COPYRIGHT 2003 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC.

By Max Tegmark

Parallel
Universes Not just a staple
of science fiction,
other universes are
a direct implication
of cosmological observations

Is there a copy of you

reading this article? A person who is not you but who lives on You will probably never see your other selves. The farthest
a planet called Earth, with misty mountains, fertile fields and you can observe is the distance that light has been able to trav-
sprawling cities, in a solar system with eight other planets? The el during the 14 billion years since the big bang expansion be-
life of this person has been identical to yours in every respect. gan. The most distant visible objects are now about 4 × 1026
But perhaps he or she now decides to put down this article with- meters away— a distance that defines our observable universe,
out finishing it, while you read on. also called our Hubble volume, our horizon volume or simply
The idea of such an alter ego seems strange and implausi- our universe. Likewise, the universes of your other selves are
ble, but it looks as if we will just have to live with it, because it spheres of the same size centered on their planets. They are the
is supported by astronomical observations. The simplest and most straightforward example of parallel universes. Each uni-
most popular cosmological model today predicts that you have verse is merely a small part of a larger “multiverse.”
a twin in a galaxy about 10 to the 1028 meters from here. This By this very definition of “universe,” one might expect the
distance is so large that it is beyond astronomical, but that does notion of a multiverse to be forever in the domain of meta-
not make your doppelgänger any less real. The estimate is de- physics. Yet the borderline between physics and metaphysics is
rived from elementary probability and does not even assume defined by whether a theory is experimentally testable, not by
speculative modern physics, merely that space is infinite (or at whether it is weird or involves unobservable entities. The fron-
least sufficiently large) in size and almost uniformly filled with tiers of physics have gradually expanded to incorporate ever
matter, as observations indicate. In infinite space, even the most more abstract (and once metaphysical) concepts such as a round
unlikely events must take place somewhere. There are infinite- Earth, invisible electromagnetic fields, time slowdown at high
ALFRED T. KAMAJIAN

ly many other inhabited planets, including not just one but in- speeds, quantum superpositions, curved space, and black holes.
finitely many that have people with the same appearance, name Over the past several years the concept of a multiverse has joined
and memories as you, who play out every possible permutation this list. It is grounded in well-tested theories such as relativity
of your life choices. and quantum mechanics, and it fulfills both of the basic criteria

www.sciam.com SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN 41

COPYRIGHT 2003 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC.
 of an empirical science: it makes predictions, and it can be fal- all universes in the Level I multiverse would be empty and dead.
sified. Scientists have discussed as many as four distinct types But recent observations of the three-dimensional galaxy distri-
of parallel universes. The key question is not whether the mul- bution and the microwave background have shown that the
tiverse exists but rather how many levels it has. arrangement of matter gives way to dull uniformity on large
scales, with no coherent structures larger than about 1024 me-
Level I: Beyond Our Cosmic Horizon ters. Assuming that this pattern continues, space beyond our
T H E P A R A L L E L U N I V E R S E S of your alter egos constitute the observable universe teems with galaxies, stars and planets.
Level I multiverse. It is the least controversial type. We all ac- Observers living in Level I parallel universes experience the
cept the existence of things that we cannot see but could see if same laws of physics as we do but with different initial condi-
we moved to a different vantage point or merely waited, like tions. According to current theories, processes early in the big
people watching for ships to come over the horizon. Objects bang spread matter around with a degree of randomness, gen-
beyond the cosmic horizon have a similar status. The observ- erating all possible arrangements with nonzero probability. Cos-
able universe grows by a light-year every year as light from far- mologists assume that our universe, with an almost uniform dis-
ther away has time to reach us. An infinity lies out there, wait- tribution of matter and initial density fluctuations of one part in
ing to be seen. You will probably die long before your alter egos 100,000, is a fairly typical one (at least among those that con-
come into view, but in principle, and if cosmic expansion co- tain observers). That assumption underlies the estimate that
operates, your descendants could observe them through a suf- your closest identical copy is 10 to the 1028 meters away. About
ficiently powerful telescope. 10 to the 1092 meters away, there should be a sphere of radius
If anything, the Level I multiverse sounds trivially obvious. 100 light-years identical to the one centered here, so all percep-
How could space not be infinite? Is there a sign somewhere say- tions that we have during the next century will be identical to
ing “Space Ends Here— Mind the Gap”? If so, what lies beyond those of our counterparts over there. About 10 to the 10118 me-
it? In fact, Einstein’s theory of gravity calls this intuition into ters away should be an entire Hubble volume identical to ours.
question. Space could be finite if it has a convex curvature or These are extremely conservative estimates, derived simply
an unusual topology (that is, interconnectedness). A spherical, by counting all possible quantum states that a Hubble volume
doughnut-shaped or pretzel-shaped universe would have a lim- can have if it is no hotter than 108 kelvins. One way to do the
ited volume and no edges. The cosmic microwave background calculation is to ask how many protons could be packed into
radiation allows sensitive tests of such scenarios [see “Is Space a Hubble volume at that temperature. The answer is 10118 pro-
Finite?” by Jean-Pierre Luminet, Glenn D. Starkman and Jef- tons. Each of those particles may or may not, in fact, be present,
frey R. Weeks; Scientific American, April 1999]. So far, which makes for 2 to the 10118 possible arrangements of pro-
however, the evidence is against them. Infinite models fit the tons. A box containing that many Hubble volumes exhausts all
data, and strong limits have been placed on the alternatives. the possibilities. If you round off the numbers, such a box is
Another possibility is that space is infinite but matter is con- about 10 to the 10118 meters across. Beyond that box, univers-
fined to a finite region around us— the historically popular “is- es— including ours— must repeat. Roughly the same number
land universe” model. In a variant on this model, matter thins could be derived by using thermodynamic or quantum-gravita-
out on large scales in a fractal pattern. In both cases, almost tional estimates of the total information content of the universe.
Your nearest doppelgänger is most likely to be much clos-
Overview/Multiverses er than these numbers suggest, given the processes of planet for-
mation and biological evolution that tip the odds in your favor.
■ One of the many implications of recent cosmological Astronomers suspect that our Hubble volume has at least 1020
observations is that the concept of parallel universes is habitable planets; some might well look like Earth.
no mere metaphor. Space appears to be infinite in size. If The Level I multiverse framework is used routinely to eval-
so, then somewhere out there, everything that is possible uate theories in modern cosmology, although this procedure is
becomes real, no matter how improbable it is. Beyond the rarely spelled out explicitly. For instance, consider how cos-
ALFRED T. KAMAJIAN (background); SARA CHEN (inset)

range of our telescopes are other regions of space that mologists used the microwave background to rule out a finite
are identical to ours. Those regions are a type of parallel spherical geometry. Hot and cold spots in microwave back-
universe. Scientists can even calculate how distant these ground maps have a characteristic size that depends on the cur-
universes are, on average. vature of space, and the observed spots appear too small to be
■ And that is fairly solid physics. When cosmologists consider consistent with a spherical shape. But it is important to be sta-
theories that are less well established, they conclude that tistically rigorous. The average spot size varies randomly from
other universes can have entirely different properties and one Hubble volume to another, so it is possible that our universe
laws of physics. The presence of those universes would is fooling us— it could be spherical but happen to have abnor-
explain various strange aspects of our own. It could even mally small spots. When cosmologists say they have ruled out
answer fundamental questions about the nature of time the spherical model with 99.9 percent confidence, they really
and the comprehensibility of the physical world. mean that if this model were true, fewer than one in 1,000 Hub-
ble volumes would show spots as small as those we observe.

42 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MAY 2003

COPYRIGHT 2003 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC.
 LEVEL I MULTIVERSE
THE SIMPLEST TYPE of parallel universe is simply a region of space bang began. (The distance is greater than 14 billion light-years
that is too far away for us to have seen yet. The farthest that we because cosmic expansion has lengthened distances.) Each of the
can observe is currently about 4 × 10 26 meters, or 42 billion light- Level I parallel universes is basically the same as ours. All the
years— the distance that light has been able to travel since the big differences stem from variations in the initial arrangement of matter.

LIMIT OF
OBSERVATION

4 × 1026 METERS

How Far Away Is a Duplicate Universe?

OUR UNIVERSE PARALLEL UNIVERSE
EXAMPLE UNIVERSE
Imagine a two-dimensional universe with space for four particles.
Such a universe has 24, or 16, possible arrangements of matter.
If more than 16 of these universes exist, they must begin to
repeat. In this example, the distance to the nearest duplicate is
roughly four times the diameter of each universe.

DISTANCE TO REPEAT
1 2
3 4
PARALLEL UNIVERSE

4 particles
24 arrangements
METERS

ALL 16 POSSIBILITIES
OUR UNIVERSE
The same argument applies to our universe, which has space
118

for about 10118 subatomic particles. The number of possible

1010

arrangements is therefore 2 to the 10118, or approximately

10 to the 10118. Multiplying by the diameter of the universe
gives an average distance to the nearest duplicate of 10 to
the 10118 meters.

2 × 10–13 METER

10118 particles
118
210 arrangements
8 × 1026 meters

IDENTICAL
PARALLEL
UNIVERSE

COPYRIGHT 2003 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC.

 Radius of Space (billions of light-years)
1 2 4 8 16

8
80 1025

Temperature Fluctuation (microkelvins)

Mass within Sphere (solar masses)

70 A
1023 AT
DD
60 UN
RO
1021 CKG
50 BAE
AV
19 ROW
40 10 C

Size of Universe
MI
UNIFORM
30 TA DENSITY
FLAT 1017 Y DA
GEOMETRY VE
20 UR
X YS
SPHERICAL HYPERBOLIC 10 15
LA
10 GEOMETRY GEOMETRY GA

0 1013
20 5 2 1 0.5 0.2 107 108 109 1010 1011
Angular Scale (degrees) Sphere Radius (light-years)

COSMOLOGICAL DATA support the idea that space continues beyond the or infinite (center). (One caveat: some cosmologists speculate that the
confines of our observable universe. The WMAP satellite recently discrepant point on the left of the graph is evidence for a finite volume.) In
measured the fluctuations in the microwave background (left). The addition, WMAP and the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey have found that space
strongest fluctuations are just over half a degree across, which on large scales is filled with matter uniformly (right), meaning that other
indicates— after applying the rules of geometry— that space is very large universes should look basically like ours.

The lesson is that the multiverse theory can be tested and tween our bubble and its neighbors is expanding faster than you
falsified even though we cannot see the other universes. The key could travel through it. Your descendants will never see their
is to predict what the ensemble of parallel universes is and to doppelgängers elsewhere in Level II. For the same reason, if cos-
specify a probability distribution, or what mathematicians call mic expansion is accelerating, as observations now suggest,
a “measure,” over that ensemble. Our universe should emerge they might not see their alter egos even in Level I.
as one of the most probable. If not— if, according to the multi- The Level II multiverse is far more diverse than the Level I
verse theory, we live in an improbable universe— then the the- multiverse. The bubbles vary not only in their initial conditions
ory is in trouble. As I will discuss later, this measure problem but also in seemingly immutable aspects of nature. The prevail-
can become quite challenging. ing view in physics today is that the dimensionality of spacetime,
the qualities of elementary particles and many of the so-called
Level II: Other Postinflation Bubbles physical constants are not built into physical laws but are the
IF THE LEVEL I MULTIVERSE was hard to stomach, try outcome of processes known as symmetry breaking. For in-
imagining an infinite set of distinct Level I multiverses, some stance, theorists think that the space in our universe once had
perhaps with different spacetime dimensionality and different nine dimensions, all on an equal footing. Early in cosmic histo-
physical constants. Those other multiverses— which constitute ry, three of them partook in the cosmic expansion and became
a Level II multiverse— are predicted by the currently popular the three dimensions we now observe. The other six are now un-
theory of chaotic eternal inflation. observable, either because they have stayed microscopic with a
Inflation is an extension of the big bang theory and ties up doughnutlike topology or because all matter is confined to a
many of the loose ends of that theory, such as why the universe three-dimensional surface (a membrane, or simply “brane”) in
is so big, so uniform and so flat. A rapid stretching of space long the nine-dimensional space.
ago can explain all these and other attributes in one fell swoop Thus, the original symmetry among the dimensions broke.
[see “The Inflationary Universe,” by Alan H. Guth and Paul J. The quantum fluctuations that drive chaotic inflation could
Steinhard; Scientific American, May 1984; and “The Self-Re- cause different symmetry breaking in different bubbles. Some
producing Inflationary Universe,” by Andrei Linde, November might become four-dimensional, others could contain only two
1994]. Such stretching is predicted by a wide class of theories rather than three generations of quarks, and still others might
of elementary particles, and all available evidence bears it out. have a stronger cosmological constant than our universe does.
MAX TEGMARK (sphere); SARA CHEN (graphs)

The phrase “chaotic eternal” refers to what happens on the very Another way to produce a Level II multiverse might be
largest scales. Space as a whole is stretching and will continue through a cycle of birth and destruction of universes. In a sci-
doing so forever, but some regions of space stop stretching and entific context, this idea was introduced by physicist Richard C.
form distinct bubbles, like gas pockets in a loaf of rising bread. Tolman in the 1930s and recently elaborated on by Paul J. Stein-
Infinitely many such bubbles emerge. Each is an embryonic Lev- hardt of Princeton University and Neil Turok of the University
el I multiverse: infinite in size and filled with matter deposited by of Cambridge. The Steinhardt and Turok proposal and related
the energy field that drove inflation. models involve a second three-dimensional brane that is quite
Those bubbles are more than infinitely far away from Earth, literally parallel to ours, merely offset in a higher dimension [see
in the sense that you would never get there even if you traveled “Been There, Done That,” by George Musser; News Scan, Sci-
at the speed of light forever. The reason is that the space be- entific American, March 2002]. This parallel universe is not

44 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MAY 2003

COPYRIGHT 2003 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC.
 LEVEL II MULTIVERSE
A SOMEWHAT MORE ELABORATE type of parallel universe emerges volume. Other bubbles exist out there, disconnected from ours.
from the theory of cosmological inflation. The idea is that our Level I They nucleate like raindrops in a cloud. During nucleation,
multiverse— namely, our universe and contiguous regions of variations in quantum fields endow each bubble with properties
space— is a bubble embedded in an even vaster but mostly empty that distinguish it from other bubbles.

EMPTY
SPACE
(INFLATING)

OUR
PARALLEL
UNIVERSE
LEVEL I
MULTIVERSE

OUR LEVEL I
MULTIVERSE

Bubble Nucleation PARALLEL

A QUANTUM FIELD known as the inflaton LEVEL I
causes space to expand rapidly. In the bulk of MULTIVERSE
STRENGTH

space, random fluctuations prevent the field

FIELD

from decaying away. But in certain regions,

ALFRED T. KAMAJIAN (background); CORNELIA BLIK (top inset); SARA CHEN (bottom inset)

the field loses its strength and the expansion

slows down. Those regions become bubbles. POSITION

Evidence ∞ 5
GRAVITY DOMINATES
COSMOLOGISTS INFER the presence ATOMS
Number of Large Time Dimensions

of Level II parallel universes by ARE

Strength of Strong Nuclear Force

PREDICTED BY GRAND UNIFIED THEORY 4 UNSTABLE

scrutinizing the properties of our 10
FIELDS EVENTS ARE
universe. These properties, including STARS
3 ARE COMPLETELY
EXPLODE ALL ATOMS ARE UNSTABLE
the strength of the forces of nature UNPREDICTABLE
RADIOACTIVE
(right) and the number of observable 1
2
space and time dimensions WE ARE
( far right), were established by HERE COMPLEX
WE ARE ATOMS ARE
10–1 CARBON IS UNSTABLE 1 STRUCTURES
HERE UNSTABLE
random processes during the birth CANNOT EXIST
of our universe. Yet they have DEUTERIUM IS UNSTABLE
EVENTS ARE COMPLETELY
0 UNPREDICTABLE
exactly the values that sustain life. 0
That suggests the existence of other 0 10–1 1 10 ∞ 0 1 2 3 4
universes with other values. Strength of Electromagnetism Number of Large Spatial Dimensions
CREDIT

www.sciam.com SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN 45

COPYRIGHT 2003 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC.
really a separate universe, because it interacts with ours. But the ues of the physical constants [see “Exploring Our Universe and
ensemble of universes— past, present and future— that these Others,” by Martin Rees; Scientific American, December
branes create would form a multiverse, arguably with a diver- 1999]. The Level II multiverse theory predicts that physicists
sity similar to that produced by chaotic inflation. An idea pro- will never be able to determine the values of these constants
posed by physicist Lee Smolin of the Perimeter Institute in Wa- from first principles. They will merely compute probability dis-
terloo, Ontario, involves yet another multiverse comparable in tributions for what they should expect to find, taking selection
diversity to that of Level II but mutating and sprouting new uni- effects into account. The result should be as generic as is con-
verses through black holes rather than through brane physics. sistent with our existence.
Although we cannot interact with other Level II parallel uni-
verses, cosmologists can infer their presence indirectly, because Level III: Quantum Many Worlds
their existence can account for unexplained coincidences in our T H E L E V E L I A N D L E V E L I I multiverses involve parallel
universe. To give an analogy, suppose you check into a hotel, worlds that are far away, beyond the domain even of as-
are assigned room 1967 and note that this is the year you were tronomers. But the next level of multiverse is right around you.
born. What a coincidence, you say. After a moment of reflec- It arises from the famous, and famously controversial, many-
tion, however, you conclude that this is not so surprising after all. worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics— the idea that
The hotel has hundreds of rooms, and you would not have been random quantum processes cause the universe to branch into
having these thoughts in the first place if you had been assigned multiple copies, one for each possible outcome.
one with a number that meant nothing to you. The lesson is that In the early 20th century the theory of quantum mechanics
even if you knew nothing about hotels, you could infer the ex- revolutionized physics by explaining the atomic realm, which
istence of other hotel rooms to explain the coincidence. does not abide by the classical rules of Newtonian mechanics.
As a more pertinent example, consider the mass of the sun. Despite the obvious successes of the theory, a heated debate
The mass of a star determines its luminosity, and using basic rages about what it really means. The theory specifies the state
physics, one can compute that life as we know it on Earth is of the universe not in classical terms, such as the positions and
possible only if the sun’s mass falls into the narrow range be- velocities of all particles, but in terms of a mathematical ob-
tween 1.6 × 1030 and 2.4 × 1030 kilograms. Otherwise Earth’s ject called a wave function. According to the Schrödinger equa-
climate would be colder than that of present-day Mars or hot- tion, this state evolves over time in a fashion that mathemati-
ter than that of present-day Venus. The measured solar mass cians term “unitary,” meaning that the wave function rotates
is 2.0 × 1030 kilograms. At first glance, this apparent coinci- in an abstract infinite-dimensional space called Hilbert space.
dence of the habitable and observed mass values appears to be Although quantum mechanics is often described as inherently
a wild stroke of luck. Stellar masses run from 1029 to 1032 kilo- random and uncertain, the wave function evolves in a deter-
grams, so if the sun acquired its mass at random, it had only a ministic way. There is nothing random or uncertain about it.
small chance of falling into the habitable range. But just as in The sticky part is how to connect this wave function with
the hotel example, one can explain this apparent coincidence what we observe. Many legitimate wave functions correspond
by postulating an ensemble (in this case, a number of planetary to counterintuitive situations, such as a cat being dead and alive
systems) and a selection effect (the fact that we must find our- at the same time in a so-called superposition. In the 1920s
selves living on a habitable planet). Such observer-related se- physicists explained away this weirdness by postulating that the
lection effects are referred to as “anthropic,” and although the wave function “collapsed” into some definite classical outcome
“A-word” is notorious for triggering controversy, physicists whenever someone made an observation. This add-on had the
broadly agree that these selection effects cannot be neglected virtue of explaining observations, but it turned an elegant, uni-
when testing fundamental theories. tary theory into a kludgy, nonunitary one. The intrinsic ran-
What applies to hotel rooms and planetary systems applies domness commonly ascribed to quantum mechanics is the re-
to parallel universes. Most, if not all, of the attributes set by sult of this postulate.
symmetry breaking appear to be fine-tuned. Changing their val- Over the years many physicists have abandoned this view
ues by modest amounts would have resulted in a qualitatively in favor of one developed in 1957 by Princeton graduate stu-
different universe— one in which we probably would not ex- dent Hugh Everett III. He showed that the collapse postulate
ist. If protons were 0.2 percent heavier, they could decay into is unnecessary. Unadulterated quantum theory does not, in fact,
neutrons, destabilizing atoms. If the electromagnetic force were pose any contradictions. Although it predicts that one classi-
4 percent weaker, there would be no hydrogen and no normal cal reality gradually splits into superpositions of many such re-
stars. If the weak interaction were much weaker, hydrogen alities, observers subjectively experience this splitting merely as
would not exist; if it were much stronger, supernovae would a slight randomness, with probabilities in exact agreement with
fail to seed interstellar space with heavy elements. If the cos- those from the old collapse postulate. This superposition of
ALFRED T. KAMAJIAN

mological constant were much larger, the universe would have classical worlds is the Level III multiverse.
blown itself apart before galaxies could form. Everett’s many-worlds interpretation has been boggling
Although the degree of fine-tuning is still debated, these ex- minds inside and outside physics for more than four decades.
amples suggest the existence of parallel universes with other val- But the theory becomes easier to grasp when one distinguishes

46 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MAY 2003

COPYRIGHT 2003 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC.
 LEVEL III MULTIVERSE
QUANTUM MECHANICS PREDICTS a vast number of parallel the world could be (within the scope of quantum mechanics)
universes by broadening the concept of “elsewhere.” These corresponds to a different universe. The parallel universes make
universes are located elsewhere, not in ordinary space but in an their presence felt in laboratory experiments, such as wave
abstract realm of all possible states. Every conceivable way that interference and quantum computation.

Quantum Dice
IMAGINE AN IDEAL DIE whose randomness
is purely quantum. When you roll it, the
die appears to land on a certain value at
random. Quantum mechanics, however,
predicts that it lands on all values at
once. One way to reconcile these
contradictory views is to conclude that
the die lands on different values in
different universes. In one sixth of the
universes, it lands on 1; in one sixth, on 2,
and so on. Trapped within one universe,
we can perceive only a fraction of the full
quantum reality.

Ergodicity The Nature of Time

ACCORDING TO THE PRINCIPLE of ergodicity, quantum parallel MOST PEOPLE THINK of time as a way to describe
universes are equivalent to more prosaic types of parallel universes. change. At one moment, matter has a certain
A quantum universe splits over time into multiple universes (left). arrangement; a moment later, it has another
Yet those new universes are no different from parallel universes that (left). The concept of multiverses suggests an
already exist somewhere else in space— in, for example, other Level I alternative view. If parallel universes contain all
universes (right). The key idea is that parallel universes, of whatever possible arrangements of matter (right), then
type, embody different ways that events could have unfolded. time is simply a way to put those universes into a
sequence. The universes themselves are static;
change is an illusion, albeit an interesting one.

= =

www.sciam.com SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN 47

COPYRIGHT 2003 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC.
between two ways of viewing a physical theory: the outside Tegmark and John Archibald Wheeler; Scientific American,
view of a physicist studying its mathematical equations, like a February 2001]. Some theorists who work on quantum gravity
bird surveying a landscape from high above it, and the inside have questioned unitarity; one concern is that evaporating black
view of an observer living in the world described by the equa- holes might destroy information, which would be a nonunitary
tions, like a frog living in the landscape surveyed by the bird. process. But a recent breakthrough in string theory known as
From the bird perspective, the Level III multiverse is simple. AdS/CFT correspondence suggests that even quantum gravity is
There is only one wave function. It evolves smoothly and de- unitary. If so, black holes do not destroy information but mere-
terministically over time without any kind of splitting or par- ly transmit it elsewhere. [Editors’ note: An upcoming article will
allelism. The abstract quantum world described by this evolv- discuss this correspondence in greater detail.]
ing wave function contains within it a vast number of parallel If physics is unitary, then the standard picture of how quan-
classical story lines, continuously splitting and merging, as well tum fluctuations operated early in the big bang must change.
as a number of quantum phenomena that lack a classical de- These fluctuations did not generate initial conditions at ran-
scription. From their frog perspective, observers perceive only dom. Rather they generated a quantum superposition of all
a tiny fraction of this full reality. They can view their own Lev- possible initial conditions, which coexisted simultaneously. De-
el I universe, but a process called decoherence— which mimics coherence then caused these initial conditions to behave clas-
wave function collapse while preserving unitarity— prevents sically in separate quantum branches. Here is the crucial point:
them from seeing Level III parallel copies of themselves. the distribution of outcomes on different quantum branches
Whenever observers are asked a question, make a snap deci- in a given Hubble volume (Level III) is identical to the distrib-
sion and give an answer, quantum effects in their brains lead to ution of outcomes in different Hubble volumes within a single
a superposition of outcomes, such as “Continue reading the ar- quantum branch (Level I). This property of the quantum fluc-
ticle” and “Put down the article.” From the bird perspective, the tuations is known in statistical mechanics as ergodicity.
act of making a decision causes a person to split into multiple The same reasoning applies to Level II. The process of sym-
copies: one who keeps on reading and one who doesn’t. From metry breaking did not produce a unique outcome but rather
their frog perspective, however, each of these alter egos is un- a superposition of all outcomes, which rapidly went their sep-
aware of the others and notices the branching merely as a slight arate ways. So if physical constants, spacetime dimensionality
randomness: a certain probability of continuing to read or not. and so on can vary among parallel quantum branches at Level
As strange as this may sound, the exact same situation oc- III, then they will also vary among parallel universes at Level II.
curs even in the Level I multiverse. You have evidently decided In other words, the Level III multiverse adds nothing new
to keep on reading the article, but one of your alter egos in a beyond Level I and Level II, just more indistinguishable copies
distant galaxy put down the magazine after the first paragraph. of the same universes— the same old story lines playing out
The only difference between Level I and Level III is where your again and again in other quantum branches. The passionate de-
doppelgängers reside. In Level I they live elsewhere in good old bate about Everett’s theory therefore seems to be ending in a
three-dimensional space. In Level III they live on another quan- grand anticlimax, with the discovery of less controversial mul-
tum branch in infinite-dimensional Hilbert space. tiverses (Levels I and II) that are equally large.
The existence of Level III depends on one crucial assump- Needless to say, the implications are profound, and physi-
tion: that the time evolution of the wave function is unitary. So cists are only beginning to explore them. For instance, consid-
far experimenters have encountered no departures from unitar- er the ramifications of the answer to a long-standing question:
ity. In the past few decades they have confirmed unitarity for Does the number of universes exponentially increase over time?
ever larger systems, including carbon 60 buckyball molecules The surprising answer is no. From the bird perspective, there is
and kilometer-long optical fibers. On the theoretical side, the of course only one quantum universe. From the frog perspective,
case for unitarity has been bolstered by the discovery of deco- what matters is the number of universes that are distinguishable
herence [see “100 Years of Quantum Mysteries,” by Max at a given instant— that is, the number of noticeably different
Hubble volumes. Imagine moving planets to random new lo-
MAX TEGMARK wrote a four-dimensional version of the computer cations, imagine having married someone else, and so on. At the
THE AUTHOR

game Tetris while in college. In another universe, he went on to be- quantum level, there are 10 to the 10118 universes with temper-
come a highly paid software developer. In our universe, however, atures below 108 kelvins. That is a vast number, but a finite one.
he wound up as professor of physics and astronomy at the Uni- From the frog perspective, the evolution of the wave func-
versity of Pennsylvania. Tegmark is an expert in analyzing the tion corresponds to a never-ending sliding from one of these 10
cosmic microwave background and galaxy clustering. Much of his to the 10118 states to another. Now you are in universe A, the
work bears on the concept of parallel universes: evaluating evi- one in which you are reading this sentence. Now you are in uni-
dence for infinite space and cosmological inflation; developing in- verse B, the one in which you are reading this other sentence.
sights into quantum decoherence; and studying the possibility Put differently, universe B has an observer identical to one in
that the amplitude of microwave background fluctuations, the di- universe A, except with an extra instant of memories. All pos-
mensionality of spacetime and the fundamental laws of physics sible states exist at every instant, so the passage of time may be
can vary from place to place. in the eye of the beholder— an idea explored in Greg Egan’s

48 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MAY 2003

COPYRIGHT 2003 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC.
 The Mystery of Probability:
What Are the Odds?
AS MULTIVERSE THEORIES gain credence, the sticky issue of how to becomes severe at Level II, has caused much debate at Level III,
compute probabilities in physics is growing from a minor nuisance and is horrendous at Level IV. At Level II, for instance, Alexander
into a major embarrassment. If there are indeed many identical Vilenkin of Tufts University and others have published predictions
copies of you, the traditional notion of determinism evaporates. for the probability distributions of various cosmological
You could not compute your own future even if you had complete parameters. They have argued that different parallel universes that
knowledge of the entire state of the multiverse, because there is no have inflated by different amounts should be given statistical
way for you to determine which of these copies is you (they all feel weights proportional to their volume. On the other hand, any
they are). All you can predict, therefore, are probabilities for what mathematician will tell you that 2 × ∞ = ∞, so there is no objective
you would observe. If an outcome has a probability of, say, 50 sense in which an infinite universe that has expanded by a factor of
percent, it means that half the observers observe that outcome. two has gotten larger. Moreover, a finite universe with the topology
Unfortunately, it is not an easy task to compute what fraction of a torus is equivalent to a perfectly periodic universe with infinite
of the infinitely many observers perceive what. The answer volume, both from the mathematical bird perspective and from the
depends on the order in which you count them. By analogy, the frog perspective of an observer within it. So why should its infinitely
fraction of the integers that are even is 50 percent if you order smaller volume give it zero statistical weight? After all, even in the
them numerically (1, 2, 3, 4, ...) but approaches 100 percent if you Level I multiverse, Hubble volumes start repeating (albeit in a
sort them digit by digit, the way your word processor would (1, 10, random order, not periodically) after about 10 to the 10 118 meters.
100, 1,000, ...). When observers reside in disconnected universes, If you think that is bad, consider the problem of assigning
there is no obviously natural way in which to order them. Instead statistical weights to different mathematical structures at Level IV.
one must sample from the different universes with some statistical The fact that our universe seems relatively simple has led many
weights referred to by mathematicians as a “measure.” people to suggest that the correct measure somehow involves
This problem crops up in a mild and treatable manner at Level I, complexity. — M.T.

1994 science-fiction novel Permutation City and developed by have. Accordingly, mathematicians commonly say that they
physicist David Deutsch of the University of Oxford, indepen- discover mathematical structures rather than create them.
dent physicist Julian Barbour, and others. The multiverse There are two tenable but diametrically opposed paradigms
framework may thus prove essential to understanding the na- for understanding the correspondence between mathematics
ture of time. and physics, a dichotomy that arguably goes as far back as Pla-
to and Aristotle. According to the Aristotelian paradigm, phys-
Level IV: Other Mathematical Structures ical reality is fundamental and mathematical language is mere-
T H E I N I T I A L C O N D I T I O N S and physical constants in the ly a useful approximation. According to the Platonic paradigm,
Level I, Level II and Level III multiverses can vary, but the the mathematical structure is the true reality and observers per-
fundamental laws that govern nature remain the same. Why ceive it imperfectly. In other words, the two paradigms disagree
stop there? Why not allow the laws themselves to vary? How on which is more basic, the frog perspective of the observer or
about a universe that obeys the laws of classical physics, with the bird perspective of the physical laws. The Aristotelian par-
no quantum effects? How about time that comes in discrete adigm prefers the frog perspective, whereas the Platonic para-
steps, as for computers, instead of being continuous? How digm prefers the bird perspective.
about a universe that is simply an empty dodecahedron? In the As children, long before we had even heard of mathemat-
Level IV multiverse, all these alternative realities actually exist. ics, we were all indoctrinated with the Aristotelian paradigm.
A hint that such a multiverse might not be just some beer- The Platonic view is an acquired taste. Modern theoretical
fueled speculation is the tight correspondence between the physicists tend to be Platonists, suspecting that mathematics de-
worlds of abstract reasoning and of observed reality. Equations scribes the universe so well because the universe is inherently
and, more generally, mathematical structures such as numbers, mathematical. Then all of physics is ultimately a mathematics
vectors and geometric objects describe the world with remark- problem: a mathematician with unlimited intelligence and re-
able verisimilitude. In a famous 1959 lecture, physicist Eugene sources could in principle compute the frog perspective— that
P. Wigner argued that “the enormous usefulness of mathemat- is, compute what self-aware observers the universe contains,
ics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mys- what they perceive, and what languages they invent to describe
terious.” Conversely, mathematical structures have an eerily their perceptions to one another.
real feel to them. They satisfy a central criterion of objective ex- A mathematical structure is an abstract, immutable entity
istence: they are the same no matter who studies them. A the- existing outside of space and time. If history were a movie, the
orem is true regardless of whether it is proved by a human, a structure would correspond not to a single frame of it but to the
SARA CHEN

computer or an intelligent dolphin. Contemplative alien civi- entire videotape. Consider, for example, a world made up of
lizations would find the same mathematical structures as we pointlike particles moving around in three-dimensional space.

www.sciam.com SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN 49

COPYRIGHT 2003 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC.
 LEVEL IV MULTIVERSE
THE ULTIMATE TYPE of parallel universe opens up the full realm of govern them. For example, consider a simple universe: Earth, moon
possibility. Universes can differ not just in location, cosmological and sun, obeying Newton’s laws. To an objective observer, this
properties or quantum state but also in the laws of physics. Existing universe looks like a circular ring (Earth’s orbit smeared out in time)
outside of space and time, they are almost impossible to visualize; the wrapped in a braid (the moon’s orbit around Earth). Other shapes
best one can do is to think of them abstractly, as static sculptures embody other laws of physics (a, b, c, d). This paradigm solves various
that represent the mathematical structure of the physical laws that problems concerning the foundations of physics.

EARTH’S a b
ORBIT SUN

c d

In four-dimensional spacetime— the bird perspective— these do not reside in the same space but exist outside of space and
particle trajectories resemble a tangle of spaghetti. If the frog time. Most of them are probably devoid of observers. This hy-
sees a particle moving with constant velocity, the bird sees a pothesis can be viewed as a form of radical Platonism, assert-
straight strand of uncooked spaghetti. If the frog sees a pair of ing that the mathematical structures in Plato’s realm of ideas or
orbiting particles, the bird sees two spaghetti strands inter- the “mindscape” of mathematician Rudy Rucker of San Jose
twined like a double helix. To the frog, the world is described State University exist in a physical sense. It is akin to what cos-
by Newton’s laws of motion and gravitation. To the bird, it is mologist John D. Barrow of the University of Cambridge refers
described by the geometry of the pasta— a mathematical struc- to as “π in the sky,” what the late Harvard University philoso-
ture. The frog itself is merely a thick bundle of pasta, whose pher Robert Nozick called the principle of fecundity and what
highly complex intertwining corresponds to a cluster of parti- the late Princeton philosopher David K. Lewis called modal re-
cles that store and process information. Our universe is far alism. Level IV brings closure to the hierarchy of multiverses, be-
more complicated than this example, and scientists do not yet cause any self-consistent fundamental physical theory can be BRYAN CHRISTIE DESIGN (left ); ALFRED T. KAMAJIAN (a–d)
know to what, if any, mathematical structure it corresponds. phrased as some kind of mathematical structure.
The Platonic paradigm raises the question of why the uni- The Level IV multiverse hypothesis makes testable predic-
verse is the way it is. To an Aristotelian, this is a meaningless tions. As with Level II, it involves an ensemble (in this case, the
question: the universe just is. But a Platonist cannot help but full range of mathematical structures) and selection effects. As
wonder why it could not have been different. If the universe is mathematicians continue to categorize mathematical struc-
inherently mathematical, then why was only one of the many tures, they should find that the structure describing our world
mathematical structures singled out to describe a universe? A is the most generic one consistent with our observations. Sim-
fundamental asymmetry appears to be built into the very heart ilarly, our future observations should be the most generic ones
of reality. that are consistent with our past observations, and our past ob-
As a way out of this conundrum, I have suggested that com- servations should be the most generic ones that are consistent
plete mathematical symmetry holds: that all mathematical struc- with our existence.
tures exist physically as well. Every mathematical structure cor- Quantifying what “generic” means is a severe problem, and
CREDIT

responds to a parallel universe. The elements of this multiverse this investigation is only now beginning. But one striking and

50 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MAY 2003

COPYRIGHT 2003 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC.
encouraging feature of mathematical structures is that the sym- Which is simpler, the whole set or just one number? Naively,
metry and invariance properties that are responsible for the you might think that a single number is simpler, but the entire
simplicity and orderliness of our universe tend to be generic, set can be generated by quite a trivial computer program,
more the rule than the exception. Mathematical structures tend whereas a single number can be hugely long. Therefore, the
to have them by default, and complicated additional axioms whole set is actually simpler.
must be added to make them go away. Similarly, the set of all solutions to Einstein’s field equations
is simpler than a specific solution. The former is described by
What Says Occam? a few equations, whereas the latter requires the specification of
T H E S C I E N T I F I C T H E O R I E S of parallel universes, therefore, vast amounts of initial data on some hypersurface. The lesson
form a four-level hierarchy, in which universes become pro- is that complexity increases when we restrict our attention to
gressively more different from ours. They might have different one particular element in an ensemble, thereby losing the sym-
initial conditions (Level I); different physical constants and par- metry and simplicity that were inherent in the totality of all the
ticles (Level II); or different physical laws (Level IV). It is iron- elements taken together.
ic that Level III is the one that has drawn the most fire in the In this sense, the higher-level multiverses are simpler. Go-
past decades, because it is the only one that adds no qualita- ing from our universe to the Level I multiverse eliminates the
tively new types of universes. need to specify initial conditions, upgrading to Level II elimi-
In the coming decade, dramatically improved cosmological nates the need to specify physical constants, and the Level IV
measurements of the microwave background and the large- multiverse eliminates the need to specify anything at all. The
scale matter distribution will support or refute Level I by fur- opulence of complexity is all in the subjective perceptions of ob-
ther pinning down the curvature and topology of space. These servers— the frog perspective. From the bird perspective, the
measurements will also probe Level II by testing the theory of multiverse could hardly be any simpler.
chaotic eternal inflation. Progress in both astrophysics and The complaint about weirdness is aesthetic rather than sci-
high-energy physics should also clarify the extent to which entific, and it really makes sense only in the Aristotelian world-
physical constants are fine-tuned, thereby weakening or view. Yet what did we expect? When we ask a profound ques-
strengthening the case for Level II. tion about the nature of reality, do we not expect an answer
If current efforts to build quantum computers succeed, they that sounds strange? Evolution provided us with intuition for
will provide further evidence for Level III, as they would, in the everyday physics that had survival value for our distant an-
essence, be exploiting the parallelism of the Level III multiverse cestors, so whenever we venture beyond the everyday world,
for parallel computation. Experimenters are also looking for we should expect it to seem bizarre.
evidence of unitarity violation, which would rule out Level III. A common feature of all four multiverse levels is that the
Finally, success or failure in the grand challenge of modern simplest and arguably most elegant theory involves parallel uni-
physics— unifying general relativity and quantum field theory— verses by default. To deny the existence of those universes, one
will sway opinions on Level IV. Either we will find a mathe- needs to complicate the theory by adding experimentally un-
matical structure that exactly matches our universe, or we will supported processes and ad hoc postulates: finite space, wave
bump up against a limit to the unreasonable effectiveness of function collapse and ontological asymmetry. Our judgment
mathematics and have to abandon that level. therefore comes down to which we find more wasteful and in-
So should you believe in parallel universes? The principal elegant: many worlds or many words. Perhaps we will gradu-
arguments against them are that they are wasteful and that they ally get used to the weird ways of our cosmos and find its
are weird. The first argument is that multiverse theories are vul- strangeness to be part of its charm.
nerable to Occam’s razor because they postulate the existence
of other worlds that we can never observe. Why should nature MORE TO E XPLORE
be so wasteful and indulge in such opulence as an infinity of dif- Why Is the CMB Fluctuation Level 10 –5? Max Tegmark and Martin Rees in
ferent worlds? Yet this argument can be turned around to ar- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 499, No. 2, pages 526–532; June 1, 1998.
Available online at arXiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9709058
gue for a multiverse. What precisely would nature be wasting?
Is “The Theory of Everything” Merely the Ultimate Ensemble Theory?
Certainly not space, mass or atoms— the uncontroversial Lev-
Max Tegmark in Annals of Physics, Vol. 270, No.1, pages 1–51;
el I multiverse already contains an infinite amount of all three, November 20, 1998. Available online at arXiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9704009
so who cares if nature wastes some more? The real issue here Many Worlds in One. Jaume Garriga and Alexander Vilenkin in Physical
is the apparent reduction in simplicity. A skeptic worries about Review, Vol. D64, No. 043511; July 26, 2001. Available online at
all the information necessary to specify all those unseen worlds. arXiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0102010
But an entire ensemble is often much simpler than one of its Our Cosmic Habitat. Martin Rees. Princeton University Press, 2001.
members. This principle can be stated more formally using the Inflation, Quantum Cosmology and the Anthropic Principle. Andrei Linde
in Science and Ultimate Reality: From Quantum to Cosmos. Edited by J. D.
notion of algorithmic information content. The algorithmic in-
Barrow, P.C.W. Davies and C. L. Harper. Cambridge University Press, 2003.
formation content in a number is, roughly speaking, the length Available online at arXiv.org/abs/hep-th/0211048
of the shortest computer program that will produce that num- The author’s Web site has more information at
ber as output. For example, consider the set of all integers. www.hep.upenn.edu/~max/multiverse.html

www.sciam.com SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN 51

COPYRIGHT 2003 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC.