The Science of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials by Mary Gribbin

Author:Mary Gribbin [Gribbin, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-54544-2
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2007-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Splitting worlds.

In our world, by the way, the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum physics was put forward in 1957 by Hugh Everett, an American who lived from 1930 to 1982. He gets a name check in The Subtle Knife, but he was a real scientist in our Universe. But although Everett made the idea of parallel universes respectable science, it had been used in science-fiction stories long before then. Unfortunately, most of the stories weren't very good. Since 1957, though, there have been a lot of good stories about parallel worlds, or alternativehistory stories, where some small difference in history has changed the entire world. One of the best is Pavane, by Keith Roberts. If you liked the His Dark Materials trilogy, you'll probably like that as well.

In a way, all stories are about parallel worlds, or alternative histories. There wasn't really a detective called Sherlock Holmes, for example. At least, there wasn't one in our world. Perhaps there really is a Sherlock Holmes in one of the Many Worlds. Without going there, we can never know.

That's the problem with all this, even if the Many-Worlds Interpretation is correct. In order to get to the world next door, and to the worlds farther away, you would have to travel sideways, somehow, in a direction that is at right angles to all of the three dimensions of space. We all know about moving in three dimensions. You can go up and down, left and right, or forward and back. You can get to anywhere on Earth (or in the Universe) by moving in these three dimensions. Each direction is at right angles to the other two. But the other worlds are in a different direction from any of them. Try imagining a direction at right angles to all three of the usual dimensions, then moving in that direction! It would be much easier if you had a door, or a window, that opened from our world right into one of the other worlds.

That's where the subtle knife comes in. And, like so much of the story, the knife itself is based on real science.

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