Introduction
Have you ever wondered if you had made a different decision to the one you had made say last year or the year before that? What would life be like now? Parallel Universes are similar to our own but decisions have gone the other way. Some Universes', the changes may be slight, you didn't make a fool of yourself the other night or major, Nazi Germany won the Second World War. The television series Sliders starring Jerry O'Connell takes this as its theme as they visit different worlds every episode. Parallel Universes is the more common term of these two. Alternate Universe is another term to describe a Multiverse. Harry Turttledove writes a lot of stories based around an alternate world. He talks about aliens gate-crashing the Second World War or weapons of today being used in wars of yesterday. His most famous selection of books are the Balance ( In the Balance, Tilting the Balance, Upsetting the Balance, Striking the Balance ) and the follow up Colonization ( Second Contact, Down to Earth, Aftershocks, Homeward Bound ). In this universe, you are an office worker, in another universe, you could be a multi-millionaire footballer or a criminal. You may or may not even exist in another universe. Your parents might not have decide to marry one another, one might have gone off with someone else. Every decision you make, in another dimension, the other decision should you be there exist there, the opposite would have been taken. A large number of sci-fi television series have tried to tackle the issue. Just three of these series are mentioned below. Other series to have tackled the subject include Red Dwarf, Doctor Who and Stargate amongst others.

Is there Proof?
The main evidence of an existance of the multiverse is the activities of particles in Quantum Mechanics. They are able to be in many places at once. A lot of theories that have been created to explain Quantum Mechanics cannot stand up unless the multiverse exists.

What is Super String Theory (SST) ?
At the moment this is no one whole unifying theory of everything (TOE), at the moment the sciences of the very large and the very small ( Quantum Mechanics ) do not match up. The SST provides some way in matching the two sciences up. It is a belief that at the heart of everything including atoms are tiny, tiny, miniscure vibratings strings. The science of SST points to there being a strong case for the Multiverse. In it, SST provides answers for 10 of the 11 known dimensions. The only way in which the sciences of the very large and the very small can co-exist is if the Multiverse exists. In these other universes, the physics may be different.

Harry Turtledove Balance and Colonization
It's the Second World War and the Race arrive to take control of Tosev III (Earth). The Allies and the Nazi's are at war but have to break it off as they deal with the Reptilians. Unlike the Reptiles in V, these are carnivores. There are a number of different story strands, in Britain, in America, in China, in Russia and in Germany. The powers build nuclear weapons to fight back. The second trilogy has the Reptilians controlling large swathes of the Planet with reinfrorcements on their way. In the final book, Homeward Bound, the humans reach the Reptillians' home planet.

Multiverse in Star Trek
The Multiverse first appears in the episode 'Mirror, Mirror' in the original series. The Multiverse is the opposite, the United Space Federation are a war hungry force who leaders use threats and torture to show their authority. Kirk, McCoy and Uhura fall into the other universe through a transporter malfunction. Their alternate equivalent come to our world. Before leaving their universe, Kirk plants seeds of doubt in the mind of Spock. This has an effect on him which ripples through the mirror universe. The alternate federation dematerializes, in effect they no longer go out and attack. They also become less able to defend themselves. In Deep Space Nine, members of the DS9 travel to the mirror universe on a number of ocassions and discover that that universe has fallen to the Alliance ( Klingons and Cardassians ). The worlds in the Star Trek are grim compared to our own.

Multiverse in Farscape
When John Crichton travels through a wormhole, he is captured by an Ancient. He sends John through a number of unrealized realities. These are essentially parallel/alternate worlds. In one, the Scarrans have found Earth and have genetically altered people. Another world, John is a Peacekeeper who has to kill Sikozu.

Multiverse in Sliders
By far the most well known series based on the principles of the Multiverse is this one. It is dedicated solely to the subject of parallel worlds. It follows four people who travel through a multiverse portal machine who have to survive until their next jump. Along the way, they come up against the Kromaggs who want to destroy parallel Earth worlds so that they can retake Kromagg Prime, their home world.

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