6 Most Mind-Boggling Theories about the Universe

The universe is mysterious, and the more science learns about it, the more amazing it seems to be. When looking at all the theories presented here, reader can simply burst into laughter. But what could be more bizarre than something already known to us?

1. Everything we are surrounded by is the “The Matrix”

Many saw the film where the main character (Keanu Reeves) learns with astonishment that the world around him, “The Matrix”, is something resembling a ghetto created for people by computer intelligence. This is, of course, science fiction, but there are scientists who are ready to take this idea seriously.

Nick Bostrom, a British philosopher, has suggested that our whole life is a very complicated game, just like the popular The Sims game: the development of the video game industry could enable us to construct our own world realities, and everyone will live forever in this isolated virtual reality. If this happens, there is a possibility that our world is built based on a code written by an unknown programmer whose abilities are much more powerful than those of an average person.

Famous physicist Silas Beane of the University of Bonn in Germany, sees this differently: if everything around us is a computer rendering, it means that there is a point or a line beyond which it is possible to identify the “pixels” from which everything is made. This boundary, according to Bean, is the Grayzen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin limit, and without going through scientific details, it becomes possible to say that the German physicist has come up with a proof that we exist in an artificially-created reality, and he is determined to find out which computer has this reality installed on.

2. We all have a “clone”

Perhaps you are aware about this popular science fiction premise when it is stipulated that there is an obscure world where each individual is accompanied by an “evil” alter-ego, and where a hero is destined to fight this character and win the fight.

This theory takes into consideration the fact that the world consists of limitless combinations of a predetermined set of particles, like a room with the kids playing with the “Lego” pieces. They have equal chances of building something similar using the blocks, but do it in different ways. The same applies to humankind, perhaps somewhere there is an exact copy of our world in existence.

3. The worlds may collide

Beyond our world there may be many other worlds, and nothing prevents them from a possibility of colliding with our own reality.

Anthony Aguirre, a Californian physicist, paints a picture of a gigantic mirror falling down from the sky, which will reflect our own frightened faces, if we are quick enough to realize what is happening. At the same time, Alex Vilenkin with his colleagues at the Tufts University, USA, are convinced they have found traces of such collision.

Relic radiation is a weak cosmic electromagnetic radiation flowing through the outer space, and all of the calculations indicate its uniformity, but there have been spots discovered where the signal is above or below normal. Vilenkin believes that these are the residual traces of collision between two collided worlds.

4. Universe is a gigantic computer

It is one thing to assume that everything surrounding us is a computer game, but not the same to say that the universe itself represents a supercomputer. A theory like this exist, and it holds that galaxies, stars and black holes are parts of this super-computer.

This theory has been introduced and scrupulously analyzed by an Oxford professor of quantum informatics Vlatko Vedral. He believes that the main building blocks from which everything is built, are not particles of matter, but bits, the same building blocks of information used by conventional computers. Each bit can be a combination of  two values: “1″ or “0″, meaning “yes” or “no”. The scientist is convinced that even subatomic particles are made up of trillions of these values, and the interaction within matter happens when bits transmit logical combinations between each other.

Similar view is supported by Seth Lloyd, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor,  who had invented the world’s first quantum computer, which relies on atoms and electrons instead of microchips. According to Lloyd, the universe constantly adjusts the dynamics of its own restructuring.

5. Living inside a black hole

Perhaps everyone has some knowledge about black holes, for instance that they have enormous gravity forces and density, which do not even allow the light to escape, but it hardly ever occurs to us that we could be living inside a black hole at this particular moment.

But this idea has boggled the mind of the scientist from the University of Indiana, doctor of theoretical physics Nikodem Poplawski. He argues that, hypothetically, our world can already be swallowed by a black hole, leading to a thought that we exist in a new universe. After all, it is still unknown what happens with objects trapped in this gigantic “funnel”.

The calculations performed by the physicist lead to a conclusion that acquisition of matter by a black hole is somewhat similar to the Big Bang, and can lead to a completely new reality.Compression of space, on the one hand, may lead to the expansion, on the other hand, it can mean that each black hole can represent a gateway to something still unexplored or unknown.

6. Humanity is experiencing a “bullet time” phenomenon

Many of us can recall scenes from movies, when a bullet or a falling glass in motion suddenly stops and we are able to see the object from every angle. Something similar may just as well be occurring to the humankind.

The Big Bang event occurred approximately 14 billion years ago, but the speed at which the universe is expanding, is still increasing, defying all laws of physics, even though the forces of gravity would probably slow down the process. Then why does the universe expand?Many scientists make a reference to “anti-gravity”, which actually pushes galaxies apart. Spanish scientists José Senovilla, Marc Mars and Raül Vera have developed an alternative theory, which states that the rate at which the universe expands is not accelerating, but the time is gradually slowing down.

This theory can explain to us why galaxies move faster: the light has traveled for so long that we are not observing their present state, but something that has happened long time in the past. If the Spanish scientists are correct in their findings, there may be time in the future when for a hypothetical “outside observer”, our time continuum will have to come to a complete halt.