All The Delicate Duplicates

Jeppe Hein

“Water Flame”, 2006

“Be sure that whatever you are is you.” ― Theodore Roethke

Are parallel universes real?

Right now there might be a whole other universe where instead of brown hair you have red hair, or a universe where you’re a classical pianist, not an engineer. In fact, an infinite number of versions of you may exist in an infinite number of other universes.

The idea sounds like science fiction, but multiverse theories — especially those that are actually testable — are gaining traction among physicists. Here are three of the most compelling theories:

If the universe is infinite, multiple universes probably exist.

If the universe is infinite, like many believe it is, then there must be huge patches of the universe that are simply too distant for us to see.

Our own universe is defined by the sphere-shaped amount of light that has had time to reach us. The universe is 13.8 billion years old, so any patches more than 13.8 billion light-years away aren’t visible to us. In that sense, multiple universes exist outside our own visible universe simply because the light from them hasn’t had enough time to reach us.

The implications are mind-bending.