Unca Cheeks the Toy Wonder's Silver Age Comics Web Site!
"Alternate Timelines For Dummies"
by Quentin Long
This site has had few (if any) friends and/or supporters as pivotal to its
creation -- or of such lengthy; tireless; and muchly appreciated duration
-- as the online repository of arcane comics minutiae and Asimovian hard
science known and renowned as Quentin Long (Esq.); a.k.a. "Cubist";
a.k.a. "Th' Perfesser." 
Unca Cheeks' and Quentin's online paths first crossed (if mercilessly time-ravaged mem'ry still serves) back in the day of America Online's DC Versus Marvel message boards; where stubbornly argumentative comics fans on both sides of the inter-company chasm would meet on the field of verbal battle, there to browbeat or plead on behalf of the inherent combat superiority of their respective "pet" hero (or heroes).
Specifically: we two ended up providing most of the intelligent commentary (and pretty much all of the good running gags) within the elephantine and contentious BATMAN VERSUS CAPTAIN AMERICA thread, thereabouts. (Quent on the good Captain's destined-to-get-his-
hinder-whupped behalf; and myself, on the Dark Knight's
demonstrably triumphant one. So: score one for the
li'l plush person, that first time out.)
Over the span of years betwixt then and now, however: your Unca Cheeks has taken it on the rhetorical chin from the redoubtable Quentin as frequently as he's dished it out (if not more so), from one unfailingly good-natured verbal sparring match to the next...
... and, thus: when the fateful hour at long last tolled for Unca Cheeks to nod assent toward the inevitable, and accept a kindly proffered offer to "step up to the plate" (as it were) for the cobbling of the occasional entertaining (and edifying) science-minded guest column for this site...
... well: there was, in the final analysis, only one rational
choice to be made. (... and made most happily, to boot!)
Ladies and gentlemen: it is with no small portion of wholly pardonable pleasure and vicarious pride that I give to you...
... Th' Perfesser.
Science and superheroes go together like peanut butter and jelly, particularly
when you're talking about Silver Age DC comics. In large part, DC had
Julius Schwartz to thank for its high degree of scientific orientation;
Mr. Schwartz was (and still is) a member of First Fandom, an organization
made up of people who were science fiction fans in 1939 or earlier, and his
pre-DC jobs included being a literary agent for a number of SF authors.
As for Marvel Comics, well, let's just say that Stan Lee's strong points never have included scientific expertise, shall we?
Of all the scientific concepts that Julius Schwartz injected into the titles he edited, there is one which eventually became part of the conceptual underpinning of all DC-produced comics; one concept whose importance grew to be such that it was sometimes present by inference even in stories where it wasn't explicitly invoked. This was the notion of parallel universes, alternative realms of existence whose past histories were identical up to certain specific event(s) in history, but diverged from each other after those events.
The neologistic term "multiverse" may not have been in use until Michael Moorcock coined it, but terminology aside, parallel universes have been a staple of science fiction for quite some time (i.e. Keith Laumer's WORLDS OF THE IMPERIUM series, or James Blish's novel JACK OF EAGLES, among many others).
While the "parallel timelines" concept is definitely attractive (heck, even Marvel Comics has a multiverse, albeit Marvel never embraced theirs as wholeheartedly as DC did its own), it's fair to ask just how plausible/realistic this Multiverse schtick truly is. Fortunately for people who approve of scientific accuracy, it turns out that there is a reasonably solid justification for parallel worlds -- in fact, there are at least two different justifications.
Justification Numero Uno: Quantum mechanics. You've probably heard of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which places well-defined limits on how much you can know about any given subatomic particle; as an example, when you measure the position of some specific Particle X, you've just put an upper limit on how accurately you can measure its momentum, and vice-versa. The Uncertainty Principle is responsible for many of the more peculiar aspects of subatomic particles, including the particular oddity that we're interested in right now. Namely, it's impossible to predict exactly how a particle is going to behave when you apply a force to it. The best you can do is determine the odds of any particular outcome. You can say that under thus-and-such conditions, a particle has an X% chance of doing This; a Y% chance of doing That; a Z% chance of doing The Other; and so on.
And guess what? When you do put a particle into thus-and-such conditions, it does have an X% chance of doing This, and all the rest of it. That's all well and good as far as it goes, but a number of scientists think it doesn't go far enough. For these scientists, the question is, how do you get from Point A (i.e. "Here are the 59 probabilities of the 59 different things that might happen when we do the experiment") to Point B (i.e. "Now that the experiment is done, this is the one thing that did happen")? Scientists have come up with a few different explanations, but there's only one that's relevant for our purposes here and now: the grandiosely named Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics.
Here's the deal: Whenever a particle can do any one of a range of different things, the Universe splits up into a semi-infinite number of parallel worlds. These newly-minted worlds are identical to each other, except for how the particle behaves in each of them: The particle does This in X% of the newly-created worlds, That in Y% of the new worlds, The Other in Z% of the new worlds, and so on.
At this point, it's worth noting that this here Many-Worlds idea doesn't have any hard evidence to support it. Of course, there also isn't any hard evidence against it, so it certainly could be true; thus it's good enough for science fiction, not to mention comic books! And if science doesn't provide any hints as to how you go about traveling from Parallel World A to Parallel World B, well, that just means the writer is free to postulate whatever means of conveyance he likes, right?
Anyway -- the Many-Worlds idea, if true, has a very interesting consequence: Multiple Universes IS the natural state of existence. And if Multiple Universes is natural, it follows that there's no point in trying to get rid of alternate worlds -- you might as well attempt to repeal the law of gravity. It's a pity nobody told the Anti-Monitor...
Justification Numero Two-O: Black holes. A black hole is anything whose escape velocity is greater than the speed of light. Since escape velocity is proportional to surface gravity, and surface gravity is inversely proportional to size, it turns out that you can make pretty much anything into a black hole if you smash it down real small. What you end up with is a thing that can never be directly observed, because there's no physical way for information to leave it. Even better, the thing you end up with has a gravity field so damn strong that it literally tears a hole in the Universe!
And yes, it is possible to fall down such a hole and emerge... somewhere else. Where? Well, if scientists are right about the equations that describe black holes, "somewhere else" means some other Universe entirely, chosen completely at random. And although you can fall into the black hole over and over again, you can't ever return to any Universe you've visited before. In other words: Not only does the "black hole express" have worse steering than the Doctor's TARDIS, but it also doesn't even have a Reverse gear! But hey, it does get you from one Universe into another...
Black holes make a somewhat problematical vehicle for inter-Universe travel; leaving aside the complete lack of control (which doesn't seem to have hurt the TV show SLIDERS any), a black hole's gravity, and accompanying tidal forces, are intense enough that any normal matter would be completely wasted long before it enters the hole proper. That's "wasted" as in "shredded so finely that you'd be lucky to find any intact atoms, let alone molecules, in the resulting Puree of Matter".
Even so, a writer might consider the "black hole express" for any character that happens to be able to ignore the constraints of the physical Universe (i.e. the Beyonder, Mr. Mxyzptlk, Gene Roddenberry's Omnipotent Energy-Things[TM]), or is honest-to-God invulnerable (i.e. Superman, Phoenix), or can shrink down small enough to not get shredded by tidal stress (i.e. the Atom), or is just plain fast enough to not remain inside the "danger zone" long enough to get shredded (i.e. the Flash).
In summary: Quantum mechanics justify the belief that alternate worlds might exist in the first place, and black holes justify the notion that it might just be possible to travel from one alternate world to another. Of course, controlling your inter-Universe trajectory is basically an unsolved problem, but to a zeroeth approximation, you could start with another quantum mechanical notion -- "the observer affects that which is observed" -- and declare that "steering" between worlds is a matter of pure, raw, Willpower.
Whatever you do, don't lose your concentration, unless you want to end up in a world where Mickey Mouse defeated Harry S. Truman in the Presidential election of 1948...
The Erudite and Right Honorable Quentin will be honoring us with his presence hereabouts again, campers and camperettes...
... and: I do believe that -- if we were
all to ask him real nicely, like -- he just might even
be willing to entertain the occasional request, re: the explication
of this scientific or that one, God wot.
Quentin's e-mail address is: [email protected].
Want to know how a man could possibly heft a chunk of collapsed, super-dense stellar matter, and whip himself up a four-color union suit out of it? Curious as to just how,precisely, it is that an alien being rocketed to Earth in his infancy could end up maanifesting the powers of flight; super-hearing; and invulnerability? Stumped by the concept of a man gaining hyper-accelerative abilities by dint of a dram of irradiated mongoose blood, even...?
Drop the gentleman a line, then.
MULTIVERSE 101 is now in session...
... and: Th' Perfesser is in da house, y'all.
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