accounts for a whopping 73% of the universe. This is the energy that exists between objects in space and is playing an integral role in expanding our universe. Now think of the initial scenario again as a pressure cooker sans the pressure and inevitably bubbles filled with dark energy begin to appear. Inside each bubble is another perfect vacuum so the bubbles themselves expand and each of these bubbles is a universe. Therefore the concept of a multiverse can be simplified into a bonanza of soap bubbles!
Now the question arises as to what these bubbles are expanding into? Take for instance that we are two-dimensional beings living on the surface of a bubble (there is a theory known as the Holographic Principle that states that we are intrinsically two-dimensional and that the perception of 3D that we get is nothing but a freaky, cosmic hologram!) then the bubble would naturally expand into the third-dimension, being a sphere. This third dimension is labelled as hyperspace and this is the void; something we can’t really see or touch. Think of hyperspace as a bath to all the bubble universes.
Now the theory of hyperspace entails that the bubble universes are together in a frothy party and thus would have ample opportunity to interact. They could combine to give another, bigger bubble or just pinch-in and detach into smaller bubbles. This begs the question that then why haven’t we experienced such an event yet? Scientists at the Perimeter Institute of Theoretical Physics have predicted via simulations that in event of a collision between two “universe bubbles”, there would be a cosmic burn in the sky likened to a disk. There has been no evidence of any such sign being observed which makes it difficult to believe the collision-model. It just might be that there are other bubble universes but they are far, far apart which would negate the probability of the occurrence of such collisions to a very small fraction.
All in all, this subject of the soap bubble multiverse is an interesting concept. Still, not many preeminent physicists agree with this hypothesis because this theory is taken to come in the realm of metaphysics in that the existence of the multiverse can’t be empirically proven and thus is more of a philosophical idea than a physical one.
This article Multiverse: A Bubbly Bath? was originally published here at isoulscience.com