How Many Multiverses Are There?

[Music]

in 1828 amateur cartographer edward

quinn finished his magnum opus

the historical

atlas

published two years after his death it

depicts our knowledge of the world as a

flickering light blowing away clouds of

ignorance unveiling continents and

civilizations shrouded beneath

it starts in 2348 bc beginning with the

bible the dispersal of the clouds mirror

european expansion into the lands beyond

his known world little more than the

lands of the euphrates and tigris rivers

time marches on as we step through the

pages of the atlas through the exodus of

the israelites and the coming of the

roman empire more of the world is

revealed

by the early 19th century the clouds are

fully dispersed

all the continents are visible there is

no more land left to discover

of course for the artist in china india

australia or the americas the focus

would be different each with their own

origin story their own small portion of

the world surrounded by their own

darkness

and indeed these clouds are not solely

geographical

all human endeavors begin in a fog of

mystery a fog that only begins to clear

when we learn something new

like the sheathed surface of the earth

clouds of mystery have also shrouded

the universe

over the last few hundred years we have

turned our attention to the heavens with

our most powerful telescopes we have

peered deeper and deeper into the cosmos

we have spied stars and galaxies black

holes and planets we have peered back

over 13 billion years and seen the very

afterglow of creation we can even deduce

the future history of our universe

looking to the days of the last star

trillions of years hence and even

further to the time when mata melts and

black holes evaporate

one by one the universe has given up its

secrets

the cosmic clouds have steadily been

lifted

it might now appear that we have learned

all there is to learn about the cosmos

but just as the polymath simon newcombe

found after claiming we had reached the

limits of astronomy in 1888 and dying in

1909 as einstein was upending the world

of physics it is always a bad idea to

bet against further

discoveries

and so this is where scientists find

themselves

now

standing tall on towers of complex

equations elaborate theories and

remarkable observational tools they try

to peer further

into

the fog

but unlike quinn's atlas

this is not only a fog

of distance

these are clouds that linger around us

within us

before us

these are new universes born beyond our

cosmic horizon in our distant cosmic

past even inside us with every instance

that passes

as our knowledge of theoretical physics

has grown what had once seemed radical

has gradually forced its way into

possibility and even probability

multiverse theories have proliferated

hoping to answer the deepest questions

about what we

and the entire cosmos

is

from parallel worlds of infinite use to

barren deserts of endless nothing

scientists are blowing away the cosmic

fog of unknowing revealing a warped

russian doll of infinities nestled both

within and right next to each other

[Music]

welcome

to the multiverses

[Music]

according to the european space agency

there are approximately 106 stillion

stars in the observable universe and

across the cosmos they form huge

filaments and clusters but on a more

personal level have you ever wondered

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in april 1920 a great debate was held at

the smithsonian museum of natural

history in washington dc

on the stage were harlow shapley and

heber curtis

both renowned astronomers shapley was

well known for mapping the locations of

stars throughout the milky way curtis

the first to observe a thin stream of

material in the object m87 though he

didn't know it at the time he had

discovered a relativistic jet of matter

ejected from an immense black hole

the topic of their debate

just how big is the universe

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the two camps presented their arguments

shapley argued that the cosmos was small

the stars of the milky way he claimed

were the entire universe

that was it there was nothing beyond

he knew that astronomers had spied

several strange nebulae through their

telescopes but these he told the

audience were features buried within the

stars of the milky way curtis however

objected he was no fan of this compact

cosmos instead he argued the universe

was a large much larger than most

astronomers were comfortable with the

spiral nebuli he declared were not

within the milky way but were many

millions of light years away each was an

island universe an individual galaxy

home to billions of stars and there

could be uncountable galaxies beyond the

edge of the milky way

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eventually the debate came to a close

the audience had been taken on a wild

ride across the universe but there was

no clear winner

shapley and curtis went their separate

ways and the size of the universe

remained unsolved

but things were changing quickly

on the other side of the country edwin

hubble had recently joined the mount

wilson observatory in california he was

on a quest to answer the question of the

size of the universe

once and for all the timing was

fortuitous as the world's largest

telescope the 100-inch hooker had just

been installed it was the ideal

instrument for surveying the sky and

charting the distances to heavenly

bodies and hubble's first target was the

fuzzy nebula in the constellation of

andromeda he knew that astronomers had

seen individual stars within andromeda's

nebula but just how far away were they

they could be intrinsically faint stars

that were closer or they could be