Hidden Realities: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos, Dr. Brian Greene, Columbia

'Physicists are now in the worst possible position imaginable as regards the prediction of the actual universe from the possible universes at the beginning, at the Big Bang.' In recent years, a growing body of work based on a broad spectrum of ideas from quantum mechanics, cosmology, and string theory has been steadily converging around a proposal that our universe is actually only one of many universes. In fact, research supports a number of different models of parallel universes in which our world appears: for instance, as one of many ‘bubbles’ in a rapidly growing bath of universes, or as one of numerous cosmic slabs separated from one another through additional spatial dimensions. In this presentation, Greene, with his trademark impartiality, crystal-clear prose, and inspired use of analogy, opens up the strange worlds of the "multiverse," taking us on a journey grounded firmly in science, and limited only by our imagination.