60 Photos So Weird And Wonderful They Belong In Another Universe

A familiar but different world is something we love to wonder about. The multiverse has been the subject of much science fiction. And it’s not just social media pages and artists, either — some scientists are also investigating the possibility.

For example, in his book The Allure of the Multiverse: Extra Dimensions, Other Worlds, and Parallel Universes, physicist Paul Halpern of Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia explores these potential parallel realities, along with their histories and evolutions, and the insights they offer into the nature of science.

"There are different ideas about the multiverse: cultural ideas and scientific ideas. Those notions tend to be very different," Halpern told Scientific American.

"The cultural ideas apply to human life. People wonder what would have happened if they had moved to a different city, taken a different job, decided to pursue different hobbies or had a different relationship. They imagine paths they didn’t take and try to picture what would happen."

In science, Halpern said the idea can be split into the quantum multiverse and the cosmological multiverse.

"The quantum multiverse is a possible answer to the questions of what happens when measurements are taken in quantum physics and how human life is connected to the quantum world," he explained.

That was addressed as early as 1957 by a young graduate student, Hugh Everett III, with the many-worlds interpretation. "He speculated that different possibilities split into different universes—and that humans experience multiple realities but don’t really know about their doppelgängers," Halpern said.