Parallel Universes

For those who have played the Delta Episode, you'll be a little familiar with the idea of parallel universes. People have long speculated that there may be other worlds alongside our own, but recent research has shown they may actually exist.

First, an explanation: matter is made of atoms. Atoms are made of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Basic science, something every grade school student knows. However, the universe doesn't stop at atoms and particles. We've discovered tiny bits that make up protons and neutrons called quarks. These quarks seem to be the building blocks for everything from light, to gravity, to matter. Photons and electrons are some commonly-known quarks, along with some stranger ones with names like Higgs-Boson. Despite seeing these quarks, however, scientists didn't understand why they acted differently. The answer they've come up with is called String Theory.

String Theory says that, instead of being simple dots made of different stuff, each type of quark is a tiny, vibrating loop, a lot like a rubber band. A quark's type depends on how it vibrates; one way makes it an electron, another makes it a graviton, and so on. However, due to a lot of very, very complicated math (that I neither fully understand nor will try to describe here), some problems started to pop up. According to String Theory, there's no reason for anything to happen any one way. If something can happen, it should. We know this isn't true - if you flip a coin, it either lands on heads or tails - but String Theory says it has to land on heads, tails, on its side, and in every way it ever could. The answer we've developed: it does land in every possible way... just not in our reality.

And so we come to the idea of parallel universes. Whenever you make a choice, whenever something can happen in multiple different ways, the universe splits. Each possible result occurs, just in a different reality. Anything that could have happened has happened somewhere. And now, scientists have a way to prove it. Using the Large Hadron Collider (a gigantic metal tube designed to smash particles together very quickly and see what happens), scientists will soon be able to prove whether or not other realities exist, by testing for gravity effects from these other universes.

So... what do you think? Does the idea of other realities sound cool, scary, or just plain silly? What do you think other realities might be like?