In the early 90s, a singer slowly introduced himself to the underground alternative scene by calling himself -E-, and releasing two melancholy solo albums. Possibly he was the first musician to start solo then join a band, the Eels. But like Nine Inch Nails, the Eels turned out to be a band in disguise, and after about the fourth album –E-, real name Mark Oliver Everett, was the only member left. The story of -E- was a mystery at first, but slowly through very autobiographic lyrics that told the stories of his life, we learned about a very tragic life behind the music. Growing up in the Virginian suburbs of Washington, -E- portrayed himself as the typical misfit and loner kid, with aloof parents and very little friends. The first Eels album, "Beautiful Freak," introduced -E- with two other band members to a larger audience, receiving airplay on alternative stations and getting exposure on various TV shows and soundtracks. It was a hit on the alternative stations at the time.
By the second Eels album, "Electro-shock Blues", we were let in on the story of his father's death when -E- was only 19, his sister's suicide and his mother contracting cancer and eventual death. While not an album that sold well, it did attracted attention for being so starkly revealing and morbid. The four following studio albums saw the fan numbers decrease even more, though the last album, being a double album four years in the making, brought a cult following back to the Eels with 33 beautifully rendered tales of woe and optimism. After a couple experimental albums, Blinking Lights and Other Revelations brought the Eels back to their original sound.
But after 15 years of being an -E- fan, imagine my surprise when it turns out that the downhearted music is not the only thing that Mark Oliver Everett is famous for. Mark, as his family surely called him, turns out to be the son of a quantum physics named Hugh Everett III. Physicists typically aren’t households name, but Hugh had one big idea that should’ve made his name well known. In 1957 in a paper for Princeton University Everett developed his theory of parallel worlds.
The details are best explained in a BBC Special going around the internet named “Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives.” In it –E- allows a camera crew to follow him as he discovers his father, who he describes as never really being social with his own family, and the highs and lows of his career before his death of a heart attack in 1982. In what’s surely an emotional journey for him, -E- travels to Virginia and to Princeton to talk to Hugh’s old friends and colleagues. There he not only learns what quantum physics is about, but also how controversial and revolutionary his father’s exploration of the physics behind parallel worlds has become. When first proposed, the idea that each decision we make, no matter how big or little, splits us off and creates alternate universes was seen as borderline crazy. It contradicted the leading physicist of the time Niels Bohr’s assertions that radiating atoms would split apart, but come back together.
While the documentary does a sufficient job of explaining to the layman the basis of quantum mechanics and what Hugh was proposing, it doesn’t explain enough the result of the theory that took hold in science fiction and how it’s grown in popularity. A lot of our science fiction physics believes that there are alternate worlds out there, where men and women have superpowers or extraordinary things happen to them. From Star Trek to the X-Men, the idea of parallel universes has generated thousands of stories, ideas and what ifs that allows us to explore actions, decisions and pivotal moments in history. Possibly this theory is so far advanced that we won’t see any real results on the physics side of it in our lifetime, but as they say, “science fiction is the science of the future” and has actually been the predecessor for many actual advances in science. Possibly in some other alternate future it already has vastly changed science and the universe. In this one at least, both –E- and Hugh Everett have done a good job of getting us to dream a bit more.
By the second Eels album, "Electro-shock Blues", we were let in on the story of his father's death when -E- was only 19, his sister's suicide and his mother contracting cancer and eventual death. While not an album that sold well, it did attracted attention for being so starkly revealing and morbid. The four following studio albums saw the fan numbers decrease even more, though the last album, being a double album four years in the making, brought a cult following back to the Eels with 33 beautifully rendered tales of woe and optimism. After a couple experimental albums, Blinking Lights and Other Revelations brought the Eels back to their original sound.
But after 15 years of being an -E- fan, imagine my surprise when it turns out that the downhearted music is not the only thing that Mark Oliver Everett is famous for. Mark, as his family surely called him, turns out to be the son of a quantum physics named Hugh Everett III. Physicists typically aren’t households name, but Hugh had one big idea that should’ve made his name well known. In 1957 in a paper for Princeton University Everett developed his theory of parallel worlds.
The details are best explained in a BBC Special going around the internet named “Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives.” In it –E- allows a camera crew to follow him as he discovers his father, who he describes as never really being social with his own family, and the highs and lows of his career before his death of a heart attack in 1982. In what’s surely an emotional journey for him, -E- travels to Virginia and to Princeton to talk to Hugh’s old friends and colleagues. There he not only learns what quantum physics is about, but also how controversial and revolutionary his father’s exploration of the physics behind parallel worlds has become. When first proposed, the idea that each decision we make, no matter how big or little, splits us off and creates alternate universes was seen as borderline crazy. It contradicted the leading physicist of the time Niels Bohr’s assertions that radiating atoms would split apart, but come back together.
While the documentary does a sufficient job of explaining to the layman the basis of quantum mechanics and what Hugh was proposing, it doesn’t explain enough the result of the theory that took hold in science fiction and how it’s grown in popularity. A lot of our science fiction physics believes that there are alternate worlds out there, where men and women have superpowers or extraordinary things happen to them. From Star Trek to the X-Men, the idea of parallel universes has generated thousands of stories, ideas and what ifs that allows us to explore actions, decisions and pivotal moments in history. Possibly this theory is so far advanced that we won’t see any real results on the physics side of it in our lifetime, but as they say, “science fiction is the science of the future” and has actually been the predecessor for many actual advances in science. Possibly in some other alternate future it already has vastly changed science and the universe. In this one at least, both –E- and Hugh Everett have done a good job of getting us to dream a bit more.
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