How to understand the parallel universe?

The course of civilization is the course that human beings see farther and farther. With the extension of vision, the universe that people know is getting bigger and bigger.

I lived in Taihang Mountain when I was young. At that time, the distant ridge line was once a wonderful flower in my eyes. Looking at the ridge with the empty sky as the background, I have been thinking about what will be on the other side of the mountain, and gradually began to imagine a wonderful world on the other side of the mountain. For me at that time, that ridge line was the edge of the world. For the ancient ancestors of human beings, this feeling may often appear. In the eyes of people at that time, maybe a valley was the whole world.

In the myths and legends of different ethnic groups, there are narratives of great floods covering the whole world, so that people once thought that the earth really had a great flood era. In fact, this may be a misunderstanding, because the mythical concept of "world" is very different from today's. For example, the most famous flood in the Bible also claimed to have swept the world, but that world was only a very limited area of the Mediterranean, and that flood was only a regional flood. Even if the speculation that the Black Sea flows into the Mediterranean Sea is established, it is far from being a worldwide flood in today's sense.

Later, mankind's vision of the world extended to the whole earth and entered the starry sky. But for a long time, the universe known to mankind was still only the size of the solar system, and Saturn and Neptune were the edges of the universe. /kloc-The discovery of the star line-of-sight difference at the end of 0/7th century made a great leap in the scale of the universe in human eyes, but until the beginning of the 20th century, scientists still thought that the Milky Way was the whole universe. Now, the size of Hubble has expanded to10 billion light years, which is a huge existence that human imagination has been difficult to grasp. The theory of parallel universe tells us that such a huge universe is not the whole existence, but may just be a drop in the ocean.

We are no strangers to the multiverse theory, but most of them come from the multiverse hypothesis of quantum mechanics, but in this book, the author * * * describes as many as nine possible multiverses for us, most of which are rarely heard of before, and the one of quantum mechanics is at the end.

Among the nine parallel universes, the most intuitive one is the so-called Bainab multiverse. We are no strangers to the concept of infinite universe. In an infinite universe, countless multiverses are bound to form in remote areas. The most striking inference is that the combination of elementary particles is limited. If the universe is infinite, there will inevitably be other sub-universes with the same particle combination as our sub-universe, and there will be countless such sub-universes, which means that there may be countless in our world. This is a multiverse model that ordinary people can understand best in mathematics. The most philosophical is the so-called ultimate multiverse, which assumes that all possible laws and parameters exist and can form their own universe, even those laws that cannot be calculated and expressed mathematically. This is undoubtedly infinity in infinity. Such a universe shakes the philosophical foundation of epistemology, and scientific exploration is based on the motivation of trying to explain why the laws and parameters of the universe are like this. But in the ultimate multiverse, all possibilities exist, just like there are shoes of various sizes in a shoe store, among which there must be a pair of feet that suit us, so the significance of exploration is greatly reduced. In addition to the above two kinds, the book also describes the multi-universe model produced by the most advanced modern physics and cosmology theories, including string theory, and even discusses the virtual universe that may be produced in computers.

I have always believed that the greatest and most wonderful stories in human history were not sung by bards, nor written by playwrights or writers. Such stories are told by science. The stories told by science are magnificent, tortuous, scary, mysterious and even romantic and sentimental, far exceeding the stories of literature. This book further proves this idea. As a science fiction fan, reading this book is full of the pleasure of reading science fiction, but the imagination of this book is far beyond science fiction, and its grandeur and madness are beyond the reach of any science fiction. For example, the high-dimensional space forms in string theory are as many as the 500th power of 10, which may produce the same number of universes, while the sum of all elementary particles in our universe is only the 90th power of 10; And the ultimate multiverse with all the possibilities. Science fiction never dares to describe such a concept. After reading this book from beginning to end, shock is followed by shock, and magic is superimposed on magic. The ideas in the book are vast and far-reaching, and the imagination is crazy, which makes people dizzy. But this book is not science fiction, and every multiverse model in it is a rigorous scientific inference with theoretical and mathematical basis, and its gold content far exceeds that of science fiction. Therefore, science is not the shackles of imagination, but the source and wings of imagination. The original title of this book is the cloud picture of the universe. I think this title is more appropriate. In front of this magnificent cloud picture, our thinking scale is stretched to the extreme, and there is an experience that God stands outside the infinite time and space.

Modern science, especially physics, has evolved into an extremely profound field, and the world described by its cutting-edge theories has gone far beyond our daily experience, and the difficult mathematical language used to describe these theories is also daunting. But the author of this book, Green, is very talented. He describes the most abstruse and obscure theory in a language that is in line with our real experience, which is not only understandable, but also vivid and beautiful. This talent has been shown in his previous book String of the Universe, which clearly introduces modern theoretical physics, including relativity and quantum mechanics chord theory, and Green's talent has been fully exerted in this book. At the same time, the translation of this book is also excellent. The translator has a professional and profound understanding of theoretical physics and cosmology, and perfectly expresses the meaning of the original work with fluent translation. This book can be said to be a model in the translation of high-level scientific communication works.

Speaking of scientific communication, I can't help feeling a lot. Compared with the applied science and technology with clear practical significance, we should understand the most basic scientific theory and its most advanced progress, because this is the latest picture of the universe and nature in the eyes of human beings. If a person has never left home from birth to old age, it is undoubtedly a very miserable life. However, if you rush through a short life, you have no idea about the grand and tiny world outside your vision, and your thoughts wander within the scope of life and work every day, it is tantamount to staying indoors mentally for a lifetime, which is undoubtedly a great regret in life.

At one time, the latest theories of basic science had a far-reaching impact on society and people's thoughts, such as Heliocentrism of Copernicus, classical mechanics of Newton and evolution theory of Darwin. But then this influence gradually disappeared, and basic science, especially theoretical physics, became castles in the air on the ivory tower, farther and farther away from social life. If we want to find a boundary, it is quantum mechanics, and people are unfamiliar with theoretical physics and cosmology after the emergence of quantum mechanics. Compared with the classical theories based on determinism, including the theory of relativity, physics after quantum mechanics shows a brand-new philosophy view, which poses a great challenge to people's habits and familiar cognitive styles, especially for the China public who have been receiving a single philosophy education.

As a result, a disturbing phenomenon has emerged: while science and technology are rapidly changing human life, the latest scientific world outlook is unknown, and the gap between nature and the universe in the eyes of the public and scientists is growing. The universe in the eyes of the public is still a classic picture, and this cognitive gap may become the biggest potential obstacle to social progress.

For example, modern physics and cosmology show us an extremely vast universe, and the emergence of parallel universe theory, no matter which of the nine multiverse hypotheses in the book comes true, has added many quantum poles to the vast universe and made countless copies for the uninhabited vast universe. This contrast in size between the universe and human beings is shocking. This contrast is actually an unmistakable philosophical revelation, calling on mankind to get out of the dusty cradle of the earth and fill a huge gap. This development and expansion is not only the mission of civilization, but also the essence of life. But now, people obviously don't feel this call. They are still immersed in the classic picture of the universe and muddle along in the illusion of human center.

The basic science is getting farther and farther away from the public, which may make mankind lie in the comfort zone of technology and enter the era of ignorance again. The society urgently needs a second scientific enlightenment, which makes such an excellent scientific communication work become "Hidden Reality: What is an immeasurable parallel universe".