...of possible universes - be they "Quilted", "Brane" or, most strangely of all, "Ultimate".
Brian Green tackles this almost mystical idea head-on in The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos. Greene discussed his ideas further during a March 2011 edition of Start the Week.
...by flying though the known universe.
A noted futurist imagines a century during which Japan and Turkey might form an alliance to attack the US, Poland would become America’s closest ally. Mexico would make a bid for global supremacy, and a third world war would take place in space!
Are such forecasts meaningful, however? A dimly-remembered book from the late 1980s forecast nuclear war between Brazil and Argentina by 2011; temporally, it could still happen, but realistically, it's - hopefully - rather unlikely...
In any case, experts on complexity point out repeatedly that complex systems do not lend themselves to the mechanistic approaches (such as forecasting, cause-and-effect analysis and systems analysis) that work in merely complicated systems. Confident "back-casting" from even a year's hence therefore seems a rather risky business, but from 100 years?
Nevertheless, we still need to plan where we can - e.g. to mitigate against the worst effects of climate change. So what can we forecast and prepare for with confidence at the societal level and what remains in the realm of fantasy? This seems to be one of the key questions of the age...
