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intolerable thought that he and all
other sentient beings are doomed to complete annihilation after such
long-continued slow progress." Unfortunately, the latest data from the
WMAP satellite seem to confirm Darwin's worst fears.
    ESCAPE INTO HYPERSPACE
    It is a law of
physics that intelligent life within the universe will necessarily face this
ultimate death. But it is also a law of evolution that when the environment
changes, life must either leave, adapt, or die. Because it is impossible to
adapt to a universe that is freezing to death, the only options are to die—or
to leave the universe itself. When facing the ultimate death of the universe,
is it possible that civilizations trillions of years ahead of us will assemble
the necessary technology to leave our universe in a dimensional
"lifeboat" and drift toward another, much younger and hotter
universe? Or will they use their superior technology to build a "time
warp" and travel back into their own past, when temperatures were much
warmer?
    Some physicists
have proposed a number of plausible, although extremely speculative schemes,
using the most advanced physics available, to provide the most realistic look
at dimensional portals or gateways to another universe. The blackboards of
physics laboratories around the world are full of abstract equations, as
physicists compute whether or not one might use "exotic energy" and
black holes to find a passageway to another universe. Can an advanced civilization,
perhaps millions to billions of years ahead of ours in technology, exploit the
known laws of physics to enter other universes?
    Cosmologist
Stephen Hawking of Cambridge University once quipped, "Wormholes, if they
exist, would be ideal for rapid space travel. You might go through a wormhole
to the other side of the galaxy and be back in time for dinner."
    And if wormholes
and dimensional portals are simply too small to permit the final exodus from
the universe, then there is another final option: to reduce the total
information content of an advanced, intelligent civilization to the molecular
level and inject this through the gateway, where it will then self-assemble on
the other side. In this way, an entire civilization may inject its seed through
a dimensional gateway and reestablish itself, in its full glory. Hyperspace,
instead of being a plaything for theoretical physicists, could potentially
become the ultimate salvation for intelligent life in a dying universe.
    But to fully
understand the implications of this event, we must first understand how
cosmologists and physicists have painstakingly arrived at these astounding
conclusions. In the course of Parallel Worlds, we review the history of cosmology, stressing the paradoxes
that have infested the field for centuries, culminating in the theory of
inflation, which, while consistent with all the experimental data, forces us to
entertain the concept of multiple universes.

CHAPTER TWO

The Paradoxical
Universe
    Had I been present at the creation, I would have given some
useful hints for the better ordering of the universe.
    —Alphonse
the Wise
    Damn the solar
system. Bad light; planets too distant; pestered with comets; feeble
contrivance; could make a better [universe] myself.
    —Lord
Jeffrey
    In the
play A s You Like It, Shakespeare wrote the immortal words
    All the world's a stage,
    And all the men and women merely players.
    They
have their exits and their entrances.
    During the
Middle Ages, the world was indeed a stage, but it was a small, static one,
consisting of a tiny, flat Earth around which the heavenly bodies moved
mysteriously in their perfect celestial orbs. Comets were seen as omens
foretelling the death of kings. When the great comet of 1066 sailed over
England, it terrified the Saxon soldiers of King Harold, who quickly lost to
the advancing, victorious troops of William the Conqueror, setting the stage
for the formation of modern England.
    That same comet
sailed over England once again in 1682, again