Like it or not, life is full of regrets and
embarrassing moments. You sleep through your alarm and miss a flight,
spill coffee on your shirt, call your date by the wrong name. (Ooh, that’s a felony!) Is there a way to take it all back? Psh, only in an alternate universe! Wait, but could you really?... When you look up at the night sky, you see
thousands of bright shining little dots we’ve come to call “stars” …at least in the
English language. Then there’s that big cheese-looking thing. Yeah, the moon. When you look at the same sky using the most
powerful telescopes, you'll see even more stars and galaxies spread around space in
a sphere about 92 billion light years in diameter. This is already impressive and huge, but does
it all end there? Can you actually go beyond that sphere? Science says… “probably.” Well, that’s anticlimactic… Physicists call this concept the multiverse. So while the “universe” technically means
everything that exists, the “multiverse” means an infinite number of those “everythings.” Yes, there’s not just one alternate or parallel
universe like you see in movies, TV shows, and so on. There’s an uncountable number of universes
that exist side by side in higher dimensions that we can’t even perceive or observe. In each of these universes, there’s an alternate
copy of yourself that looks a lot like you. Only, they make different choices that lead
to different outcomes on a daily basis. One of those “you’s” might’ve set
3 alarms, woke up no problem, and didn’t miss the flight to your sister’s wedding. Then, in some other universe, you never skipped
physics in high school, went on to study it in college, and became an awesome scientist
who discovers the multiverse! Hey, maybe in one of those versions you called
that date by the right name, and you two ended up being soulmates! (Or maybe you saved yourself in this one – what
if they were looney!?) Anyway, all of this sounds pretty awesome
as it gives endless opportunities. But is there any scientific proof it could
be real? To answer that question, let’s start small. In the universe, be it ours or some parallel
kind, everything is connected. The smallest things directly influence the
largest things. Everything in that universe (including you
and me!) is made of atoms. Atoms, in turn, are made up of electrons,
protons, and neutrons. We’ll skip the morons for now. Quantum physics (that’s the science that
studies all these teeny tiny particles) say electrons have a superpower: instead of just
moving in one direction, they can spin both clockwise and counterclockwise. Now, atoms, powered with these super particles,
can do plenty of things. They can go to the left or right, they can
jump up and down, spin, and whatnot. But according to quantum physics, they don’t
choose just one option but do everything they possibly can at the same time! The “multiverse” concept is based on the
same idea. Anything that can happen actually does happen
somewhere out there. Every possible combination of particles and
every possible scenario gives birth to a different universe. One of such possible scenarios brought our
universe into existence billions of years ago. Before the Big Bang, the universe was a super
hot, small, and dense point with no stars or any form or structure whatsoever. About 13.8 billion years ago, give or take,
this tiny point started expanding at a crazy speed. Atoms were formed, and then stars and galaxies. All this expansion never really stopped – it
just slowed down. To this day, galaxies keep moving away from
each other as the space fabric between them is being stretched. While this is happening, other universes pop
up into existence. Some of them have no atoms, galaxies, or living
beings because they may be expanding or collapsing way too fast. But there must be others that are more like
our universe with many alternate versions of you and me. As long as it’s possible for life to evolve,
it’ll continue to do so. Just like there’s an infinite number of
combinations of particles and universes, there’s an infinite number of possible physical laws
ruling in those universes. In one, for instance, electrons are much heavier
than here, energy behaves differently, and gravity is much stronger than in our world
– the possibilities are limitless! Hey, here’s something to think about: perhaps
in one of those universes, life is two-dimensional? I know, it breaks the brain to think about
it. I guess it’d be like looking at a comic
book about your life! What would your comic book be called and what
would be the best scenes in it? Let me know down in the comments! Here’s another cool one to consider: let’s
say the visible light spectrum is reversed in one of those worlds. So, what you now see as blue would be orange. What’s red would be green. Oh, that big yellow sun in the sky? It’s now purple! Anyway, back to the sciencey stuff. Because space-time constantly begins and stretches,
it just has to repeat itself at some point. At least that’s what mathematics say. But could you ever travel to another space-time? If you believe there’s been more than one
Big Bang, traveling to another universe would be like going back in time to the moment before
our own was born. Traveling back in time is really tricky. But it’s not completely impossible if you
trust the theory of general relativity. Why wouldn’t you? Einstein was a smart guy! According his famous theory, you can make
a loop out of space-time and travel through it. Imagine it like a rollercoaster that would
relocate you in both space and time to the point before you started the journey. Stephen Hawking, however, questioned this
possibility by asking why we haven’t seen any time travelers from the future yet. As for traveling to the future, it’s also
possible according to the same theory. Einstein believed time is not an absolute. You can actually stretch or squeeze it – all
it takes is a certain speed. If you get close to the speed of light, time
will slow down. When you stop, more time will have gone by
for everyone else than for you. So, you’ll have traveled to the future,
even if it’s not by much! Another possible option to travel to the future
is based on gravity. According to Einstein’s theory, gravity
slows down time. So time is technically passing by faster on
a mountain top than at its bottom. This difference is close to nothing on Earth,
but if you could travel to a place with a super strong gravitational pull, like a black
hole, you'd see some remarkable results. If you move around it a few times, its gravitational
field would slow down time for you. You'd be away for many years. But when you came back to Earth, you’d still
look just as young as you did when you set on out on the journey! All this sounds theoretically possible yet
pretty hard to arrange in real life. But it doesn’t mean you should be sad that
you can’t travel to an alternate universe! In fact, you’re already in many of them
at this very moment! If the theory of parallel universes is true
– you’re making every possible choice you can all the time. And in this way, you’re constantly traveling
between parallel universes without even knowing it. That should make you feel at least a little
better about any bad decisions you’ve ever made! “Hey, at least Me #5,671 never took that
horrendous job I’d waste 6 years of my life at! Then again, he wouldn’t have learned so
much from that mistake! Always looking on the bright side!” With the technology that currently exists,
humans can’t see what’s beyond our observable universe. Meanwhile, physicists are looking for ways
to unlock the mysteries of the multiverse and prove the existence of parallel universes. They might even find gateways to them! In 2012, scientists at the Large Hadron Collider
discovered the Higgs boson – an elementary particle that gives other particles their
mass. Without it, atoms and humans never would’ve
formed! Scientists can’t see these particles yet,
but CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, has announced their plan to build
a larger more powerful collider to discover those particles. According to particle physicist Dr. James
Beacham, if that doesn’t work out, then the plan is to go even further. They’d build a particle collider around
the Moon to reach energies tens of thousands of times larger than currently available! The next step would be building a collider
around the outer edge of the Solar System. However, even if scientists find evidence
that other universes exist, it’s still unlikely that humans will ever be able to interact
with them… But maybe in an alternative universe, they’ve
already found a way to exchange information and travel to other universes and times? Maybe that oddly dressed guy you saw on the
bus the other day is from another dimension! Kinda looked like Will Smith too! Hey, if you learned something new today, then
give the video a like and share it with a friend! And here are some other cool videos I think
you'll enjoy. Just click to the left or right, and stay
on the Bright Side of life!
