By Max Tegmark Universes Parallel MIT Kavli （组成宇宙平行麻省理工学院Kavli）.pdf

By Max Tegmark Parallel Universes Not just a staple of science fiction, other universes are a direct implication of cosmological observations Is there a copy of you reading this article? A person who is not you but who lives on You will probably never see your other selves. The farthest a planet called Earth, with misty mountains, fertile fields and you can observe is the distance that light has been able to trav- sprawling cities, in a solar system with eight other planets? The el during the 14 billion years since the big bang expansion be- life of this person has been identical to yours in every respect. gan. The most distant visible objects are now about 4 1026 But perhaps he or she now decides to put down this article with- meters away— a distance that defines our observable universe, out finishing it, while you read on. also called our Hubble volume, our horizon volume or simply The idea of such an alter ego seems strange and implausi- our universe. Likewise, the universes of your other selves are ble, but it looks as if we will just have to live with it, because it spheres of the same size centered on their planets. They are the is supported by astronomical observations. The simplest and most straightforward example of parallel universes. Each uni- most popular cosmological model today predicts that you have verse is merely a small part of a larger “multiverse.” 28 meters from here. This By this very