oxford Blog and Journals

I will simply echo the sentiments of my beloved blogger sister, Melissa: HOLY ZOMG, THIS IS THE COOLEST THING ON THE PLANET.

Seriously, I can't even begin to stress how gigantically huge this discovery is. If it pans out fully, our entire perception of the world will by systematically changed.

But let me back up and try to explain this to you. (You can find the source article here.)

• The parallel universe theory, first proposed in 1950 by the US physicist Hugh Everett, helps explain mysteries of quantum mechanics that have baffled scientists for decades, it is claimed.

  In Everett's "many worlds" universe, every time a new physical possibility is explored, the universe splits. Given a number of possible alternative outcomes, each one is played out - in its own universe.

There was an awesome (though Mulderless) episode of The X Files in Season 9 called "4D" that addressed this very issue; in many ways, it confused the fuck out of fans, simply because it's incredibly difficult to think about our world in this way.

The episode centered around a man who could simply travel in between parallel universes. In one, he was a meek and shy mother's boy. In another, he was a ruthless killer and a psychopath. Obviously, the writers took some physical and scientific liberties, but the basic science was there: At any given time, when any action occurs at the physical and subatomic level, the universe "splits" into all of the given possibilities.

Do you realize what this means?????

• A motorist who has a near miss, for instance, might feel relieved at his lucky escape. But in a parallel universe, another version of the same driver will have been killed. Yet another universe will see the motorist recover after treatment in hospital. The number of alternative scenarios is endless.

  It is a bizarre idea which has been dismissed as fanciful by many experts. But the new research from Oxford shows that it offers a mathematical answer to quantum conundrums that cannot be dismissed lightly - and suggests that Dr Everett, who was a Phd student at Princeton University when he came up with the theory, was on the right track.

  Commenting in New Scientist magazine, Dr Andy Albrecht, a physicist at the University of California at Davis, said: "This work will go down as one of the most important developments in the history of science."

Most assuredly. This could explain so many unexplained phenomenon that we experience in this universe: UFOs could be ships from parallel universes. Ghosts could come from another universe. People disappearing out of thin air could be attributed to this as well.

Ok, I'm certainly getting way ahead of myself. This is still just a proposed mathematical theory that explains a lot. But just imagine how amazing this would be!!!!!!