Are you ready for the metaverse? Or should that be the multiverse? Since both are being described as “parallel worlds” you’re naturally confused about the two concepts. Don’t be. Despite all the parallel world talk they’re very different from one another, but they do have something in common.
Both the metaverse and the multiverse are highly conceptual and hard to pin down.
Here’s everything you need to know about both the metaverse and the multiverse so you never get them confused again:
Is the metaverse just virtual and augmented reality?
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The metaverse explained: virtual worlds and the future internet
What is the metaverse? Welcome to the new online virtual world of the future, which from where we stand right now does seem to a lot of people like some kind of parallel universe.
The metaverse is one of the biggest buzzwords of the last few months largely because Facebook announced in October 2021 that it was changing its name to Meta.
Is the metaverse a Facebook product? No. A loose concept of what the future of the internet looks like, myriad companies will be involved. Sure, Meta wants to be part of it—hence its name-change—but there’s no certainly it will have a decisive role. In fact, some people are so critical of Facebook’s involvement that arguably it can’t be. The cynical presume it’s simply a play by Facebook to regain the attention of millennials and Gen Z.
Some companies have already been successful at some aspect of creating virtual or AR-driven worlds and experiences, such as Fortnite, World of Warcraft and even Pokémon Go. In short, video games.
However, the metaverse will be, thinks Zuckerberg, the successor to the mobile internet. The phrase appears to have been coined by science fiction author Neal Stephenson in his 1992 novel Snow Crash, in which the protagonist travels through a 3D virtual cityscape. However, fast-forward 30 years and the modern metaverse will likely include elements of—and be built upon—some fairly recent consumer tech innovations:
- Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) headsets
- Wearable technology
- Social media and social interaction
- Internet-wide avatars
- Immersive experiences
- Collaboration at work and virtual conference rooms
How—and if—these innovations will fit together is up for grabs. Given that merging them into an online virtual world is mostly based on software one of the biggest uncertainties is actually hardware. People hated Google Glass back in 2013, while sales of VR headsets right now are small ... a breakthrough product is required. Facebook's Ray-Ban Stories smart glasses, released to zero fanfare last fall, probably aren’t it ... though they could be if an AR dimension is added in future. It could be that the metaverse will have to wait until someone can take advantage of the ever-increasing power of microchips to create seamless, super-fast headsets of some kind that everyone wants to wear.
Nobody knows what metaverse really means, save for it being a next step in all things digital. What happens next to the metaverse—and even if it ever becomes a recognisable thing—is anyone’s guess.
But it’s going to be fun finding out ... unlike the multiverse.
Is the multiverse about parallel worlds?
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The multiverse explained: parallel worlds and ‘bubble universes’
What is the multiverse? Any concept of the metaverse—about a parallel world of avatars and a virtual Universe—instantly seems trivial when you consider concepts of the multiverse.
What happened before the Big Bang? The multiverse theory—also known as “bubble universes”—goes way back to before the Big Bang and postulates that the cosmos inflated, with only one of the outcomes being our Universe. It produced many other completely independent universes, too, goes the theory—lots of big bangs. It’s not testable, but then the our theories of the early Universe are a little fuzzy—we’re waiting for a bigger theory than the Big Bang to properly explain ... everything. “Bubble universes” could theoretically be part of that explanation.
Besides, quantum mechanics—which describes nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles—says there must be something beyond our universe. The “many-worlds” interpretation (MWI) of quantum mechanics, around since the late 1950s, sees time as the branches of a tree upon which all quantum possibilities are played out in an infinite number of multiple and parallel Universes. Since there is no communication between them the theory can’t be tested ... so it could be said to be an unscientific theory.
There was a science story around in 2019 claiming that scientists in Antarctica had found evidence for a parallel universe, though it was really about uncertainly of the source of some particles detected by an experiment in Antarctica. Besides, the claim was that it involved high-energy neutrinos swapping from another universe into our own—essentially that a different model of physics applies in a parallel universe. The scientific explanation is actually a lot less interesting—there was likely an issue with the particle detector.
Is there anything beyond our lonely Universe? Since our own universe is expanding we will never be able to see its edge, and so the question will likely never be answered ... which is why we probably need a metaverse to distract us!
Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.
#News | https://sciencespies.com/news/metaverse-vs-multiverse-how-to-tell-apart-the-parallel-universe-concepts-we-cant-stop-talking-about/
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