We are obsessed with the multiverse. From blockbuster movies Doctor Strange in the Multiverse
of Madness and Everything Everywhere All at Once to television's The Man in the High Castle
and Rick and Morty the idea that there could be an infinite number of universes holding an
infinite number of possibilities captivates us. And this fascination is not new - the
fascination with these repetitions dates back to the philosophers of ancient Greece. In The
Allure of the Multiverse physicist Paul Halpern examines the theory of the universe we can't
seem to let go in an infinite universe finite components are bound to repeat their patterns
again and again. Halpern traces the multiverse from the ancient Greek debate over cosmic
building blocks to German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's imagined eternal repetition of all
events and lives in time to Albert Einstein's special and general theories of relativity
opening the door to the fourth dimension (another way of enlarging reality). All these ideas
together culminated in Princeton graduate student Hugh Everett's Many Words Interpretation in
which all possibilities of existence simultaneously exist. That imaginative idea led to
numerous other multiverse notions including the idea that the universe might be a collection
of bubble universes each inflated from the primordial stuff of the cosmos. Yet the prospect of
such a maddening labyrinth of parallel realities has led other researchers to propose
alternatives such as bouncing universes in multiple dimensions that are every bit as
perplexing. An epic through physics' history The Allure of the Multiverse explores one of
physics' most controversial - yet most persistent - ideas--
