Does the multiverse, like Marvel, really exist? The physicist explains

“The multiverse is a concept about which we know frighteningly little.” Those words from Doctor Strange to Peter Parker in the recently released Spider-Man: No Return Home are by no means true. Last week, too, the teaser presented by Dr. Estranho at Multiverso da Loucura demonstrated the concept of a multiverse.

So is there any scientific support for this fantasy? While some physicists have suggested that our universe may be just one of many facts, others say this is nothing more than a guess.

Sabine Hussienfelder, a German theoretical physicist, has an interesting insight into the multiverse. In a video posted in 2019 on her YouTube channel, she said, “Belief in the concept of the multiverse is logically equivalent to belief in God. So it is religion, not science.” She explains that science tells us nothing about universes we can’t observe.

Dr. Kinjalk Lochan, assistant professor of physics at IISER Mohali, who specializes in the fields of general relativity, black holes and the primordial universe, also studies this topic.

Most physicists say the concept of the multiverse is speculation or science fiction. So why do some think it might exist?

Let me instill some optimism for the sake of the discussion, without committing myself to being a proponent of the concept. With the advent of quantum mechanics came a wonderful idea – that it is unimaginably difficult to completely rule out something. Each process has some probability of occurrence – low or high – but it is rarely zero.

Everything we see, learn and generally understand is based on the experiences we have – experiences gained on the scale (size and energy) in which we usually live. There is usually a well-understood flow of events from which we draw some inferences according to the logic. For example, if someone is in front of me, I will conclude that they are not anywhere else at that moment.

At the microscopic level, however, two or more realities can coexist – an electron, for example, can live simultaneously “here” and “there” (proved by experiments). The famous example of Schrödinger’s cat shows that a cat can be both dead and alive if combined with a microscopic particle whose presence “here” or “there” kills or saves the cat.

These concepts lead to the idea that when the universe was born, it was also a microscopic entity. So there must have been a million possibilities for coexistence as well. The question is what happened to these other possibilities? Did they disappear in favor of the one we see or did they all really coexist? I dare say we don’t know for sure.