Skymatters: Why does the idea of a multiverse get so much attention in the scientific community?

The planet Venus plays the starring role in the evening sky throughout the month. It is by far the brightest object in the evening sky and between 8 – 14 April

Benedict Cumberbatch in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness - but would an actual multiverse be worth the madness?

Although this year’s Oscars may have lacked something of the drama of 2022, from an astronomy point of view the winning movie - Everything Everywhere All at Once – highlights a different drama, one playing out in observatories across the globe. The movie itself deals with fantastical events that happen when two universes become connected through a rupture in the “spacetime continuum”. 

But it’s not the fantastical nature of the interactions of creatures from different universes that excites astronomers, rather the idea that there may be more than one Universe – the so-called “multiverse” model. It’s not a new idea and it certainly wasn’t spawned in Hollywood.