The Mystery Of Déjà Vu: What Do We Know?
While the action elements of DÉJÀ VU are all about realism, the unconventional underpinning of the thriller is an inquiry into just what the feeling of déjà vu really is – and what it might reveal about the workings of the universe.
Déjà vu, though a common phenomenon, has defied easy explanations by biologists, psychiatrists, neurologists and physicists. Current theories, as the filmmakers discovered, range from the psychological to the downright fantastical and include:
- Some neurologists believe that déjà vu happens when the brain latches onto a single detail –a smell, sight or sound – the familiarity of which causes it to confuse the past and present for*a split second
- Doctors point out that many patients with temporal lobe seizures experience the feeling of déjà vu so it may originate from unexpected stimulation to that part of the brain
- Some psychoanalysts believe déjà vu is a form of “wish fulfillment” – in which deep-seated psychological desires come to the fore, as they usually do in dreams, but in waking life
- Those who subscribe to the theory of reincarnation believe detailed episodes of déjà vu are evidence of memories of previous lives
- Scientists on the fringes of new discoveries in quantum physics have suggested that déjà vu could be the result of parallel universes that accidentally intersect when the fabric of spacetime*is disrupted
It is the latter theory that plays a vital role in the development of DÉJÀ VU’s suspenseful and thought-provoking twists. In order to get a better handle on what pioneering physicists believe about how time really operates, Jerry Bruckheimer and Tony Scott went right to the source: they picked the mega-sized brains of several world-class physicists including Dr. Brian Greene, an expert on String Theory and a professor of physics at Columbia University who has written such popular explorations of general relativity and quantum mechanics as The Fabric of the Cosmos and The Elegant Universe. Says Bruckheimer, “We wanted to do our best to really explore what the various characters do in DÉJÀ VU, including the scientists in our time window lab. I’ve made a career of telling stories that take you inside a world you’d never be a part of, yet, we make you part of it through this movie. Balancing science fiction and science fact can be tricky and complex, but we wanted to start this dialogue in DÉJÀ VU and open our eyes to possibilities that perhaps are not as far fetched as they seem.”
To get inside the surprising world of quantum physics, Bruckheimer and Scott sat down with Dr. Greene and asked him to explain some of theories behind time travel and parallel universes to them as simply as possible. Greene, in turn, simplified the concepts on a blackboard for Bruckheimer and Scott. He explained that we live in a world in which we are not always aware of the tricks our minds play on us when it comes to the medium of time. For example, he noted that when you look at yourself in a mirror that is 8 feet away, you might think you’re seeing yourself right now, but you are actually looking at yourself as you existed 16 nanoseconds ago! (That 16 nanoseconds is the time it takes for light to reflect off your face at the mirror and come back.) So, in a sense, you are actually looking into the past. We do it all the time. It happens whenever you look up in the night sky to admire the North Star – even though it appears to be twinkling right at you, in fact you are actually peering at the star as it was 630 years ago. So one thing we know for sure is that time isn’t always what it seems to be.
Getting into even more mind-bending concepts, Green explained how some physicists now believe, based on the latest evidence, that there exist an infinite number of parallel universes in the cosmos — and that we just happen to lead our lives in one of them, unaware of the others. Once considered pure science fiction, the theory of parallel universes has now been directly implicated by recent cosmological observations. Though there are many different views of how parallel universes might operate, one of the most elegant explanations comes from an exciting new frontier in contemporary physics: String Theory. String Theory posits that the universe consists of tiny strings or membranes that vibrate in 11 dimensions. In this theory of a multi-dimensional cosmos, parallel universes could be separated from our own by as little as a fraction of a millimeter. Greene uses the analogy that our universe and everything in it might be just one thin slice of bread in an inconceivably vast loaf.
Though most of these theories still leave many questions unanswered, the potential they suggest for time travel and manipulation of the past or future is mind-boggling. As Dr. Greene says, “The realization there’s more to the universe than we are directly aware of helps us appreciate our place in the cosmos.”
Continues Bruckheimer, “Understanding parallel universes was one of our biggest challenges in developing the DÉJÀ VU story. We wanted to know by consulting the experts in this area how we could convince audiences that there really are parallel universe – that, even as I am sitting here right now, there might be yet another Jerry talking somewhere else saying something completely different. An then how do you bridge these parallel universes? That’s another area we explore in DÉJÀ VU.” At the time window lab, things become more peculiar as the scientists utilize “wormholes” to journey across the gap between past and future. Wormholes, also known as “Einstein-Rosen bridges” (based on a paper by Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen in which they proposed a bridge that could travel between a black hole and white hole at a speed faster than light) and “space tunnels,” are a hypothetical feature of space-time that could provide a shortcut between one point in time and another. Wormholes, similar to black holes, are created by sources of intense gravity that cause the space-time fabric to fold or distort. Just as a worm can get to the other side of an apple by journeying through its center, wormholes could provide a quick path to an alternate place in this or other universes.
So can we alter events that have already happened? Can our future really change our past? The answers are very much open to debate – and that just adds to the fun of DÉJÀ VU. Says Tony Scott, “I want audiences to leave the theater thinking this type of travel through time is really possible. If they haven’t quite perfected this technology today, scientists will do it tomorrow. When the audience takes that leap with us, they’ll be swept up in the story.”
