• Question: are there other universes

    Asked by milli to Aaron, Abbey, Keith, Natalie, Pete on 13 Nov 2015. This question was also asked by i<3science.
    • Photo: Natalie Garrett

      Natalie Garrett answered on 13 Nov 2015:

      The short answer to this is : maybe?

      We don’t know for sure if there are or if there aren’t other universes. Some people believe the idea of the “many worlds interpretation”, where for every scenario there is an infinite array of alternative universes where each possible outcome played out. It would be really cool if it was true but I have no idea how you could prove it!

      To read more on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation

    • Photo: Keith Franklin

      Keith Franklin answered on 15 Nov 2015:

      There might be – we don’t know, and we don’t know how to find out at the moment.

      Imagine living in a house with no windows and no doors to get out. You would think that is the only world there is, until you discovered a way out.

      We will only know if there is another universe if we discover a way out of this one, and there might not be a way out of this one! (my head hurts now…)

    • Photo: Aaron Boardley

      Aaron Boardley answered on 16 Nov 2015:

      It’s hard to know.

      One of the key things about the scientific method is that theories need to be testable. If a scientist has an idea, they can develop an experiment to test it which will mean it can be disproved if it is wrong. The trouble is, there’s not an easy way to test for other universes – as everything we see and hear and touch in a test will be part of our own universe!

      ‘Uni’ means ‘one’ – like in ‘unicycles’ which have one wheel – so when we called it the universe we thought it was the only one – the one word to cover all the matter and energy there is. It’s a bit mind boggling to think of what other universes might mean!

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