THE SOUTHWORTH PLANETARIUM
70 Falmouth Street      Portland, Maine 04103
(207) 780-4249      usm.maine.edu/planet
43.6667° N    70.2667° W  Altitude:  10 feet below sea level Founded
January 1970
2021-2022: XCVIII
"I'm not strange, weird, off nor crazy. my reality is just different from
yours." -Lewis Carroll

THE DAILY ASTRONOMER
Monday, March 28, 2022
A Bishop on Boardwalk

 A despairing shout emanated from the darkness in the star dome: "I want to
go into a parallel Universe where there isn't any homework!"
Titters rippled through the audience before the teacher testily reminded
students that I had asked for questions, not editorial comments.  I
dispelled the ensuing and oppressive silence with the "Bishop on
Boardwalk."   No, not a tale about a church official perambulating along a
promenade.   An analogy about parallel Universes.

The problem is that we humans are spatial and temporal beings.   Since we
regard all destinations as being coordinates along the space-time matrix,
our notion of moving from one situation to another is perceived as a
spatial and temporal event.  For instance, "Mr Spock is going to mosey on
down to the little cow poke's room after 112,345,984,498 periods of the
radiation corresponding to the transition between the hyperfine levels of
the unperturbed ground state of the Cesium-133 atom."

Shifting between alternative realities is not quite as straight forward.
"Imagine a bishop on boardwalk," I explained to the darkness, which
responded with a perplexed grimace.  "By which I mean, placing a bishop on
Boardwalk, as opposed to Park Place."     The darkness then smiled a bit
and nodded knowingly.   "What would happen?   Bishops can only move
diagonally."    The darkness scratched its head and looked up hopelessly at
the dome.


[image:
depositphotos_128860238-stock-photo-wooden-bishop-brown-chess-piece.jpg]
*Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200*

"You see, the situation is impossible.  It doesn't translate. Yes, one can
place a bishop on a Monopoly board.  However, the bishop cannot actually
participate in the game.  It can be used as a piece just like the race car
-my favorite- or the ironing board.  However, if used in this capacity, it
will cease to actually be a bishop in the conventional sense.   Understand."

The darkness became so frustrated it left the dome.   As the students were
now able to see me, I went to the chalkboard and drew two squares, or,
actually, two pathetic attempts at squares, separated by two feet.

"Here is the chess board and here the Monopoly Board."   They are distinct
Universes inaccessible to each other by any means.    We could put one
board on top of another, of course, but the laws governing each game cannot
be combined."

Parallel Universes, if they even exist, would be wholly different from our
own.   They wouldn't be subject to the same physical laws which prevail in
this cosmos.  Moreover, we know of no spatial corridors that connect
them.*   The student desperately seeking to avoid homework wouldn't be able
to just skip off into another Universe.

The notion of parallel Universes came into scientific vogue largely because
the Universe seems so precisely designed to produce life.  For instance,
tweak gravity slightly and the Universe would have either imploded soon
after its inception or the matter within it would never have coalesced to
form stars, planets or galaxies in the first place.     The notion of one
universe perfectly crafted to generate life causes some scientists an
immense amount of discomfort.  However, if billions of Universes exist,
then life just happens to arise in those Universes that are suitable for
its development.

Our Universe could be just a bubble in a vast sea.
We don't yet know how to discover these other bubbles, or even how to
access them, which might be impossible.       The bishop cannot pass Go.



*Black holes are often regarded as serving as such conduits.   Actually,
Einstein-Rosen Bridges, which are believed  to be attached to them, could
be passageways to other Universes. However, these "bridges" are likely so
unstable that they'd collapse whenever something enters them.      Also,
the extreme tidal forces associated with black holes would literally reduce
any traveler to his/her subatomic particles long before they reached it.



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