The science behind ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’

“Everything Everywhere All At Once” won seven awards at the Oscars on Sunday, and although it’s science fiction, the movie’s plot combines two physicist-backed theories about the multiverse.

The award-winning film focuses on Evelyn Wang (played by Michelle Yeoh), who must connect with versions of herself in the parallel universe to stop a powerful being from destroying the multiverse.

The multiverse is a theory that our universe may not be the only one, but one of an infinite number of parallel universes that contain infinite versions of ourselves.

The makers of the film said that they took inspiration from the many-worlds interpretation and cosmic bubble theory when developing the film

One suggests that when you decide, you split the universe in half, and the other goes back to the origin of the universe during the big bang.

‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ won the Oscar for Best Picture, along with others for Best Supporting Actress and Actor.

The story focuses on Evelyn, a middle-aged Chinese immigrant who owns a laundromat controlled by the IRS.

She and her husband, Waymond (played by Ke Huy Quan), go to an IRS building to discuss the matter.

While there, Waymond is controlled by a version of himself from another world – the Alpha-Verse.

The Alpha-Verse was the first to develop technology to track the direction of the other universes and the ability to mentally tap into the different parts of the multiverse.

The Alpha-Waymond gives Evelyn a device to jump into Evelyn’s mind from other realities.

And the ability to jump through worlds was presented by Burt Goldman, a self-proclaimed spiritual master and energy healer.

Goldman created this as a self-help technique, believing that people can shift their consciousness to access other realities and change their lives.

Physicist Cynthia Sue Larson has written the book Quantum Jumps: An Extraordinary Science of Happiness and Prosperity.

Evelyn and her husband, Waymond (played by Ke Huy Quan), go to an IRS building to discuss the matter and here Waymond is controlled by a version of himself from another world (pictured) – the Alpha-Verse

Larson proposes a similar idea that coincides with her “paradigm shift” theory that we exist in an interconnected holographic multiverse.

While traveling through the multiverse, Evelyn comes into contact with different versions of herself, including a movie star and king fu master.

‘Everything All At Once’ is written and directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, who call themselves the Daniels.

In an interview with the New York Timesthe Daniels reveal how the film combines the two multiverse theories.

“It’s fun to imagine both versions,” Kwan said. “Both point to infinity or just point to the unknown.”

The many-worlds interpretation supports the idea that there are multiple versions of ourselves, which various physicists from well-known research centers, such as Oxford University and MIT, have created.

The concept was invented in the late 1950s by Hugh Everett, who developed the idea for his thesis.

This interpretation proposes that any event can have more than one outcome, causing reality to fragment and branch out to create new universes where alternate events take place.

Evelyn is played by Michelle Yeoh (left), who won the Academy Award for Best Actress, and Ke Huy Quan, who plays her husband, won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor

Max Tegmark, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a proponent of the idea, explained The Washington Post“I actually try to think, if I get a parking ticket, ‘Hey, there’s another version of a parallel universe where I didn’t get a parking ticket,’ so that I can feel a little better.” And there’s another version where my car was towed away.’

The cosmic bubble suggests that as the universe expanded at an extraordinary rate after the big bang, it created quantum fluctuations that created separate bubble universes that evolved in their own way.

Speaking to the New York Times, the duo said the film is less about physics and more about how physics makes you feel.

“If you could see alternate lives, that would be — that would send you into a spiral,” Scheinert said.

“It would send each of us into a spiral, like lives you could have lived and choices you could have made.”

WHAT IS THE MULTIVERSE THEORY?

The multiverse theory suggests that our cosmos is one of a number of different “alternate” universes.

The number of universes could be infinite, meaning there are infinite versions of reality, some very similar to ours.

Some could have similar Earth-like planets, societies, and even humans. Others may exist where dinosaurs were not wiped out, or where Germany won World War II.

The multiverse theory suggests that our cosmos is one of a number of different universes (artist’s impression)

It may sound far-fetched, but the concept is the subject of serious debate among physicists.

The presenter and physicist Prof. Brian Cox supports the idea that there may be many universes.

Professor Stephen Hawking’s latest research paper, completed just ten days before he died in March 2018, suggested that our universe is one of many – each with similar physical states.