Parallel universes

[Magical Realist]

This thread is accounts/discussion regarding the possibility of parallel universes and their interaction with our own. What do you think? Could there be many more cases like the following?

"
On a seemingly normal day in 1954, a seemingly normal man allegedly flew into Tokyo, but upon landing at the Tokyo International Airport, his seemingly normal trip had taken a very drastic turn for the weird. When he handed over his passport to be stamped, the man was immediately interrogated as to the whereabouts of his origins. It wasn’t a case of racial profiling: While his passport looked authentic, it listed a country no one had ever heard of called Taured.

The mystery man claimed his country was located between France and Spain, but when he was asked to point it out on a map, he pointed to the Principality of Andorra. Insisting he had never heard of Andorra and that Taured had existed for 1,000 years, he claimed that he was in Japan on business, something he had been doing for the past five years. His passport seemed to back up his story, as it was covered in previous customs and visa stamps, and he carried with him legal currency from several European countries. He even had a driver’s license issued by the mysterious country and a checkbook containing checks from an unknown bank.

After more interrogation and confusion for both parties, the traveler was sent to a nearby hotel until an official decision could be reached. There, two immigration officials stood outside the hotel door until morning. It was then that they discovered the mystery man had vanished without a trace, which was troubling, since the only possible exit was a window with no ledge 15 stories above a busy street. The Tokyo police department conducted an extensive search but continually came up empty-handed. Hopefully, if he really was from a parallel Earth, he was able to find a way back to the comforts of his home in Taured."

Then there's the case of Lerina Garcia in Spain:

"In July 2008, a well-educated 41-year-old woman named Lerina Garcia woke up in her bed on what seemed to like an ordinary day. However, as she went on with her normal routine, she claims she found small details that seemed peculiar. For example, her sheets and pajamas were different from what she remembered wearing to bed. She resolved to brush off this curiosity and drove to her place of work, where she had been employed for 20 years. However, upon arriving at her department, she realized it wasn’t actually her department, despite being in its usual location on its usual floor.

Having decided that something weird was definitely going on, she returned home only to find the man from whom she says she had separated six months before, who acted like the separation had never taken place. Her new lover, whom she claimed she had been seeing for four months, was nowhere to be found. Even after hiring a private detective, his whereabouts remained unknown. There was no trace of him at his alleged residence nor any trace of his family.

While it seems more likely that Garcia’s perceptions are the result of some neurological malfunction, she believes she woke up in a parallel universe. Unfortunately for the alleged dimensional traveler, Garcia has not been able to return to her normal universe, leaving her stuck in a dimension where she doesn’t belong with a boyfriend she can’t get rid of.

 

[Magical Realist]

"In May 1972, four girls were allegedly driving back to Southern Utah University after spending their Saturday at a rodeo in Pioche. While crossing the desolate Utah-Nevada state line at around 10:00 PM, they came upon a fork in the highway, where they veered to the left and began driving through Gadianton Canyon. Suddenly, the black pavement turned to white cement. Believing they had simply taken a wrong turn, the girls headed back the way they came, but to their surprise, they were suddenly driving past grain fields and ponderosa pines with no desert in sight.

They decided to stop at a roadside tavern to ask for directions but quickly changed their minds after one of the girls began screaming hysterically. Four egg-shaped vehicles mounted on tricycle wheels with bright lights shining from the top of them began speeding after them. The petrified girls sped back through the canyon as the white cement changed back to its normal black asphalt, leading them into the familiar desert. After wrecking in a creek, leaving them with three flat tires, they waited until morning to hike to Highway 56, where they flagged down an obviously skeptical state trooper.

As outlandish as their story seemed, the tire tracks they left are difficult to explain. The only tire tracks left by the girls’ Chevy ended abruptly only 200 meters (about 600 ft) into the desert, which leaves the mystery of how the girls ended up over 3 kilometers (2 mi) north of the highway with no physical evidence of their travels. The car was also missing a hubcap that was never located. Maybe it got lost somewhere in the Utah desert, or maybe it’s being displayed at a museum on the parallel Earth.

 

[zgmc]

I like to think that it could be possible. Stories like those are interesting, but doubtful. There are probably more stories like that our there.

 

[youreyes]

we could potentially be going into a parallel universe when we die.

 

[James R]

These stories are all anecdotal. I assume there's no documentary or other supporting evidence?

For example, the guy from Taured. Did anybody keep copies of his passport and other documentation, money and so on? Where are they now? And have there been any further developments in the case sine 1954?

Such stories are easy to invent or fake. If you're actually planning on believing in parallel universes, you'd better gather better evidence than a few old wives' tales.

 

[Magical Realist]

These stories are all anecdotal. I assume there's no documentary or other supporting evidence?

For example, the guy from Taured. Did anybody keep copies of his passport and other documentation, money and so on? Where are they now? And have there been any further developments in the case sine 1954?

Such stories are easy to invent or fake. If you're actually planning on believing in parallel universes, you'd better gather better evidence than a few old wives' tales.

I have no reason to think these stories are invented or faked. Do you? Why would someone make up something like that? They don't. And as for the evidence for parallel worlds, start here:

http://rt.com/usa/202255-many-interacting-worlds-quantum-mechanics/

 

[youreyes]

If you're actually planning on believing in parallel universes, you'd better gather better evidence than a few old wives' tales.

I know...you didn't expect proof.
But such exists.

By Max Tegmark of University of Pennsylvania

I survey physics theories involving parallel universes, which form a natural four-level
hierarchy of multiverses allowing progressively greater diversity.

Level I: A generic prediction of
inflation is an infinite ergodic universe, which contains Hubble volumes realizing all initial conditions
— including an identical copy of you about 10^29 m away.

Level II: In chaotic inflation, other
thermalized regions may have different physical constants, dimensionality and particle content.

Level III: In unitary quantum mechanics, other branches of the wavefunction add nothing qualitatively
new, which is ironic given that this level has historically been the most controversial.

Level IV: Other mathematical structures give different fundamental equations of physics. The key question is
not whether parallel universes exist (Level I is the uncontroversial cosmological concordance model),
but how many levels there are. I discuss how multiverse models can be falsified and argue that there
is a severe “measure problem” that must be solved to make testable predictions at levels II-IV.

http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/multiverse.pdf

 

[James R]

If there's an identical copy of me $$10^{10^{29}}$$ m away, the question is how can that other me swap places with me, here, as the stories above want to imply?

 

[James R]

I have no reason to think these stories are invented or faked. Do you?

Too early to tell for sure. There's just not enough information to go on. But extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence, and sadly the evidence presented here so far is very far from extraordinary.

Why would someone make up something like that?

Fame. Money. Because they are a pathological liar. Because they love a good sci-fi story. Who knows? There are many possibilities. It's the same crowd that make up stories about telepathy, alien visitation, crystal power, the Curse of the Pharoahs etc.

 

[Magical Realist]

Fame. Money. Because they are a pathological liar. Because they love a good sci-fi story. Who knows? There are many possibilities. It's the same crowd that make up stories about telepathy, alien visitation, crystal power, the Curse of the Pharoahs etc.

So they're part of some despicable "crowd" are they? Fraudulant hoaxters after a buck. Hisss...lol!
Sorry. I don't buy that for a moment. I think people generally tell the truth about the experiences they have. And I think when they come forward about experiences that may even make them scorned as nutty, as you are doing in a sort of kneejerk fashion, they should be believed all the more.

 

[Magical Realist]

If there's an identical copy of me $$10^{10^{29}}$$ m away, the question is how can that other me swap places with me, here, as the stories above want to imply?

You're saying we should know everything about parallel world interaction before believing it? Nonsense. We believe in the Big Bang, and noone knows how that happened.

 

[youreyes]

If there's an identical copy of me $$10^{10^{29}}$$ m away, the question is how can that other me swap places with me, here, as the stories above want to imply?

simple, death. If you recall from schrodinger's cat story, the dead cat is also alive in quantum universe sense.

 

[James R]

So they're part of some despicable "crowd" are they? Fraudulant hoaxters after a buck. Hisss...lol!

I know you don't. Your mind is so open that you believe just about anything that could be labelled new-age woo. Alien spaceships, ghosts, psychic powers, parallel lives, talking to dead people, etc. You seem to apply no critical faculty to any paranormal claim that anybody makes. I suppose you feel you are part of an alternative community who knows the "real truth" or something.

I think people generally tell the truth about the experiences they have. And I think when they come forward about experiences that may even make them scorned as nutty, as you are doing in a sort of kneejerk fashion, they should be believed all the more.

It really depends. The whole paranormal field is rife with fraudsters and others who are out to make a buck or just to get their 15 minutes of fame. Sure, there are some honest people who mistake unusual or unfamiliar occurrences for something supernatural, but it's very hard to sort the wheat from the chaff when it comes to the paranormal.

In the paranormal "community", standards of acceptable "proof" are so lax as to be virtually non-existent. Tell a good story, or post a fuzzy photo, or describe your (perhaps imagined) odd experience and the community will hail you as another example of whatever paranormal phenomenon you're describing. There's generally no attempt to investigate claims scientifically, or even to worry about who is making the claim and what might motivate them to make it. There's also usually no attempt to find mundane explanations for claimed paranormal phenomena. These people invariably want just to believe without question.

You're saying we should know everything about parallel world interaction before believing it? Nonsense. We believe in the Big Bang, and noone knows how that happened.

No. What I'm saying is that there should be some kind of persuasive evidence of parallel world interaction before we believe it.

The big bang is quite different. That is a scientific theory that makes quantitative predictions that can be tested against what we observe of our universe. We only have to look to see the universe expanding. We can measure the ratio of hydrogen to helium in the universe and compare it to the ratio predicted by the theory. We believe the theory because it has explanatory power. That is, it explains established facts that would otherwise go unexplained, in a way that is consistent with everything else we know about how the world works.

When it comes to your parallel-world stories, things are different. You have a bunch of unestablished "facts" that have little to no evidence to back them up. And you have a theory that departs completely from everything else we know for sure about how our world works. In other words, fantasy piled on fantasy. A house built on air.

 

[Magical Realist]

I know you don't. Your mind is so open that you believe just about anything that could be labelled new-age woo. Alien spaceships, ghosts, psychic powers, parallel lives, talking to dead people, etc. You seem to apply no critical faculty to any paranormal claim that anybody makes. I suppose you feel you are part of an alternative community who knows the "real truth" or something.

An alternative community that knows the "real truth"? You mean as opposed to the skeptical community that knows the "real truth". I'm not part of any community like that. I just accept accounts of people about their own experiences. You apparently make judgements about their character that enable you to dismiss them as frauds. That's a kind of knowledge I'm not privy to. In fact I avoid making such assumptions on principle.

It really depends. The whole paranormal field is rife with fraudsters and others who are out to make a buck or just to get their 15 minutes of fame. Sure, there are some honest people who mistake unusual or unfamiliar occurrences for something supernatural, but it's very hard to sort the wheat from the chaff when it comes to the paranormal.

If it's so hard to tell the honest from the fakes, then how did you ever arrive at the knowledge that the field is rife with fraudsters and buck makers? Have you interviewed these people? Do you know them personally? Ofcourse not. You're making moral judgements about people you don't even know who claim to have experiences that you can't explain. You're labeling them rather that considering the validity of their experience. And that's not very objective of you. Just because someone has an experience that you can't explain doesn't mean they're lying.

In the paranormal "community", standards of acceptable "proof" are so lax as to be virtually non-existent. Tell a good story, or post a fuzzy photo, or describe your (perhaps imagined) odd experience and the community will hail you as another example of whatever paranormal phenomenon you're describing. There's generally no attempt to investigate claims scientifically, or even to worry about who is making the claim and what might motivate them to make it. There's also usually no attempt to find mundane explanations for claimed paranormal phenomena. These people invariably want just to believe without question.

Oh really? People WANT to believe they're being abducted by aliens? People WANT to believe they're being haunted by a ghost? People WANT to believe they came from another dimension? I doubt that. Most people just want to live their normal lives and be happy. When they have a jolting experience with something maddening that disrupts that, it's not like they were looking for it. Most encounters with the paranormal are highly disturbing if not traumatic events people AREN'T looking for.

No. What I'm saying is that there should be some kind of persuasive evidence of parallel world interaction before we believe it.

I gave you three accounts of such and you dismissed them immediately. How can there be evidence like this when you proclaim all accounts of such are hoaxes?

The big bang is quite different. That is a scientific theory that makes quantitative predictions that can be tested against what we observe of our universe. We only have to look to see the universe expanding. We can measure the ratio of hydrogen to helium in the universe and compare it to the ratio predicted by the theory. We believe the theory because it has explanatory power. That is, it explains established facts that would otherwise go unexplained, in a way that is consistent with everything else we know about how the world works.

Noone has any clue what led to the Big Bang. While there is evidence that it happened, how it happened remains a mystery. Hence we have an unexplained event right there at the beginning of time. Seems it wouldn't be hard to admit the existence of other unexplained events.

When it comes to your parallel-world stories, things are different. You have a bunch of unestablished "facts" that have little to no evidence to back them up. And you have a theory that departs completely from everything else we know for sure about how our world works. In other words, fantasy piled on fantasy. A house built on air.

We have multiple firsthand accounts by people about their experiences. That's enough to lead us to suspect something real is going on. People don't get together and decide to fabricate the same sorts of stories. And we don't dismiss them just because we lack an explanation for them. I don't know what that is, but it's certainly not science.