Astrophysicist Overthinks Rick & Morty - THE MULTIVERSE

"You might remember doing the double slit experiment in school" we clearly did not go to the same kinds of school lol. The highest level science experiment we did in school was boiling water in paper bags.

Cat: “Tell Schrodinger I survived, and I’m coming for him!”

Futurama has done both. The quantum mechanics Many Worlds version was the plot of a whole episode. The bubble inflation version was just a first act bit. The latter was in one of the early episodes where Fry wanted to experience all the things that could now be done because it was the future. One of which was traveling to the edge of the universe, where, using a coin operated telescoping viewer, Fry and crew viewed a cowboy universe version of themselves. When asked about an infinite number of them, Fry was told there was only the one, which hints that this was another bubble universe touching ours. The Many Worlds was the Professor made box containing another universe where the results of coin flips were the opposite of their universe.

When Rick C-137 invents teleportation, Rick Prime lectures him about realizing that "traveling the whole galaxy means that you're the last guy to invent teleportation", and then says he's going to invent something much greater. The teleportation device with the blue portals Rick C-137 invents isn't the "portal gun" -- it's just local-universe teleportation. The portal gun mechanism isn't same-universe teleportation, it's many worlds multiverse teleportation.

"Star Trek:The Next Generation" episode "Remember Me" . Dr. Crusher gets caught in a bubble universe created by a "Warp Bubble" that slowly shrinks causing the crew of the Enterprise to disappear and the size of the universe to shrink until she's the only one left on the ship in a Universe 700 meters across. (And the ship's computer thinks this is totally normal)

I'm sure someone else has already said this, but The Tardis from "Dr. Who" is described as a bubble universe attached to ours, which is how it travels through time and also why it is bigger on the inside.

I liked the Doctor Who episode saying goodbye to Rose in another dimension where he says he’s burning up a star to just send a message. It kinda demonstrated the idea that while some things might be possible, the power needed to even attempt them make them impractical/impossible (if you’re not as advanced as fictional Timelords).

A key difference between the two is that in Many Worlds, there are branches of a single reality, so doppelgängers are a natural aspect, but bubble universes have no connection to each other, so doppelgängers are purely statistical coincidences and presumably much rarer whereas you’d have an infinite number of doppelgängers in Many Worlds. BTW: the “bubble universe” or “pocket universe” is an old staple of SF that many have mentioned in the comments. These are different from the bubble universes created by eternal inflation. They’re usually smaller and contained next to if not within our universe. “Micro” universes are very popular.

It's worth mentioning that Dan Harmon created both Rick and Morty and Community.

The bubble worlds interpretation occurs a couple of times in Dr Who. They make a couple of bubble universes accessible through some sort of rift at the point where they touch. They ignore the prospect of them forming at great distance, and allow then to touch or move inside each other.

Showing my age, but there we go. Show that had multi-verses: Quantum Leap, Voyagers, Sliders and Early Edition (and Dr. Who). Some movies that had multi verses, where most only cover the different timeline: Back to the Future, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, 12 Monkees and Looper.

For TV shows i would say Sliders was the first show to describe the multiverse. And a great book about the multiverse is a book called "Dark Matter" by Blake Crouch

My all time favorite movie, Run Lola Run, is focused on how small changes can lead to wildly different outcomes.

I absolute love that you described a universe where everyone has a hamster living in their butts and then say "but then things start getting unrealistic" 😂🤣

Steins Gate. A Japanese anime where the protagonist accomplishes time travel (more time manipulation). The protagonist also becomes aware of alternate bubble universes. He attempts to force a jump (a universe shift) into the adjoining universe to stop a loved ones death from occurring. Fantastic show.

Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter wrote a series of five novels in a multiverse setting: The Long Eart, The Long War, The Long Mars, The Long Utopia and The Long Cosmos. They are settled in a many worlds scenario.

Schrödinger was trying to demonstrate the incompleteness of QM with his famous though experiment. He didn't think that "dead and alive" for a macroscopic object was reasonable, but it's not clear where the breakdown was between particles and cats.

Futurama Did bubble universe. There was a wall separating them

Stargate SG-1 does a prerty good job with it, there's an alien device called a "quantum mirror" that allows characters to hop between timelines. They take an interesting nature vs. nurture approach by having most of the characters acting the same in each universe, but being minorly affected by the variations in circumstances, but one character in particular that seems to have a completely different life in every timeline, like she must have left a lot up to chance or spontaneous decisions.

In Ben 10 Alien Force there is an obscure reference where the 'gang' is transported to an empty space and directed to look out the window, they are told a fuzzy blob is the universe and that another fuzzy blob is another universe. Sounds like they use bubble universe in that context.