Theory About the Multiverse Suggests That it May Even Hold the Key to Immortality

In 1979, physicist Alan Guth proposed 'cosmological inflation' as one of the most developed multiverse models to answer questions about the existence of a parallel universe that had been discussed since the early 1900s. He suggested that after the Big Bang, the universe expanded rapidly for a brief moment, creating a huge zoom effect that affected the cosmic microwave background and the distribution of galaxies.

Elaborating on the same, Neil Turok, a physicist at the University of Edinburgh, UK, told Bored Panda , "It was an approach that was born out of a certain sense of frustration with previous approaches. In my view, they had all become rather complicated and contrived, including my own approaches." He added, "I thought we could be on the verge of the next big revolution in theory. It would be inspired by the data, and by the failure of traditional paradigms. It would change our view of the universe."

Following Guth's proposal, many theories emerged including one from physicist Andrei Linde, who introduced chaotic inflation in 1983. This suggested that rapid expansion possibly occurred in different ways due to chaotic early conditions in the universe. Knewz.com noted that in 2013, the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite map of the cosmic microwave background challenged inflation theory.

Since then, scientists have been inventing new methods to prove that there were parallel universes. Some argued in favor of the cyclic universe, which proposed that the universe went through endless cycles of formation and destruction. Additionally, Turok himself suggested a mirror universe theory in 2018, explaining that our universe had a twin where time moved backward.

According to theoretical physicist Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University in Massachusetts, inflation didn't stop everywhere at the same time. Writing in Scientific American , he explained that when inflation stopped in one area, a new bubble universe was formed. He further wrote, "This picture of the universe, or multiverse, as it was called, explained the long-standing mystery of why the constants of nature appeared to be fine-tuned for the emergence of life. The reason was that intelligent observers existed only in those rare bubbles in which, by pure chance, the constants happened to be just right for life to evolve. The rest of the multiverse remained barren, but no one was there to complain about that."

Another theory that gained attention was Hugh Everett's 'Many-Worlds theory.' According to his theory, whenever an event had several possible outcomes, the universe split with every action. The theory surfaced more in the late 1990s through a thought experiment called 'quantum suicide,' which suggested that the Many-Worlds idea was theoretically possible. It was first suggested by physicist Hans Moravec in the 1990s and later expanded by Max Tegmark.

The experiment was created to test the idea of the 'many worlds' interpretation of quantum mechanics. Furthermore, the trials suggested that the person involved in the experiment would never experience death. This was because there would always be a version of the universe where they survived, making them 'quantum immortal.' Since then, physicists and mathematicians have continued to explore its implications. However, Many-Worlds was just one of several theories about the universe, and scientists were exploring more in search of a logical explanation.