We often hear about universes splitting, they're being multiple versions of the universe of ourselves. I don't know if that's just sort of, we've got carried away with the science fiction or if there's better language that we should be using to describe what the physics actually says. You know, this debate over language goes back to Everett himself and his thesis advisor, who was John Wheeler,. They butted heads a little bit because Everett introduced the language of the universe splitting. So he really hung on to that language as being metaphorical, but vivid and accurate.
The film Everything Everywhere All at Once won the 2023 Academy Award for Best Picture. In this episode from March 2023, just before the Oscars, Ian Sample spoke to the theoretical physicist and philosopher Sean Carroll about why we seem to be drawn to the idea of multiple worlds, and what the science says about how the multiverse might actually work. Help support our independent journalism at
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