Do you ever wonder if there's an alternate version of you, sitting somewhere else right now, reading this article in some alternate reality? It's not just Marvel that's obsessed with the idea of a multiverse, as there's been a recent boom in movies like The Flash and Everything Everywhere All at Once. Still, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is pushing the idea in the likes of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Spider-Man: No Way Home, and The Marvels. That's all fiction, but in real life, Google might have just discovered proof we're living in a multiverse.
Early ideas of a multiverse can be traced back to the Ancient Greek Atomists Leucippus and Democritus in the 5th century BCE, so it's taken us quite some time to nail down the theory.
Scientific research into the multiverse really took off in the '90s thanks to a boom in sci-fi projects, while in 2010, scientists including Stephen M. Feeney suggested that data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) could prove our universe had collided with parallel ones in the past.
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As for Google's 'proof', it all comes from its new 'Willow' quantum computing chip. In a blog post, Google Quantum AI founder Hartmut Neven claimed that Willow's immense computing power suggests we live in a multiverse.
Pointing to how Willow only took five minutes to solve a complex computation that would take today's fastest computers 10 septillion years (far older than the universe), Neven wrote: "It lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes, in line with the idea that we live in a multiverse, a prediction first made by David Deutsch."
The mention of David Deutsch is in reference to the physicist who explained his own multiversal hypothesis in 1997's The Fabric of Reality. Back then, Deutsch suggested that quantum computers were linked by calculations being concurrently performed across multiverse universes.
Not everyone is sold on the idea, with skeptics reiterating that these quantum computing benchmarks were set by Google itself many years ago.
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X account @Geiger_Capital said it was being 'Willow-pilled', with others in the replies also sharing their skepticism.
One asked: "How do they know the answer is correct? How did they verify it?"
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Another added: "Parallel universes is a notion that derives from the purely speculative Einstein's equations. They are not based on observations but rather on assumptions and masked with complex math that nobody understands."
Someone else joked: "Society had watched too many Marvel movies."
We're sure that Google casually throwing in the idea that some version of you might be living a billionaire's lifestyle in an alternate universe will help with that existential dread. For now, we'll stick a pin in this one.