IN AN INFINITY of universes, an endless number of possibilities must exist, as Max Tegmark argues in "Parallel Universes" [May]. It's tempting to wonder if every other Scientific American board of editors who published that article got as bleary-eyed reading the scads of letters it generated. Many of the notes were thoughtful--and thought-provoking--such as this one, which Anita Brubaker sent via e-mail: "If Tegmark's multiverse theory is true, then one of the many existing universes has no pain, no death and no suffering. On the other hand, one universe's inhabitants experience maximum pain. Has Tegmark demonstrated the existence of what are usually called heaven and hell?" More cosmic commentary on the May issue follows.

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PROBLEMS WITH PARALLELS

I have a problem with Max Tegmark's use in "Parallel Universes" of "infinity," which I understand to state that there are infinite universes, and hence all possible arrangements of matter and energy must exist somewhere. The particular arrangement of matter and energy we observe in this universe is the culmination of causal processes that have led up to it. One can imagine all sorts of variations--Abraham Lincoln at our dinner table, our conscious brain inside the skull of a whale, an intact planet Earth lying at the center of the sun. But if there are no means by which such events could come about, then they never will, even given infinite time and universes.

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