Recap

Parallel Universes

World-renowned physicist, Dr. Michio Kaku, discussed his newest book Parallel Worlds, which presents what today's trailblazing cosmologists know about the nature of the universe, including its age, its composition, and perhaps even its eventual death.

Hypothesizing about the existence of parallel universes, Kaku said there could be millions of different universes, some that look like our own, but completely invisible to us. "We are prisoners of our sheet of paper (universe)," Kaku explained, while noting that gravity, unlike light and matter, could travel between parallel universes. Since gravity theoretically exists in all parallel worlds, Kaku said we should be able to detect "shadow" matter in these dimensions.

Kaku speculated that parallel universes would allow a sufficiently advanced civilization to escape the death of our universe trillions of years from now. According to Kaku, such a technologically advanced society would be able to "boil space" to create wormhole escape gateways into parallel universes, where they could send DNA-carrying nanobots to recreate their race. Kaku also detailed the civilization types, and discussed global climate change.

Related Articles

In the Beginning...

Our understanding of the universe may be completely transformed when the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) is launched in 2011. It's five year mission: to detect gravitational waves generated by black holes, stars, and neutron stars that orbit each other (binaries).

LISA will travel an Earth's orbit away from the Sun, but follow behind our planet by 30 million miles. It will consist of three freely flying spacecraft 'connected' to one another by laser beams, forming a gigantic triangle of light about three million miles on each side. When a gravity wave hits the triangle, distortions in the laser light will be picked up by the antenna's instruments.

The observatory will be able to detect and measure gravitational waves that have been around since the birth of the universe, and perhaps answer one of mankind's greatest mysteries: how did the universe begin? Read more at JPL's LISA site.

Graphic: JPL