The Multiverse

As someone who is very keen in physics, I was reading an article regarding the multiverse which both fascinated me and provoked me to ask some questions.

1. If in this universe we are making decisions which affect all our other world cousins, isn't that placing ourselves at the centre of all the worlds? Could it not be that one of our many-world cousins is making the decision which affects us?

2. Would all the many-world cousins we have be making the same choice at the same time? And if so how is this possible?

3. If all the outcomes of a decision occur in different worlds, would that not mean there would be a world in which I am still hoping to study vet-med or in which I didn't wish to study physics. In that case, how then would the decisions I make in the future regarding physics affects my many-world cousins who did not study physics; and how would their decisions regarding their endeavours affect me?

4. If one decision I make now carries a very high fatality risk, but in this world I emerge unscathed, in another world my many-world cousin would have died or been put in a coma. What happens in the world in which my cousin has died? Would my existence disappear from it entirely? In the world in which I am in a coma, how would the decisions I make in this world affect my many-world cousin who would in effect be then living a parallel life to me and wouldn't be able to continue making decisions which affect the many-world cousins?

I currently fail to see how the multiverse idea is feasible, although I'm not physicist. Can anyone shed any light on it?

Are you talking about the article that was in NewScientist this week? It was a really fascinating piece and very, very thought provoking.

My issue with the whole idea of our decisions creating multiverses is that it assumes consciousness, or the ability to make a decision exists. My understanding of multiverse theory is that it's to do with quantum probabilities. For instance, as you probably know, things like electrons in orbitals can only be described using wave functions - we can only say the probability of finding an electron in a certain place. Say the chance of a particle being in area A is 10%: my understanding is that in 10% of the multiverses spawned, the particle will be in area A, in the other 90% it won't. It doesn't make sense to me that mulitverses should only be spawned when we make a decision or actually do something, which was the implication in that article I read. The article, in comparison argued along the lines of, if the chance you die by doing an action is 10%, in 10% of universes spawned, you will die - an example I don't think is very helpful or accurate. The article was talking about how the concept of multiverses will force us to be more humble since we're only one version of an infinite realities, but I felt that the article itself was being arrogant in that sense since it was describing everything around the basis of human decisions, when I don't think it's anything to do with humans in the first place.

On your third point, your future decisions don't affect cousins that have been created or that are being created now. Once a multiverse splits, it's completely independent from your universe. What happens in 1 second in your universe doesn't affect a universe created a second ago. On your fourth point, if you die in another universe, you won't disappear. Your consciousness (if there's such a thing) will simple stop. The fact that you're dead in other universes has no impact on your existence in this universe. You can sort of imagine multiverses by being a book, where every universe is a page and everything in the universe are the words on that page. The pages all exist at the same time, but if something changes on page 1, it's not going to affect any of the other pages.

The reason why multiverse theory is so popular is that it makes the maths work out nicely. I'm also not a physicist so I can't tell you how!

I was indeed reading the NewScientist article. I understand how nicely the theory fits with the maths- no more collapsing wave functions! However I do agree that the article was very much focused on humans.
Would the same thing occur for animals as well? Would there be other worlds for them?
It's quite a complex thing to get your head round and there are so many questions to be asked about it!

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As far as I understand, yes. Every single particle in existence is subjected to uncertainty, so in theory, there should be a multiverse spawned for every single possibility. Saying "would the same thing occur for animals as well" is again a bit misleading though, because it implies the animal is somehow responsible for it. It's not, it's quantum uncertainty.

A multiverse for each particle.. Is there any way this can be proved at all?

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