Big Bang Waves Suggest We Live in a Multiverse

If you’ve heard news reports of big discoveries related to the Big Bang and don’t know what to make of it, or why it should matter, you may be amazed to find that scientists have made one of the biggest discoveries about the beginning and nature of our universe–confirming that our universe began from something very, very small, and there was rapid inflation that left its mark in the form of gravitational waves.

Recent findings by physicists working with data from observations of cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation at the time of the Big Bang suggest that our universe experienced a time of extraordinarily rapid expansion called inflation… which in turn provides support for the idea that new “pocket universes” can be formed.

The basic idea of inflation is that spacetime is physically infinite… a fabric stretched out farther than we can fully imagine. Even more amazingly, the notion of “eternal inflation” predicts there will be an infinite number of Big Bang universes separate and distinct from ours, bursting forth endlessly from an underlying matrix. While most other Big Bang universes are likely to be quite different from ours, parallel universes are now viewed to be more than just a theory, and in fact predictions of particular theories.

This new research is generating tremendous excitement based on data collected by the BICEP2 telescope in Antarctica, where scientists have been searching for evidence of a particular type of polarization existing in the cosmic radiation found everywhere in our universe after the Big Bang. BICEP stands for “Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization,” and the BICEP2 telescope is the second version of this research device. Scientists working with BICEP and BICEP2 have found primordial b-mode gravitational waves, indicating that light was polarized by existence of uniformly distributed influence of gravity on light from a time period of 380,000 years after the Big Bang.

What makes the discovery of these gravitational waves so remarkable is the phenomenal power and frequency of these waves at the time they were formed–on the order of about 10 to the sixteenth gigaelectronvolts, or 10 trillion times the peak energies found at the world’s largest operating particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)… energies so high, in fact, that physicists expect that three of the four fundamental forces in physics (the weak, the strong, and the electromagnetic forces) would operate as one. This is the first observation of quantum gravity at work, providing real evidence of a quantum connection to gravity.

While the BICEP2 results were confirmed by corroborating reports from an earlier version of BICEP utilizing different equipment, physicists are expressing cautious enthusiasm until such time as the Planck telescope provides confirmation that these gravity waves can be found in Planck’s view of the CMB, too.

And where does all this lead? The next steps for physicists looking back as far as possible to the very beginnings of this universe are to integrate new data with existing and emerging theories. Multiverse theories are gaining tremendous ground, now that inflation appears to have moved from theory to fact.

I am tremendously excited about these findings because I have been following a great deal of multidisciplinary studies, all suggesting we live in a holographic multiverse, as discussed in the book, Quantum Jumps, in which quantum effects influence much more than just the microscopic realm.

You can view the video summary of this at:

http://youtu.be/TdzLf0DpRUY

Nelson Mandela Didn’t Die in Prison, and Why it Matters

“The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”   – Mark Twain

If you remember seeing media coverage of Nelson Mandela having died in prison in the 1980s, and you’re wondering why he’s just this month been reported dead again, you’re in good company. Mandela is one of the most commonly discussed celebrities who has been seen alive after having been reported dead. When we personally witness disparities between events we remember having happened and what reliable physical evidence suggests has occurred, we might at first feel a sense of dissonance. Fortunately, we need not stay confused, since noticing the differences between our memories and evidence in our current reality allows us to gain valuable direct experience of how malleable reality can truly be. Recent scientific discoveries suggest it’s quite likely that both this so-called “Mandela Effect,” also known as the “Alive Again” phenomena, are not new, as shamans and spiritual teachers from every continent and age of humankind have described for millennia.

The Mechanism Behind the Mandela Effect

We are fortunate to be alive at a time when scientists from several different branches of physics are converging on the idea that we live in a holographic multiverse… AND that everything including you and me have a truly quantum nature. When we put these two big ideas together, we see the mechanism by which we can understand and appreciate how things like intuition, synchronicity, the placebo effect, and spontaneous remission can transpire.

Illustration of Holographic Multiverse from “Quantum Jumps: An Extraordinary Science of Happiness and Prosperity”

Evidence supporting the concept of many parallel universes being interconnected comes from UC Berkeley’s Raphael Bousso, whose view of reality has been gaining support ever since last year’s discovery of the Higgs boson. And there is further good news for those wondering, “Where are these other parallel universes?” Some of the first hard evidence of other universes was found just this year by theoretical physicist Laura Mersini-Houghton of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Carnegie Mellon professor Richard Holman, through cosmic background radiation data collected by the European Space Agency’s Planck telescope, which indicates the presence of other external universes to our own at the very moment of the Big Bang.

What Happens in the Quantum Realm Doesn’t Stay in the Quantum Realm

In much the same way that some people prefer that “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” many physicists have hoped that the weirdness known to happen in the quantum realm would remain safely confined there. This appears to not be the case, as evidenced in recent ground-breaking laboratory experiments over the past few years. Increasing numbers of studies with macroscopic scale objects, such as diamonds, are consistently and repeatedly demonstrating such distinctly quantum behaviors as entanglement–which Albert Einstein once called, “spooky action at a distance.” 

Other behaviors previously presumed to reside exclusively within the quantum scale including: superposition of states, coherence, and teleportation are also being witnessed on the macroscopic scale. This is happening to the point that a growing consensus is beginning to form amongst physicists, such as those surveyed at a recent conference that you and I and everyone and everything around us exists in a superposition of states.

This means that in one possible reality, you have not made a decision that resulted in your catching a cold, but in another possible reality, you have. We can expect to occasionally experience quantum jumps from one possible reality to another, particularly when we are aware that such leaps are possible. These jumps from one reality to another can be a lot of fun, as some of the world’s quantum jumping experts can attest.

And who, might you ask, are the world’s quantum jumping experts? Such experts include most of the world’s top athletes, medical miracle experiencers, heroes, survivors of close brushes with death, experienced meditators, beneficiaries of the placebo effect, and people experienced with hypnosis and lucid dreaming have experienced leaps to better possible realities. These people often trust intuition, and benefit from a sense of there being a connectedness between themselves and everyone and everything else.

Evidence of Possible Futures & Pasts 

As the saying goes, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.” But how can we find evidence demonstrating that alternate histories occur, when typically the only “proof” we have that a change has occurred resides in our own memories? One way to collect such proof is to rapidly document peoples’ experiences immediately following highly memorable historic events like the Kennedy assassination, the Challenger space shuttle explosion, or Princess Diana’s death. Such flashbulb memories provide reference points by which the same people can later be asked about.

Researchers Ulric Neisser and Nicole Harsch at Emory University investigated flashbulb memories of students immediately following the Challenger space shuttle explosion by collecting handwritten student reactions immediately following the disaster. When they followed up two and a half years later with the very same students, Neisser and Harsch were startled to find that students’ accounts of where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news were different from what they’d initially described. One student said, “That’s my handwriting, but that’s not what happened.” 

Kindness Matters 

Discrepancies between memories also often appear amongst people who were all together for a particular event, but later remember what transpired very differently. Chances are pretty good that you’ve encountered disagreements with people you’d usually consider competent and aware… except for when they insist something happened some way you know for sure couldn’t be true.

If we didn’t live in a holographic multiverse in which we’re all venturing in various directions to experience a multitude of different possible futures and pasts, we wouldn’t find the tremendous divergence between peoples’ memories. As we enter the Quantum Age, it’s time that we stop calling such differences in memory “false recollections,” in favor of “alternate recollections,” indicating respect for the fact that each and every one of us exists in a superimposed state, with access to many possible alternate histories, presents, and futures.

And most importantly, it’s time we truly show respect for one another and our multitudes of alternate histories and recollections.

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Do you remember Nelson Mandela having died before? Take the poll, and share your recollections with alternate histories in the comments below:

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Further details, explanations, research, examples and references about the ideas presented in this article are provided in Quantum Jumps: An Extraordinary Science of Happiness and Prosperity.