<story><title>Two weeks before death, Hawking submitted a paper on parallel universes</title><url>https://www.sciencealert.com/stephen-hawking-submitted-a-paper-on-parallel-universes-just-before-he-died</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>epaga</author><text>Something I&amp;#x27;ve never understood and would greatly appreciate understanding: could someone ELI&amp;quot;5&amp;quot; how the concept of &amp;quot;parallel universes&amp;quot; will not always be a metaphysical instead of a scientific question?&lt;p&gt;If there are truly separate &amp;quot;universes&amp;quot;, then by definition wouldn&amp;#x27;t it be the case that there would be no way to test (or falsify) whether they exist or not, so would the question of their existence not be in the realm of philosophy and metaphysics rather than the sciences? What am I missing (I assume it has to do with my understanding of the word &amp;quot;universe&amp;quot;)?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gizmo686</author><text>At this point, if we discovered something resembling the current conceptions of parallel universe, we would probably just re-define &amp;quot;universe&amp;quot; to refer to what we traditionally think of as a universe. In much the same way that we do not have any problem with talking about sub-atomic particles; even though that is sub-atomic is a concept that does not make any sense.&lt;p&gt;In this case, from the article, it sounds like there is only a very weak interaction. In fact, since it is only &amp;quot;evidence&amp;quot; left behind in background radiation, it is possible that there is no ongoing interaction, but rather some remaining artifact from when the universes did interact.</text></comment>
<story><title>Two weeks before death, Hawking submitted a paper on parallel universes</title><url>https://www.sciencealert.com/stephen-hawking-submitted-a-paper-on-parallel-universes-just-before-he-died</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>epaga</author><text>Something I&amp;#x27;ve never understood and would greatly appreciate understanding: could someone ELI&amp;quot;5&amp;quot; how the concept of &amp;quot;parallel universes&amp;quot; will not always be a metaphysical instead of a scientific question?&lt;p&gt;If there are truly separate &amp;quot;universes&amp;quot;, then by definition wouldn&amp;#x27;t it be the case that there would be no way to test (or falsify) whether they exist or not, so would the question of their existence not be in the realm of philosophy and metaphysics rather than the sciences? What am I missing (I assume it has to do with my understanding of the word &amp;quot;universe&amp;quot;)?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hnarn</author><text>&amp;gt;If there are truly separate &amp;quot;universes&amp;quot;, then by definition wouldn&amp;#x27;t it be the case that there would be no way to test (or falsify) whether they exist or not&lt;p&gt;This literally contradicts what the first paragraph of the article. It says that this paper &amp;quot;lays the theoretical groundwork for discovering a parallel universe&amp;quot;. If you&amp;#x27;ve discovered it, you&amp;#x27;ve tested and proved that it exists.&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, the article states that it&amp;#x27;s a &amp;quot;mathematical paper which seeks proof of the &amp;#x27;multiverse&amp;#x27; theory&amp;quot;. Assume for a second that there is &lt;i&gt;mathematical proof&lt;/i&gt; of the multiverse theory. In order to disprove this, you now need to disprove the math.</text></comment>