#dromophobia

No matter how long it's been since his reincarnation into the modern century, Arthur has never gotten over his severe Dromophobia.

I’m dromophobic.

That means I have a morbid fear of crossing roads.

Yeah. It’s a thing. And it’s hereditary. Mum has it too. And it has a far more potent hold on her than me.

  Ever since being introduced to probability and quantum mechanics, I indiscriminatingly, compulsively and often incorrectly apply it to everything.

Allow me to stress that again: EVERYTHING.

Allow me to elaborate: my dromophobia.

  Digression:

So here I am, geeking over the multiverse theories again, wherein I enthusiastically pretend to grasp incredible science often way beyond my years.

And there isn’t just one theory. It is available in jellybeans of every flavour by Bertie Bott.

Its numerous forms arise as consequences of cosmic inflation, currently the best theory to explain the early universe; beloved quantum mechanics that makes aspiring physicists want to pull out their hair at the roots; and the gloriously baffling string theory that leaves me catatonically mumbling to myself.

  Having digressed so far into a galaxy far, far away, permit me to digress a little more.

The simplestly conceived one of there is Max Tegmark’s Level I multiverse, a consequence of inflation, (which I do believe indisputably exists). We can of course not see the entire universe because it’s infinite. That’s a bugging personality trait of infinite things, especially ones that are also expanding infinitely. Our cosmic horizon is only about 13.7 billion light years. This is how far light has travelled from the beginning of time. Therefore, we have yet received light and information from this far away from us in the universe. The universe beyond this may look quite different, but will be ruled by the same universe-invariant physical laws.

I won’t touch Level II on account of I don’t want to because it’s dripping with the bodily juices of string theory and goo.

 Level III is where the party starts. A consequence of quantum mechanics, which leads to parallel worlds.

  Aside:

Let me interject here and say,

*POOF*, you just died in a parallel universe.

I’m sorry. I refuse to comfort you on account of I was never born in that one.

  Un-Digressing:

Applying quantum mechanics and probability, for me, all this jibber jabber comes down to: “everything not forbidden is compulsory”, as comprehensively stated by Murray Gell-Mann.

See, quantum mechanics was chiefly established to describe the world at sub-atomic levels. To probabilistically describe electrons and neutrons and protons and how they themselves are so often utterly perplexed about whether they are particles or waves.

However, the world at our scale can also be described by quantum mechanical probability. BUT, for example, for a ball thrown at a wall, this probability is almost 1, (1 is maximum probability, implying an absolute certainty of happening), for the ball bouncing off the wall. Also, this probability is almost 0 (0 implies an absolute impossibility of happening) of the ball quantum-ly tunnelling through the wall and surprising folk on the other side, by dancing the cancan. This is why smart, non-paranoid people don’t listen to quantum interpretations of macro worlds.

But if you have an infinite number of universes, it is quite possible that in one of them, this near zero possibility is realised. You would then have a badass and very confused ball that defies the odds and tunnels clean through walls.

  Similarly,

You may say there is very little probability of me dying every time I cross a road. Of being crushed by big evil buses and larger malevolent trucks that I swear speed up the minute I step on the tarmac. Of being crushed by the hoard of motor vehicles that appear out of quantum fluctuations the moment my shoe soles touch road tar.

You may say, “Relax, little one. Here, hold my hand. There is almost no chance of you dying crossing this wide road studded with fast and blind cars that revel in running over things with legs that dare cross their way.”

ALMOST.

But, there might be a multiverse.

Which means, there are infinite parallel worlds. And I am even crossing roads in each of those infinite parallel worlds SO many times.

Which means, this ALMOST zero probability of dying at the wheels of a mean, menacing, metallic, cruel, sadistic, homicidal, murder machine ARE realised in one of those universes of the multiverse, on one of my fateful strolls across a road.

This universe here is just one of those many.

On how many different roads on how many different days in how many different universes am I already dead?

What happens when I run out of universes to die in?

  We need jet packs already. Or large mutant eagles. Or dragons. Or just more subways would do too. (But I’d prefer the jet packs.)

   References:

Alexander Vilenkin, Max Tegmark. “The Case for Parallel Universes.” Scientific American, July 2011.

Dr. Murray Gell-Mann is the physicist who came up with the term 'quark' among unending other cool stuff.