by In some alternate reality, no one is talking about Everything at once everywhere. The extraordinary sci-fi story, created by the Daniels — Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert — closed out its awards season with the jackpot yesterday: the Oscar for best film, one of the seven statuettes he received last night. And although we could spend weeks celebrating the benefits of the film —because there are a lot—, here we cannot stop thinking about just one thing: Could the multiverse proposed by the tape exist in reality?
If you have not seen it, here we leave you, not one, but two reviews that we did. But, in general terms, the central plot of the film is developed around the idea that there are multiple universes. He argues that, in these other realities, there are alternate versions of ourselves: more powerful, more humiliating or even contradictory. That’s why it’s so fascinating. Yes, it may sound like Marvel to you.
We don’t want to drive you crazy. In fact, we warn you that Hugh Everett III, the American physicist who first proposed the theory of parallel universes, was ridiculed by his colleagues at the time, left physics overwhelmed by the complexity of his postulates, and died an early death. A heart attack, in 1982. So take it easy.
What is the multiverse they talk about in Everything at once everywhere?
Yes, the existence of the multiverse has not been proven, but the mere idea continues to keep many up all night. It is a concept with many theories, which at times dances between the scientific and the philosophical. Physicists George Ellis and Joe Silk described the multiverse debate in an article published in Nature in 2014, as a “Battle for the heart and soul of physics.”
One of the simplest explanations about the multiverse that we see in Everything at once everywhere It has to do with the theory of “cosmic inflation”. Let’s go to “multiverse for beginners” mode -because that’s how we asked them to explain it to us.
Does he ring a bell? big Bang? When the Universe grew exponentially in less than the blink of an eye after the Big Bang, some parts of space-time expanded faster than others. This could have created a kind of bubbles that would house their own universes. These other “bubbles” would be parallel universes to ours, which could have very different physical laws. Sort of like the scene in the movie where everyone had sausage hands.
A lot? This explanation may be simpler: the “many worlds interpretation” of quantum mechanics. This has to do with what you explained everett iii —the one with the heart attack. In the world of quantum reality, everything is described in probabilities.
According to this version of the multiverse, any event could have more than one result, either because we make some decision or because some random event occurs that alters everything. Each decision creates an alternate timeline in which we chose something else. Something like what we think when we ask ourselves: what would have happened if…? Except that, in effect, that other thing would be happening in a parallel universe. Like when Evelyn, the protagonist of Everything at once everywhere, universe jumps and can see a world where she decided not to get married. And she saw that it was a happier world.
Could we jump between universes?
The directors of Everything at once everywhere said in an interview with New York Times which were inspired by what we have just explained: both in the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, and in the idea of cosmic bubble universes.
Now: what about being able to jump between these realities, like in the movie? There is still no theory on how to travel between different parallel universes. The closest thing that has been written has to do with the idea that these “bubble universes” collide with each other, leaving a kind of “scars” that could give us some clue to the existence of other realities.
The Daniels explained that their film is less about physics than about how physics makes you feel. “If you could see alternate lives, that would send you into a spiral with all those lives you could have led and those choices you could have made,” Scheinert told The New York Times.
They clarified that their multiverse is less science and more metaphor. “I grew up in a very religious home, so everything mattered… And when it all matters, it’s a horrible experience sailing the world.“, said, for his part, Kwan, the other creative. This is paralyzing: “Everything, every action, is full of regret, and every action is full of guilt.”
Perhaps, in the midst of so much reflection on bubble universes, on the arbitrary or insignificant of our existence, we can come to understand that, in reality, “nothing matters”. And, if nothing matters, everything is possible.
