I know that this is not really the ideal place to ask this question, but the other day my prof mentioned the hypothetical schrodinger's cat experiment, and that brought me back to my own thoughts about a multiverse through quantum mechanics. I have asked this question in many other places, but I also wanted to know the thoughts of people here. What if there were alternate realities and timelines?

Maybe it could make time travel without paradoxes possible. Travel back in time, and you start a new timeline.

Just a random thought I just had after reading this thread: if a Boltzmann brain (or a brain in a jar) hallucinates that there's logically another universe with another brain that hallucinates that there's a tree that had fallen in a forest while nobody was around to see it... Did the tree make a sound?

lance_armstrong said:
Maybe it could make time travel without paradoxes possible. Travel back in time, and you start a new timeline.

This is the idea I've subscribed to, because this is the only way I could see time travel to the past scientifically possible, at least from what we know of how physics works now. that being said...

nottheknown said:
I know that this is not really the ideal place to ask this question, but the other day my prof mentioned the hypothetical schrodinger's cat experiment, and that brought me back to my own thoughts about a multiverse through quantum mechanics. I have asked this question in many other places, but I also wanted to know the thoughts of people here. What if there were alternate realities and timelines?

The issue with this "what if" question is that unless there was any way of accessing parallel universes, the question is kind of redundant, as it would just be speculation without any way of confirming the theory.

Remember that episode of Star Trek where they blew up the alternate timeline Enterprise that just wanted to escape the Borg? I guess it was okay because they were from an alternate timeline so they weren't real.

I'm generally not spiritual, and pretty much a logic based person.

But I would recommend looking into zoroastrianism purely academically. For a "religion" that apparently existed well before the bible, they basically have a very interesting take on the end times.
Something along the lines: The Saoshyant will raise the dead—including those in all !!afterworlds!!—for final judgment, returning the wicked to hell to be purged of bodily sin.

Literally talking about paradoxical multiverses and ascension to higher dimensions/plains of existence as well as non-linear time, way before Jaysus hit the scene.

If they weren't visited by some advanced aliens or multidimensional beings then I dunno what drugs they where taking... But I want some.

fenrick said:
Remember that episode of Star Trek where they blew up the alternate timeline Enterprise that just wanted to escape the Borg? I guess it was okay because they were from an alternate timeline so they weren't real.

That feeling when people from an alternate timeline come and kill you, telling you it's okay because you are not real...

fenrick said:
Remember that episode of Star Trek where they blew up the alternate timeline Enterprise that just wanted to escape the Borg? I guess it was okay because they were from an alternate timeline so they weren't real.

That was an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation in which Worf kept jumping between alternate realities every time he got too near LaForge's visor. In the final act, hordes of Enterprise-Ds, including aforementioned escapee from the Borg, get yanked into the same reality.

Yes, they wanted to escape the Borg, but they weren't destroyed until after they opened fire on Worf's shuttle when he was trying to fix this dimensional mess. It was a matter of conflicting ideas of what needed to be done to survive. Besides, everything was reset when Worf was successful, so this Enterprise would have been undestroyed.

lance_armstrong said:
Maybe it could make time travel without paradoxes possible. Travel back in time, and you start a new timeline.

The way I see it, what we perceive as the flow of time is not a dimension, but a vector of motion through multiple temporal dimensions, in the same way you rolling down a steep hill is a vector of motion through multiple spatial dimensions. If you shift your position a little, you can roll into an alternate timeline. With some effort, you could stop your roll and hold yourself in place, or perhaps you could even climb back up the hill of time, going into what to you is the past.

Once upon a time there was a causally-independent multiverse. For every universe, everything was exactly the same as if it were the only universe. The end.

Something to do with a whale and a bowl of petunias. I think.

deleuzian_cattery said:
Once upon a time there was a causally-independent multiverse. For every universe, everything was exactly the same as if it were the only universe. The end.

There would not be an alternate universe in the first place if everything were the same though. The difference is what would seperate the timelines in the first place.

binagon said:
The issue with this "what if" question is that unless there was any way of accessing parallel universes, the question is kind of redundant, as it would just be speculation without any way of confirming the theory.

I understand your point, although the multiverse started out as a speculation. All tests within the theory where hypothetical, but they mainly tested around the cause of superposition, where an object could exist within two places at the same time. This mostly exists with quantuntum system states, but it was thought to be impossible. That is unless, if the other position of that particle were to be in another dimention, but it all still remains hypothetical.

lance_armstrong said:
Maybe it could make time travel without paradoxes possible. Travel back in time, and you start a new timeline.

Actually that does make sense. The changes made by you existing within that time would make the two timelines.

nottheknown said:
There would not be an alternate universe in the first place if everything were the same though. The difference is what would seperate the timelines in the first place.

I said everything was as if no other universe existed, not that they were all the same. A multiverse can exist without the possibility of any kind of interaction between them. Also, "alternate universes" or "timelines" is only one way to think about multiverses.

rhyolite said:
Something to do with a whale and a bowl of petunias. I think.

Oh no, not again.

Oh my? Hello? I guess I'll just start off by saying this topic is right up my alley.

brokenarrow277 said:
Oh my? Hello? I guess I'll just start off by saying this topic is right up my alley.

Leave your thoughts then.

Well first and foremost, everything is going to get screwed up the moment we met up with the space time continuum. Perhaps time-travel into the past can create an alternate timeline but that one Paradox always presents itself, if you were going to change something about history then why would you ever need to go back to change it if it never needed to be changed?

brokenarrow277 said:
Well first and foremost, everything is going to get screwed up the moment we met up with the space time continuum. Perhaps time-travel into the past can create an alternate timeline but that one Paradox always presents itself, if you were going to change something about history then why would you ever need to go back to change it if it never needed to be changed?

Ah but you see, you are a different you. Basically if you go back to change something in the past and it does split off into a different reality then whatever version of "you" is born later in that new reality is not going to be "you".
Both yous could exist in the same universe quite tidelly. Though you would be a being from the original universe and the you that may or may not even be born due to butterfly effect would be an entirely different person.

Look up a game called SOMA, explores exactly what constitutes as "you" an individual in a very in depth way.

(Edit though the original universe might be a bit buggered afterwards. But that's not the one your gonna want to stay in anyway.)

zypher0s said:
Ah but you see, you are a different you. Basically if you go back to change something in the past and it does split off into a different reality then whatever version of "you" is born later in that new reality is not going to be "you".
Both yous could exist in the same universe quite tidelly. Though you would be a being from the original universe and the you that may or may not even be born due to butterfly effect would be an entirely different person.

Look up a game called SOMA, explores exactly what constitutes as "you" an individual in a very in depth way.

(Edit though the original universe might be a bit buggered afterwards. But that's not the one your gonna want to stay in anyway.)

I always thought that the version of you that went back in time would cease to exist and the timeline you came from would cease to exist

brokenarrow277 said:
I always thought that the version of you that went back in time would cease to exist and the timeline you came from would cease to exist

It would, but there should still be a carbon copy of you in the new timeline. Otherwise that new timeline didn't get created. Yeaaa, it's a bit depressing but that's how it works.

Of course pure speculation. I do have a decent theory for escaping ones brain though without using a copy. (Cuz a copy is always just that, a copy. It isn't you.)
You would have to interface your brain to a synthetic version, then phase out the organic parts bit by bit, carefully retaining the original personally. Ala, ghost in the shell.

clawstripe said:

Yes, they wanted to escape the Borg, but they weren't destroyed until after they opened fire on Worf's shuttle when he was trying to fix this dimensional mess. It was a matter of conflicting ideas of what needed to be done to survive.

I admit I was just joking and I knew they shot them to solve the dimensional dilemma but I didn't remember them firing first. Guess that kills my joke…

nottheknown said:
I know that this is not really the ideal place to ask this question, but the other day my prof mentioned the hypothetical schrodinger's cat experiment, and that brought me back to my own thoughts about a multiverse through quantum mechanics. I have asked this question in many other places, but I also wanted to know the thoughts of people here. What if there were alternate realities and timelines?

To believe that this is the only Universe is the proportionate equivalent to believing that our own Planet is the only celestial body in space. There’s no doubt in my mind that there’s an infinite number of spatial fabrics, as well as timelines to go with each one that possesses the potential to bare laws of time.

The gears of our Universe continue to turn due to variety, abundance, and causality. That in itself is proof that whatever/whoever gave life to our Universe worked off of those prime factors, therefore, meaning other neighboring/parallel Universes had to have been born out of the same concepts of variety, abundance and causality. They’re much like “sibling Universes” in some regard, while others that are not so Sibling-like are just simply very different. That’s even more additional proof that more than one Universe exists, and that countless amounts are connected.

Also, our Universe is blocked off against other Universes for some reason. Someone powerful doesn’t want us interacting with those places. And quite frankly, I completely agree with that restriction. Imagine our Universe becoming something akin to the SCP Universe, and think of what kind of plagues and pandemics could take place if foreign bacteria from entirely different spatial fabrics were to invade countless worlds, due to massive Planetary cross-contamination. Even intergalactic pestilence would happen in some areas of the cosmos.

The reason our Universe isn’t in a heap of cross-Multiversal chaos right now is because it’s ruled by someone or something that’s covering our asses 24/7, protecting us from an infinite number of other realities/Universes with the powers/technology to travel to ours.