Why Detecting a Parallel Universe May be Impossible

   

Are there parallel universes? And how will we know? Researchers from the universities of Calgary and Waterloo in Canada and the University of Geneva in Switzerland have published a paper this week in Physical Review Letters explaining why we don't usually see the physical effects of quantum mechanics and why it may be impossible to ever detect a parallel universe (at current levels of scientific knowledge).
 

"Quantum physics works fantastically well on small scales but when it comes to larger scales, it is nearly impossible to count photons very well. We have demonstrated that this makes it hard to see these effects in our daily life," says Dr. Christoph Simon, who teaches in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Calgary and is one of the lead authors of the paper entitled: Coarse-graining makes it hard to see micro-macro entanglement.

It's well known that quantum systems are fragile. When a photon interacts with its environment, even just a tiny bit, the superposition is destroyed. Superposition is a fundamental principle of quantum physics that says that systems can exist in all their possible states simultaneously. But when measured, only the result of one of the states is given.

This effect is known as decoherence, and it has been studied intensively over the last few decades. The idea of decoherence as a thought experiment was raised by Erwin Schrödinger, one of the founding fathers of quantum physics, in his famous cat paradox: a cat in a box can be both dead and alive at the same time.

But, according to the authors of this study, it turns out that decoherence is not the only reason why quantum effects are hard to see. Seeing quantum effects requires extremely precise measurements. Simon and his team studied a concrete example for such a "cat" by using a particular quantum state involving a large number of photons.

"We show that in order to see the quantum nature of this state, one has to be able to count the number of photons in it perfectly," says Simon. "This becomes more and more difficult as the total number of photons is increased. Distinguishing one photon from two photons is within reach of current technology, but distinguishing a million photons from a million plus one is not."

The Daily Galaxy via University of Calgary

Image credit: With thanks to http://robtatedesign.com/syringe-mems-paralels/

Comments

[Bob Greenwade]

So observing parallel universes is impossible with our current level of technology. Isn't that a "Department of Duh" observation? I'm not meaning to be disparaging here (especially since, this criticism aside, the article is generally quite well-written), but this does strike me as rather obvious. After all, if it was within our current level of technology, we would have already done it. For that matter, if we were even close, we'd be talking about it from that angle.

That's why, in my books, I added a parallel world of advanced technology, since otherwise the most technologically advanced world would be the one nearly identical to our own, and observation of and travel between worlds is far too advanced for our technology.

(Also, this isn't so much observing a parallel universe as observing what we sci-fi authors like to call an "alternate timeline." A "parallel universe" would be one occupying a different space than our own. But that, I admit, is just picking nits and not a real criticism.)

[pult]

We don't know nearly enough about how the universe actually works to make a claim like this. This is like a 4 year old thinking they know enough to comment on differential equations.

[pult]

do you think...we can't and won't ever get off this planet let alone anything like that...

[Jonathan]

Can you please link to original articles when you reference them?

[orgasmictomato]

Whilst ever any science academia has closed thoughts on any subject and disregards theories and discoveries by laymen, they will always be a second fiddle in the orchestra of life.
Try pointing some of your supposed educated minds toward my discoveries and try to explain them as natural already found goals of science.... as infrared dimension could be a understood parallel universe, but not in your books of theory. As not one page of written papers are published on searching dimensional boundaries with laser technology as I do with results of many, many objects, slow and fast traveling through the atmosphere of this planet and as yet unexplained by so called modern science, including University of Calgary.
It is easy for you to close your eyes on subjects you cannot achieve is it not?

[smartypants]

orgasmictomato
You gotta admit, when the author of a report is named orgasmictomato, you kind of think its about gardening.

pult
Are you saying we don't know nearly enough about how the universe actually works to not know how to see alternate universes?

[DwarfGalaxy]

It is not, and going there is also not impossible, and even create one, but may take a while :)

[ravitheja]

no we can detect parallel universe. Parallel universe exist. Black hole is one type of warmhole that connects two universes. Ofcourse the middle part of the black hole is so shrinked that no one will enter and cross to other universe if that shrinkage is less then a person enters into a black hole can exist in other universe by travelling with infinite speed

[SB]

Black Holes connect two universes?

Prove it.

The make up of a BH is pure speculation at this point. It could be a mere physical unit consisting of an event horizon only where all it's mass resides in equilibrium.