• Question: do u believe in universes?

    Asked by 755grak26 to Scott, Ry, Hannah, Daniel on 13 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Hannah Middleton

      Hannah Middleton answered on 13 Nov 2017:

      It’s a really difficult question to answer, because as far as we know it’s impossible to find evidence whether other universes exist or not.

      There are lot’s of different theories of how there could be multiple universes. There is one idea by a physicist called Roger Penrose that the universe follows a “conformal cyclic cosmology”. In this theory, the universe will go through cycles of big bangs and expansions, with the end of one universe leading onto the start of the next. So this is like universes in series instead of in parallel! But it’s very tough to find evidence to support or disprove these theories.

      As for me personally, I think it would be pretty cool if there are other universes out there!

    • Photo: Daniel Williams

      Daniel Williams answered on 13 Nov 2017:

      I believe in one at least: the one we live in!

      As Hannah said, it’s very difficult to find evidence for other universes. There are lots of theories about how other universes might exist on the other side of some kinds of wormhole, or how a new universe is created for every decision that we make, but it’s very hard to prove that these exist.

      As a scientist it’s very difficult to believe in things until you see evidence for them. It would be pretty cool if they did exist though!

    • Photo: Scott Melville

      Scott Melville answered on 14 Nov 2017:

      Some people try to make sense of quantum mechanics by saying that there are many different Universes – but it always sounds a bit fishy to me. Like Dan says, it would mean that every time we make a decision or measure something then the Universe splits into multiple ones (it would be like every time you flip a coin, there’s one Universe in which it’s heads and one Universe in which it’s tails). There’s no experiment we could do to test this – so I try not to worry about it too much (it’s not really science 😉 ).

    • Photo: Ry Cutter

      Ry Cutter answered on 14 Nov 2017:

      Like Daniel says, I’m pretty sure our universe exists. While there is no evidence for other universes, I do think there are more universes. My reason is that everything we thought was special (like the Earth being the center of the universe, then the sun being the center of the universe) has turned out to be one out of billions. So why should it be any different for our universe?
      Great question,
      Ryan

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