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令人著迷的「平行」宇宙
Stranger that fiction：parallel universes beguile science
宇宙 -- 更正：「我們的」宇宙 -- 不過是無窮無盡之平行世界當中的宇宙塵埃微粒嗎？多重宇宙的可能性，是引起幻覺之科幻小說的主題之一，長久以來都讓冷靜的物理學家、數學著迷，宇宙學家也是。
在本片中，一位孤女活在一個交錯的（alternate）宇宙中，為了拯救被誘拐的小孩與解開污染塵埃之謎（據聞從一個平行的領域中洩漏），由她以動物精靈形式現身的靈魂相伴（譯註：潘拉蒙），持續追尋下去。把熊（譯註：指當中的「武裝熊」）與神奇塵埃的話題放一邊吧，Pullman 幻想之作的基本前提並非超越科學界限。
In the film, an orphaned girl living in an alternate universe goes on a quest, accompanied by an animal manifestation of her soul, to rescue kidnapped children and discover the secret of a contaminating dust said to be leaking from a parallel realm. Talking bears and magic dust aside, the basic premise of Pullman's fantasy is not beyond the scientific pale.
"多重宇宙的構想不只古怪的發明 -- 它似乎自然地存在於數個科學理論中，而且應當嚴肅考慮，" Aurelien Barrau 說，一位在 CERN（這一點都不像古裡古怪科學的溫床）工作的法國粒子物理學家。
"The idea of multiple universes is more than a fantastic invention -- it appears naturally within several scientific theories, and deserves to be taken seriously," said Aurelien Barrau, a French particle physicist at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), hardly a hotbed of flaky science.
"The multiverse is no longer a model, it is a consequence of our models," explained Barrau, who recently published an essay for CERN defending the concept.
這裡有數種關於平行宇宙，競爭且部份重疊的理論，不過大部分的基礎是基於一個簡單的（如果令人極為驚訝的話）構想：假若宇宙是無限的，那麼邏輯上每樣事物，可能發生的已發生，或將發生。
There are several competing and overlapping theories about parallel universes, but the most basic is based on the simple, if mind-boggling, idea that if the universe is infinite then logically everything that could possible occur has happened or will happen.
試著估量一下：你／妳的一位副本生活在一個行星上，行星則位於一個跟我們太陽系很像的系統中，如同你一樣正在讀這段文字。「你／妳」的生活到目前為止都極為相似，即使你／妳沒有繼續把這段文字讀下去，不過他／她或許會這麼做，Max Tegmark 說，MIT 一位宇宙學家。
Try this on for size：a copy of you living on a planet and in a solar system like ours is reading these words just as you are. Your lives have been carbon copies up to now, but maybe he or she will keep reading even if you don't, says Max Tegmark, a cosmologist at MIT in Boston, Massachusetts.
這種幽靈分身（doppleganger，源自於德文，意指這世界上有另一個跟你極為相似的幽靈）的存在，"甚至沒有採用純理論的現代物理，只不過空間是無限的，而不像最近的文觀測所指稱，均勻的充滿物質，" Tegmark 在一篇由劍橋大學所發表的平行宇宙研究中如此下結論。
The existence of such a doppleganger "does not even assume speculative modern physics, merely that space is infinite and rather uniformly filled with matter as indicated by recent astronomical observations," Tegmark concluded in a study of parallel universes published by Cambridge University.
"你的第二個我（alter ego）不過是所謂的宇宙論調和模型的一種預測，" 他說。
"Your alter ego is simply a prediction of the so-called concordance model of cosmology," he said.
另一類多重宇宙來自於渾沌膨脹（chaotic inflation）的理論，那告訴我們，所有的平行世界都膨脹的如此迅速 -- 往空間中延伸的愈來愈遠 -- 即便某人永遠能以光速旅行，它們依然無法觸及。
Another type of multiverse arises with the theory of chaotic inflation, which tells us that all these parallel worlds are expanding so rapidly -- stretching further and further in to space -- that they remain out of reach even if one could travel at the speed of light forever.
當某人將經常違逆直覺的量子物理學定律放入此一圖像當中，事情會變得更加奇怪，這些專家表示。
Things get even stranger when one brings the often counter-intuitive laws of quantum physics into the picture, these experts say.
在 1957 年，一篇劃時代的論文中，那時他仍是普林斯頓大學的畢業生，數學家 Hugh Everett（譯註：他是物理博士），證明量子理論預言，單一古典的實在（reality）應該會逐漸分離成「個別，但同時存在的」領域。
In a landmark paper published in 1957 while he was still a graduate student at Princeton University, mathematician Hugh Everett showed how quantum theory predicts that a single classical reality should gradually split into separate but simultaneously existing realms.
"這不過是完全信任基礎量子力學等式的一種作法，" Barrau 說。"這些世界並非空間上的分離，而是以某種「平行」宇宙的方式存在。"
"This is simply a way of trusting strictly the fundamental equations of quantum mechanics," says Barrau. "The worlds are not spatially separated, but exist as kinds of 'parallel' universes."
物理與形而上學之間的界線並非由某個實體（entity）能被觀測與否所界定，而是它是否可試驗，Tegmark 指出。
The borderline between physics and metaphysics is not defined by whether an entity can be observed, but whether it is testable, pointed out Tegmark.
這裡有許多現象 -- 黑洞、彎曲空間、高速下的時間減緩、甚至是地球的自轉與公轉 -- 在經過實驗證明之前，它們一度都被當成科學異端邪說而糟排斥，及便有某些（現象）依然超越觀測所能掌握，他說。
There are many phenomena -- black holes, curved space, the slowing of time at high speeds, even a round and rotating Earth -- that were once rejected as scientific heresy before being proven through experimentation, even if some remain beyond the grasp of observation, he said.
他下結論道：目前變得愈來愈明瞭，根植於現代物理學的多重宇宙模型能憑經驗地試驗、預測與反駁。
He concluded that it was becoming increasingly clear that multiverse models grounded in modern physics could be empirically testable, predictive and disprovable.
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