In his story “The Garden of Forking Paths,” Jorge Luis Borges imagined an inventor who, many centuries ago, abandoned their quest to create an infinite labyrinth in order to write a great novel. Upon the writer’s death, a manuscript was discovered, but everyone who read the posthumous work was confounded. The story was filled with contradictions, inconsistencies, impossibilities: characters who died on one page suddenly appeared in scenes a hundred pages later, similar events occurred simultaneously, doubling with minor variations.
After some study, it was theorized that the inventor never abandoned their quest to make a labyrinth, but instead of a labrinth of space, they created a labyrinth of time. The branching paths of the story represent forks in time, where characters in the novel made not one choice or another choice, but both choices at the same time, creating a book that told the tale of a multiverse.
But is the multiverse a real thing? What is the science behind the idea of the multiverse? Here’s an investigation from the UK Science Museum:
Instead of being a single spherically symmetric expanding balloon-like structure, our universe may look like a “multiverse”, a cosmic froth of many different exponentially large bubbles (“universes”) with different laws of physics operating in each one.
Some parts of the multiverse may halt their expansion and contract but there are always parts that are still inflating, with universes like ours eternally being produced. As a consequence, our universe is necessarily one of a vast number, each of which is constantly and randomly spawning new universes in an unending chain of cosmic creation.
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Join 32,000+ makers on Adafruit’s Discord channels and be part of the community! http://adafru.it/discord
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
Join us every Wednesday night at 8pm ET for Ask an Engineer!
Follow Adafruit on Instagram for top secret new products, behinds the scenes and more https://www.instagram.com/adafruit/
CircuitPython – The easiest way to program microcontrollers – CircuitPython.org
No comments yet.
Adafruit has a “be excellent to each other” comment policy. Help us keep the community here positive and helpful. Stick to the topic, be respectful of makers of all ages and skill levels. Be kind, and don’t spam – Thank you!
