The idea that our universe can only be one of many others has evolved from science fiction to a viable multiverse theory over the past twenty years. Now physicists from Stanford (Stanford University) have tried to calculate how many such parallel worlds can exist.
Andrey Linde and Vitaly Vanchurin took over the calculations. They proceeded from the following assumptions. Immediately after the Big Bang, which was a quantum process that caused various quantum fluctuations, there was a rapid expansion (inflation) of the universe.
Due to the high speed, quantum fluctuations were soon frozen in certain regions in the form of certain classical conditions. Nowadays, all these different regions are separate universes, and each of them has its own laws of low energy physics.
Linde adheres to the Inflationary Multiverse, which he developed in the early 1980s with several other scientists. This shows the development of the multiverse over time, with different colors representing the laws of physics that are specific to individual universes (illustration by Stanford University).
In their article, which has so far been published only on the arXiv.org preprint site, the authors of the work analyzed the mechanism of the appearance of those very quantum fluctuations. And scientists came to the conclusion - the number of formed universes is equal to ten to the tenth power to the tenth power to the seventh power (10 ^ 10 ^ 10 ^ 7). However, this value can differ depending on which model to build (how to distinguish between separate universes).
In any case, the number is, of course, gigantic. However, people are not able to observe all universes, experts from Stanford are convinced. This is due to the peculiarities of the structure of our brain: during its life it is not able to perceive more than ten to the sixteenth power (1016) bits of information (this assumption was put forward in another work and supported by Stanford scientists). As a result, it turns out that a person cannot perceive more than ten to the tenth power to the sixth power of the observed configurations.
No more, no less - exactly so many universes, according to the authors of the new work, are available to the human mind (illustration by Andrei Linde, Vitaly Vanchurin)
And that's okay, Linde and Vanchurin say. There is no need to try to exalt yourself and believe that all parallel universes are available to human consciousness. In addition, quantum effects play a small role in our daily life, and therefore we can safely ignore them.
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Such calculations are really of little use to the layman and are of value, perhaps, only for physicists and astronomers studying quantum effects at the supergalactic level.
When we analyze the possibility of the existence of a certain type of universe, we must remember that there is a pair of the universe-observer, which actually animates it, and also that the wave function of the rest of the multiverse depends on time, physicists write.
Why count parallel universes? Linde and Vanchurin believe - in order to later determine the probability of the existence of life in the Universe with some special set of properties. And also to find out what the chances were that we would "find ourselves" in a world with physical laws corresponding to the observable ones (which would resolve issues related to the anthropic principle).