By Velika Freesia
Caution: minor Loki spoilers ahead!
If you're a massive MCU fan like me, I suppose you've already familiarized yourself with the term 'multiverse' and the possibilities within it. As simple as our friend Miss Minutes has described it, the reality as we all know it today is divided into countless separate timelines, each with its unique variances. A multiverse is a hypothetical group of universes comprising everything that exists: space, time, matter, energy, information, physical laws, and constants. This multiverse concept is not only famous among science fiction works, but it is one of the most dominant theories of modern cosmology. Are you interested in diving into the scientific depths of the TVA and the 'sacred timeline' the organization devotes to defend? Read more to find out!
Erwin Schrödinger first established the theory in 1952
Though the rough concept of the existence of infinite worlds had already arisen since the era of Ancient Greek Atomism, it was not until the uprising of modern quantum mechanics, this idea was deemed not only philosophical but also theoretical. The principal contributor was no other than Erwin Schrödinger, an Austrian-Irish physicist, who had brilliant yet bizarre hypotheses up in his sleeves.
You may have heard of the infamous Schrödinger's cat experimentation, of which he concluded that in a particular moment, the cat is simultaneously dead and alive. Not a mixture, but a superposition of states. He also concludes through this experiment that both of the cat's conditions persist after the box is opened. Regardless of which cat we'll find in our box, there's a particular universe out there that bears an opposite result; one where the cat lives and one where the cat dies.
Of course, this absurd conception received mixed reactions from his colleagues, especially when the physicist had a powerful belief that his eponymous equations are not explaining alternatives but all happen simultaneously in a superposition state. Despite being unaccepted by conventional science, the model was eventually picked up and studied by other scientists, who were still piqued by the possibilities of a said ‘parallel universe’ Schrödinger was rambling about.
Scientists have provided various hypotheses of how this multiverse would look like
Not only the multiverse's existence is up for debate. How it’d ‘hypothetically look like' is also different, according to many cosmologists studying it. I won't be including every existing theory out there because I believe it's going to take up a very lot of space, and you might get bored at some point (or in another universe, you won't, who knows?), but I'll elaborate on a few dominant prototypes that are considered to be empirically testable.
The first one is the Many World Interpretation (MWI), which asserts that the universal wave function is objectively accurate and that many worlds exist in parallel in the same space and time as our own. Hugh Everett first introduced this theory. To make sense of this formula, imagine a massive tree with branches. Everett theorizes that every decision that we make can lead to a new branch, an alternative universe and that it'll never stop generating all-new outcomes. The existence of the other worlds makes it possible to remove all kinds of randomness in the laws of physics.
The second one is the eternal inflation theory, which supports the idea of bubble universes. There's a turbulent spacetime foam at the very beginning of the cosmos, and within the foam, there's quantum inflation. Inflation is the rapid stretching of space. It makes space flat and uniform like the surface of an expanding balloon and stretches quantum vacuum fluctuations into macroscopically large density fluctuations that can seed galaxy formation. This inflation restricts to not only one event. Instead, it gives birth to different bubbles – different universes – and its exponential growth remains eternal.
The last piece I'd like to elaborate on is the membrane theory, or simply the M-Theory, which focuses on the involvement of string theory and such infinitesimal particles that can explain astrophysical occurrences. As an overview, string theory implements the theoretical framework in which the point-like particles of particle physics are replaced by one-dimensional objects called strings. String theory attempts to describe the entire universe under a single "theory of everything" by adding extra spacetime dimensions and thinking of particles as minuscule vibrating loops. Its higher-dimensional dimension, M-theory, implies that these strings stretch into sheet-like membranes, and these membranes exist with universes attached to them.
Scientists are still in search of solid evidence
Until now, the multiverse theory is still just a series of interpretations by physicists who dare to voice out their opinions. We cannot quickly determine its existence just from some logical mathematical equations, and if it does exist, it's going to be hard to align it with the knowledge we have today, for their world may work differently compared to ours. Many of these contrasting universes may defy this universe's current law of physics for all that we know. This may ruin the foundation of everything we've ever established and concluded as resolute. What may appear as magical rubbish in our world might be concrete and falsifiable science somewhere else. The possibilities are endless, to the point that most of the recurring theories fail to escape an expected, philosophical turn. Despite the circumstances, there are still many scientists involved to solve this cosmological enigma. The multiverse theory is now widely accepted within the scientific framework, with a few notable names acknowledging its existence, or simply, its probability.
Because of that, let’s not be blue for things we can’t be sure of yet! Just remember that somewhere in a different universe, another variant of us already knows the answer to all of this, and they're perhaps trying to find a way to get into the sacred timeline and explain everything that we don't understand.
That is, if the TVA doesn’t catch them first, I guess.
Works cited:
Wow, I learned a lot! Also, amazing writing style!