I heard that subatomic particles at the quantum level is possible that they exist in multiple parallel universes at the same time, or did I hear that wrong.

Sure they can. Read about quantum suicide, its a rather interesting read. Basically it states that every time the trigger of a gun is pulled, it measures the spin of the quantum particle. So when the trigger is pulled, the gun can either spin clockwise or counter-clockwise. When it spins clockwise, it fires. But when it spins counter-clockwise the opposite happens, only a click.

Lets throw a hypothetical man in this abstract idea that is holding the gun. He points the gun at his head and pulls the trigger... Lucky enough for him, the quarks "the measure of spin of the quantum particle" spin counter clockwise.. Just a click happens, and no matter how many times he pulls the trigger, the same thing happens. If he goes back in time and pulls the trigger again, the measure will be clockwise, thus killing him. In the real world, the man already pulled the trigger for the first time, and infinitely after that.. How can he be dead? He's both alive AND dead, and every time he pulls the trigger, the universe splits in two.

The idea of a multiverse is called a thought theory. And any experiment done to test this theory is called a thought experiment. Its impossible as of right now to measure or deal with any quantum level particles, so its only thought provoking as of right now.

Check out Max Tegmarks Quantum Suicide and other thought experiments.. Pretty cool stuff.

So every action we take it takes into consideration every possible action that could be taken and it splits off into a new Universe for each action?

This post was edited by pnutz on Mar 25 2015 08:26pm

yes, in theory

but remember, a particle is not a single point, it is a wave (no matter how large the particle is) you will never know exactly where it is, but as the particle gets larger, the variability in its position is lowered.

An example is a billard ball. you may think you knows it position exactly, but it you actually only know it to around 10^-16m, while an election is a lot larger of a range

This post was edited by TheStealthTarget on Mar 26 2015 01:50am

So you're saying.. a single particle expands itself into a wave? Or its travel path is like a wave?

Given post-Everett quantum mechanics (e.g. many worlds), sort of (it's unclear when exactly branching occurs). I myself favor the many worlds theory.

There are other interpretations of QM which don't postulate a multiverse, though.

I'm trying to visualize how a particle behaves both as a wave and a particle at the same time. Also during the dual slit experiment the particle goes through both slits but it doesn't clone itself, does that mean it physically spread itself out into a wave form and then collapsed back?

To actually get a grasp on it you're going to have to at least get past your first few years of university level physics courses.

But don't try the suicide thing !! We are in the "the gun fire" parallel so it always kill you

The term you probably heard was superposition.

The information of a system involving particles is limited by mathematics in a stange way. If you dont know the position of a particle with certainty by measurent, its location becomes defined by a mathematical function, literally as fragments of a particle scattered over different locations in space. "one location" as we know it does not materialize until the position is measured and the waveform is "collapsed". Shroidinger's cat is a reasonable metaphor to explain it.

The math involved is heisenberg's uncertainty principle and i would be careful what you read out there about quantum mechanics because theres a lot of utter nonsense out there.