“… an infinite series of times, in a dizzily growing, ever spreading network of diverging, converging and parallel times. This web of time—the strands of which approach one another, bifurcate, intersect or ignore each other through the centuries—embraces every possibility. We do not exist in most of them. In some you exist and not I, while in others I do, and you do not, and in yet others both of us exist. In this one, which chance had favored me, you have come to my gate. In another, you, crossing the garden, have found me dead. In yet another, I say these very same words, but am in error, a phantom.
This excerpt from Jorge Borges’ “The Garden of the Forking Paths” taken from Ray Bradbury’s 1956 “The Silver Locusts: A classical collection of Science Fiction stories taken from the Martian Chronicles” illustrates the bizarre and highly counterintuitive world of parallel worlds. (Wolf: p. 42)
In parallel universes strange things happen. You and your doubles may have by and large identical lives and pasts, except for totally different behaviors all occurring at the same time. Or they may have totally different lives. Does reality consist of one universe or many? And how many universes are there? Do they exist simultaneously or at different times at different locations? Is it possible to communicate with them? Is there any scientific evidence for parallel universes?
The idea of strange parallel worlds touching our reality has been described by science fiction writers for quite some time, ever since the beginning of the genre. But for the last fifty years or so the realm of parallel universes has leaped from science fiction into serious scientific discussion.
The interesting fact is that the modern (by this I mean non-metaphysical) multiverse idea came to the scientists themselves from experiments in quantum mechanics, during which the particles behaved in a rather intriguing fashion. We will see these experiments in more detail later in Chapter 3. “
