Mirror Universes

It is a staple of science fiction: the mirror world or mirror universe, or parallel universe. Star Trek has used it any number of times, as have some of the Marvel movies. You know, the characters you are following somehow transition to an alternate universe where there are copies of themselves, but the alternate universe selves are altered. Perhaps if the originals are good, the alternates are bad. Or, perhaps the captain in one universe is a bricklayer in the other.

It is a fun concept to play around with in a fictional setting, but like the concept of travel, it doesn’t really work if you think about it too hard. There could certainly be other universes that were belched out of the Big Bang at the same time ours was. They might even start out with the same materials in the same quantities. But a parallel universe? One that has another version of you and me in it? That doesn’t work. The two universes would have to be absolutely identical and our doppelgangers doing the same things we are, in other words, no different from our universe: indistinguishable. Or it would be completely different. Because even if they started out identical, any change that happened three seconds after the Big Bang would propagate an infinite number of further changes.

In the Star Trek episode “Mirror, Mirror,” we learn that Kirk’s doppelganger became captain by assassinating Captain Pike. A big change like that would change everything that happened after it. A change like that, if it happened a thousand years earlier, would make the parallel universe unrecognizable. There would be no “parallels.” The only way for this to work would be that everything in both universes was identical for billions of years and only started to diverge from each other very recently. What would make them identical for billions of years and then suddenly diverge? It doesn’t make any logical sense (other than as a plot device).

Some scientists have theorized the possible existence of other universes. But there is no reason to believe those universes would be similar to ours; indeed, those universes would not necessarily even be governed by the same laws of physics that our universe is.

But in a fictional world parallel universes and time travel can be great fun. Endless stories could be generated by them. Just don’t think about them too hard.

Star Liner

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