I have some preliminary thoughts on the possibility of multiverses and would like to vet them through the membership here.
Herbert Sweet
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Are Multiverses Possible?
The speculation on Multiverses or multiple universes reaches as far back as the nineteenth century. Could such a thing be possible?
The answer ‘anything is possible’ first comes to mind but that doesn’t get us very far. To get a better answer we need to start with what we know and work from there.
What we know about the universe is that it consists of space, time, matter and energy and we know more about each of these than we think we do.
Space not only is what separates the heavenly bodies it is what separates the most elementary particles of matter — what ever they are ultimately determined to be.
Time is what separates events. Events are fundamentally the movements of matter or energy through space. There is a commencement, a continuation and a completion. Time is the relationship not only between these stages but is the relationship of the stages to other events. The clock itself; whether measuring the movement of sand in an hourglass, the movement of heavenly bodies such as the earth or the activity of atoms; is measuring the commencement, continuation and completion of an event.
Energy is the flip side of matter which propels it through space. We all know that E = mc 2.
Without matter there would be no time to denote its movement through space as time is but the measurement of that movement. Without particles (matter), there would be no space to separate them as space is what separates particles. Without space, there would be no separation between particles and therefore there could be no particles at all as they would all be fused together. Without energy there would be no matter. Without matter there would be no energy. If there is no ‘E’ on one side of the equation, then there is no ‘m’ on the other side.
As each of these elements is completely wrapped up in the other three, none exist independently. We can only conclude that the universe not only consists of space, time, matter and energy but the universe IS space, time, matter and energy.
If each of these elements is interdependent with each of the others, then none could exist separately outside of the universe. There would be no abstract ‘fields’ of space or time or energy as some have thought.
This common concept of space or time or energy as an abstract foundation for matter is but an extrapolation of the practical reality of these elements. This is no different than any other straight line extrapolation that assumes that activity further removed is the same as what is currently experienced. We’ve seen this before when people extrapolated their observation of a flat reality to the notion that the entire earth was flat. Haven’t we just increased the scale of this kind of faulty logic?
But to speculate that there are multiverses, we need to establish that there is something from which they can arise — some soil for the plants to grow in. If there is no
underlying ‘field’-- no field of energy, no field of time, no field of space-- then there is nothing from which the many universes could arise. Knowing what each of these fields is, we can not conclude that they could exist separately. And even if such was possible, is it reasonable to speculate that any one of these fields could give rise to a universe in which it was but one of the constituents?
Could there have been other points from which other universes arose such as the point from which our universe arose? Behind this question is a hidden implication that is based on our everyday perception of reality. It assumes that there was a time and place from which our universe arose and all other universes could have arisen. But to suggest such, we are unwittingly speculating that there must have been a field of time and space to start with which seems unlikely as previously discussed. So as enticing as the multiverse speculation may be, as we look more closely, we find nothing to sustain it.
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