I walked into my classroom as always, took out my laptop, and began getting the presentation ready. And those students are presenting uniquely remote-learning problems. The problem is that the bizarre power surge (or whatever it was) mixed up some of the 2020 universes, and even though classes are meeting in person in this alternate universe, remotely learning students from our universe are showing up. In this parallel universe, Astro 101 classes are conducted in person. Imagine, if you will, that somewhere “out there” is a universe just like ours, alike in every way but one. There really is no other explanation for 2020. While there are several dozen more mundane explanations that should be ticked off the list long before invoking “proof of parallel universes,” the whole notion of co-mingling universes has actually been at the forefront of many instructors’ minds this year. It was merely pointing out the curious case of a signal similar to the high-energy particles from a cosmic ray shower that appeared to be going up instead of down. Apparently one energetic particle had somehow escaped the bounds of its universe, its wreckage discovered by NASA’s balloon craft, the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna.Įxcept… that’s not what the discovery’s announcement suggested at all. Oh, sure, in the spring of 2020, there was quite a lot of excitement that NASA had somehow found evidence for a parallel universe in which particles move backward in time - at least that was the story if you believe the tabloids. Our observations are, as far as we can tell, restricted to this universe. The problem with treating multiverse ideas scientifically is that there seems to be no place to start. If you start looking into actuarial tables, this prospect will start to seem more terrifying than enchanting. In this second picture of the multiverse, you - and everyone else who has ever lived - have made every possible decision and have lived every possible life. Or perhaps at every instant in time, every possible outcome of every quantum mechanical roll-of-the-dice splits into its own universe. Why should our universe with its laws and its history be the only one? Perhaps beyond our observational horizon exist other universes that are cut off from the one we can measure. The idea of parallel universes or a multiverse is an intriguing one, even to astronomers. And finally everyone is back where they should be, but perhaps a bit wiser. Then a solution presents itself, whether it’s 1.21 Gigawatts or resetting the Heisenberg Focusing Device or closing the gate to the Upside-down. Long after the viewer realizes it, the character comes to understand that a power surge contaminated the timeline or some cosmic anomaly thrust our intrepid heroes into a mirror universe or…something. Our protagonist winds up in an environment that seems familiar, but something is off. Image: Maybe the multiverse is to blame for our pandemic-filled year? 4) issue of Mercury magazine, an ASP members-only quarterly publication. This article was originally published in the Autumn 2020 (vol.