Engineered Metamaterials Could Recreate the Birth of Extra-Dimensional Universes in the Lab
Multiverses from Metamaterials Using metamaterials, one physicist thinks we can create analogies for some of the most interesting - and far out - cosmological occurences like multiverses and even the birth of universes. NASA Man-made metamaterials could theoretically bend light to create invisibility cloaks, or alter electromagnetic waves in ways nature never intended. Now, a researcher at the University of Maryland in College Park thinks they could do much more than that, becoming man-made analogies to various cosmological theories of how the Universe works and helping researchers explain certain aspects of those universes. The theories Igor Smolyaninov has in mind are those that have to do with parallel universes or dimensions of space and time that we don't experience in this world. In these lines of thought, different dimensions become "compactified" early in the Universe's life, leaving the three dimensions of space and one of time that we understand today. These other dimensions...