THE SOUTHWORTH PLANETARIUM
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              "Keeping a watchful eye on a complex sky"




THE DAILY ASTRONOMER
Tuesday, December 29, 2015
Finding a Parallel Universe



So, there we were rummaging around the star dome, trying to decide
which two of Pandora's parchment scrolls to choose, when the
University officials decided to shut us up at noon.  Or, something
like that.   Consequently, we experienced half a day and this
reduction divided our labors in half.  Therefore, we had time only to
answer one parchment instead of two.  And, yes, unbelievably, that
sounded even more lame in my head.

Today, Pandora's parchment takes us to a parallel Universe.   Or, on
how to find it.
[For those who've just joined:    each week, we answer astronomy
questions stored in Pandora's Jar.]


"I hear talk about parallel Universes, but how do we know they exist?
 How can we find them?   I am using a made up name that I thought
worked well for this question."
            -E Gleason,  Manchester



Hello, E!

First of all, nobody knows if parallel Universes exist.     Though it
seems the sole reserve of science fiction writers, the parallel
Universe concept is seriously discussed by physicists.   A parallel
universe is defined as a space-time system wholly disassociated from
our own.  Such a universe would be governed by different physical
laws; the relative strengths of its fundamental forces could differ
profoundly from ours; and its duration could be fleeting or eternal,
based on the dynamics of its inception.     If these Universes do
exist, we have no knowledge of their differences or similarities.
Presently, we have no knowledge of them, at all.

The parallel Universe notion, in the scientific sense, arose once
physicists realized that life arose only because the physical
parameters within our cosmos are finely set.*  If gravity, already
comparatively weak, were slightly weaker, the materials within the
infant Universe wouldn't have gathered into galaxies or stars.    If
gravity were slightly stronger, our Universe might have imploded in on
itself within a microsecrond after its birth.     If the Strong
Nuclear Force, the one that binds subatomic particles within the
nuclei of atoms, were slightly weaker, atoms would have never formed.
The cosmos might well be pervaded by a highly rarefied quark "mist."

Some insist that these precisely balanced parameters attest to the
existence of a higher intelligence who crafted a Universe capable of
sustaining life  And, perhaps, it does.   Others argue that our
Universe is merely one of many:  perhaps trillions of trillions of
trillions.    Most of these Universes are not conducive to life's
formation.   Only a select few would permit life to exist and we just
happen to live in one of them.

Now, from a physics standpoint, other universes could exist in a
hyperdimensional reality much like sheets of paper that are
unattached, but parallel to one another exist in three dimensional
space.   Some theorists believe that these universes might, in fact,
interact , as gravity could "leak" from one universe into another.
Such hyperdimensional leakage could explain why gravity is
significantly weaker than the other fundamental forces.  Such a
leakage could be detected if, for instance, the Large Hadron collider
could detect such mini black holes which such a leakage could produce.
   While such detections have not yet been made, this could be one way
that physicists could discover that other universes are floating
around out there beyond our own.










*Some people object to the word "set," as it implies the machinations
of a designing intelligence.  No such implication Is intended.