text: can someone help me understand how parallel universes work?   think of a tree. it branches out from the trunk. now think of the tree as a bunch of universes. there's the "first" universe, another branches off of it, then more appear, and after a while there's quite a lot of universes. furthermore, these universes don't even have to have the same laws of physics as us, or even the same amount of dimensions. theoretically, some of these universes are almost exactly the same as ours, with one difference: probability. after a lottery, if you didn't win here, you won another of the infinate amount of universes. that's why people say, "i did so-and-so in a parallel universe."