Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion Physics Forum What about multiple universes?

http://physics.about.com/od/quantumphysics/f/manyworldsinterpretation.htm

“In this interpretation, every time a "random" event takes place, the universe splits between the various options available. Each separate version of the universe contains a different outcome of that event. Instead of one continuous timeline, the universe under the many worlds interpretation looks more like a series of branches splitting off of a tree limb.”

Does the fact that I was trying to make sense of someone else’s claim that “the universe splits between the various options”, rather than actually claiming that I think it does that, bring the discussion to an end?

Yep you cleaned all that up

Great; but it certainly does not dispose of the problems attached to this version of the multiverse idea.

Based on this idea of the universe “dividing”, DeWitt estimated that there must, by now, (fairly recent estimate, I believe) be some 10^100 universes. I suspect this may be a conservative estimate, but that’s not the point.

My point is that if new universes are coming into existence in such a way as to accommodate different outcomes of a given experiment, then these universes are being created “fully formed”. The new universe must be formed with information distributed in the way in which it is in the initial universe. Would this not involve the spread of information faster than light? For example, how would a part of the universe 10^14 light years away "know" about your experiment here on Earth?

I suspect it might be possible to get round the FTL bit by saying that the new universe comes into being with the information already distributed. This still leaves a lot of questions, though.

Entanglement experiments already show that the entangled particles are interacting faster than the speed of light

The current number is a minimum of 10,000 times the speed of light

http://www.livescience.com/27920-quantum-action-faster-than-light.html

http://www.gizmag.com/quantum-entanglement-speed-10000-faster-light/26587/

Does that answer your question or is there something deeper, I am missing?

As Orac said, entanglement ignores the speed of light, and it seems to me that when the new universe comes into being that it is probably highly entangled, so there I don't see a problem there. There are other problems though. One is that the universe is full of (consists of?) a big lot of energy. After the new universe comes into existence it has the same "big lot" of energy. That kind of boggles the mind, to have that much energy just appear from apparently no where. And that is just for one split. For all the splits that are happening all the time it really gets hard to swallow.

Bill Gill

http://www.gizmag.com/quantum-entanglement-speed-10000-faster-light/26587/

“Notice that this result does not eliminate the possibility that the influence of entanglement actually is instantaneous – it merely sets a limit saying how close the influence must be to infinitely fast. Another possibility that is gaining credence is that entanglement dynamics may operate external to time, or at least may ignore time as it ignores distance.”

That I like. "instantaneous" and "..may operate external to time" both fit neatly into the way I am thinking.

Thanks for that one Orac.

Entanglement, on the scale of the Universe? That was the sort of thing I had in mind when I said: “I suspect it might be possible to get round the FTL bit by saying that the new universe comes into being with the information already distributed.”

I quite expected someone to object to that.

I agree that the seeming creation of all that energy (and matter) appears to be a major stumbling block. I have yet to find a convincing explanation of that. The best I have found is that it already exists – an infinite supply – and it is just changed, or redistributed. At least, that doesn’t clash with the concept of a finite universe existing in an infinite cosmos. Those of you who espouse the idea of the infinite sequence should like that as well.