Against the Day and Pocket Universes

Spoilers Abound

Lately I’ve been traversing the universes of Against the Day (2006). Pynchon’s multiverse is enabled by a trick of the light at the end of the 19th century: he tunes into alternative realities by splitting light and taking the polarization that projects “to the side of the day”:

“Yes yes but suppose, suppose when they split that light beam, that one half of it is Michelson’s and the other is his partner Morley’s, which turns out to be the half the comes back with the phases perfectly matched up – but under slightly different conditions, alternative axioms, there could be another pair that don’t match up, see, in fact millions of pairs, that sometimes you could blame it on the Æther, sure, but other cases maybe the light goes someplace else, takes a detour and that’s why it shows up late and out of phase because it went where Blinky was when he was invisible, and –”

Pynchon’s play with polarized light in Against the Day mirrors more modern physics’ allowance for hidden realities and alternative axioms waiting just beyond the edge of observation. Specifically, this literary trick echoes speculative theories of pocket universes, where reality itself might split under the right conditions.

I recently listened to the Dwarkesh interview with Adam Brown, which explores some 21st century physics ripe for all sorts of post-modern literary conceits, from pocket universes to replicating Einstein. What jumped out at me was that while pocket universes have been showing up for awhile now in science fiction, apparently they’re, not inconsistent with the known laws of physics, which means that it’s just engineering:

The hard bit is going to be concentrating it together in a really small little bubble that’s shaped exactly right in order that it doesn’t form a black hole, expands in just the way that you want it to expand, and lands in the vacuum that you’re aiming for.

This places pocket universes as both surprisingly possible, but unsurprisingly inaccessible to the present day us. Well, inaccessible unless it occurred naturally. In their discursions, Dwarkesh and Brown touch on naturally occurring spontaneous nuclear reactors, and as Brown says anything that humans can do can happen without humans. It’s a short speculative step to imagine natural generators of pocket universes, perhaps something you might use yourself if you existed in a piece of literary fiction.

Ok, but what is a pocket-dimension? Unless we wanted to over-abuse the physics, pocket universes can only change reality in particular ways ¹. These bubble universes expand at their speed of light but must be smaller than the containing universe. They can be nested, but can’t overlap. Within a pocket universe fundamental constants, dimensionality, and rules of nature might change, with most formulations inimical to life. And, a bit like a black hole, entering is a one way ticket. Once you’re in the bubble, that’s your universe.

While Against the Day emphasizes the dead-ends and misturns, the implications of accepted physics still leaves tantalizing possibilities beyond just science fiction. I look forward to the next post-modern authors taking up the Pynchon / Borges work, mining the metaphysical implications of our science-in-progress.