I’m afraid I’m dipping my very uneducated toe into the dark murky waters of science again 😯
Have you ever wondered what would’ve happened if you’d ran into the road a split second later all those years ago? Or what if you’d not woken up at 2:00 AM to find your house on fire? These are obviously personal events to me, but every-one’s life is littered with dramatic events & life changing decisions and I’ve always wondered… What if?
Well a few days ago, whilst killing a bit of time in the magazine kiosk at Lime St Station, Liverpool, I read a rather interesting article in one of those rather high-brow sciencey magazines that nobody ever buys (well I don’t. I only picked it up because it had a picture of the Tardis on the cover!!!). It was a fascinating read and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. As usual, I’ll use my very basic schoolboy speak to explain things 🙂 (I did actually get O’ Level physics & chemistry at school, but it kinda stops there!!!)
The main gist of the article was to try and explain how we are all immortal. A rather bold claim I know, but let me explain…
As usual with these kinds of things, you have to try and imagine or get to grips with huge numbers; numbers so big there’s probably not even a word for them. Sawyer has a book he’s currently rather fond of, about a bee who has to count every grain of sand on a beach and even that messes with my poor little head at times!!! So anyway… Let’s imagine that instead of just the one Stephen Coley, sat here writing this blog post while he should be working ( 😎 ), there are zillions. Each one living on another world; a parallel identical world to this one. And all those zillions of Stephen Coley’s are currently all writing the same blog post, at the same computer, with the same dog sat at his feet. And let’s assume that tonight my house catches fire and that at 2:00 AM I don’t wake up. I would then die… But maybe not. What if half of the zilllion other Stephen Coley’s didn’t wake up and the other half did? Half would survive and live on. And here’s where my schoolboy speak may struggle… What if Stephen Coley isn’t just the Stephen Coley who’s writing this post, but is every Stephen Coley? That would mean that when half die, Stephen Coley would seamlessly continue to live in the other half (is this remotely making sense???). The zillions of Stephen’s would continue to die. Zillions would halve to trillions (not sure of the maths here!!!), to millions, to thousands, to hundreds etc… Half would always die, but this means that half would always survive, thus achieving immortality… Simples 😎
The article I read obviously went into a little more detail than that, but hopefully you’ve got the idea? Some crazy boffins have even devised an experiment (if you’re brave/insane enough) to prove this theory… Quantum suicide & immortality
I am open to most ideas & theories, but I do have a few questions about this one…
If people never died, but instead continued to live on parallel words, then why are we not surrounded by people who are 100’s of years old? Henry VIII, my great grandad, Noah… Where are these people now?
Also, I’m assuming that when we die/jump to another parrallel word, that world would have to be identical in every way to the one we’ve left, to make the shift seamless. If this is the case (and this kinda answers my 1st question) then all the people that had died in your 1st world would remain dead. This would also mean that eventually you would lose all the people you know. They would die/jump ship, but you could never see them again as this would shatter the illusion… All a bit sad really 🙁
And on that happy note… Work is now long overdue!!!
