• Question: what do you think about multiple universe thereoy? Morgan, 12 ☺☻

    Asked by breem001 to Ben, Jony, Katharine, Mark, Peter on 17 Nov 2011.
    • Photo: Jony Hudson

      Jony Hudson answered on 16 Nov 2011:

      Hi Morgan.

      I don’t really like multiple universe theories.

      The reason is that because I think to be a good physics theory you have to be able to think of an experiment that could test whether it’s true or not. I don’t think anybody can think of a way to test whether multiple universe theories are true or not. So they are interesting, but not really a scientific theory.

    • Photo: Mark Basham

      Mark Basham answered on 16 Nov 2011:

      I agree with Jony on this one, I’m not sold on it, but it can’t be discounted as its almost impossible to disprove and it can be used to explain some Phenomena.

      It does however have a part to play in Science Fiction, otherwise we would never have had Sliders, episodes of Futurama, and many other great items of Parallel Universe goodness 🙂

    • Photo: Katharine Schofield

      Katharine Schofield answered on 16 Nov 2011:

      I like it as an idea – it’s cool and weird to think that there are other universes with different versions of me doing different things having made different decisions in life. I hope they’re all getting on fine! I’m happy being in this one though. As a scientific theory though? Hmm maybe not… There’s quite enough to understand in this Universe never mind in any parallel ones. And we can’t communicate with parallel universes even if they do exist, so I’m not going to spend too much time puzzling over it.

    • Photo: Ben Still

      Ben Still answered on 17 Nov 2011:

      As Jony said – a theory that cannot be tested by experiment is difficult to like as an experimental physicist, we need ways of testing Nature. Again I agree, interesting but not something that will be making it into textbooks anytime soon, just SciFi novels.

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