Mon 28 Apr 2008
The question comes courtesy of the referrer logs; I hate to think that whoever was doing their metauniverse research came up empty-handed, so, okay:
What is it? What isn’t it? How many are there? What colors do they come in? Etc.
Posted by Josh Millard5 answers so far!
If I remember my spurious physics terms correctly metauniverse is a term for the collection of universes that may exist. I believe, and I’m very probably wrong, that multiverse is a synonym. Also, isn’t this a question way too unspeculative for BBQ? Take it to AskMe!
I see it as more like Horton Hears a Who, and they are infinite universes within each other.
Why would we even need the idea of the metaverse or the multiverse? Couldn’t we just say that whatever these terms may refer to is all just part of the universe? Which is, after all, everything.
Well, maybe not.
In set theory it is possible to show, by a variation on Cantor’s diagonal argument, that the universal set, or set of all sets, is a contradiction in terms. Essentially you demonstrate by construction that the universal set cannot contain at least one member of its set of subsets, and since that member of the set of subsets is itself a set, it must be a member of the set of all sets. A flat contradiction. Therefore the universal set cannot exist.
It would require a lot fancier dancing than I can do to show that this same argument could be made to apply to our ordinary concept of the universe, but I do think it is ultimately feasible.
So, based upon this argument I cannot even make but only point in the general direction of, I would assert that the very idea of a universe is a contradiction in terms, and that we must fall back– defeated– to the metaverse.
Google gives priority to the Wikipedia entry for Metaverse, ” Neal Stephenson’s 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash.”
The concept of multiverse (see Many Worlds and David Deutsch) refers to an infinite multiplicity of separate (multi-dimensional) universes (where all possible possibilities are realized). Not even our universe is unique.
If you have to ask, you wouldn’t understand. Keep taking your metavitamins and maybe someday you’ll get it, Junior.