One of the current fashions in cosmology (it's what happens when cosmologists sit around playing with their brains too much) is the notion that our universe is but a bubble in a larger structure called the multiverse. Because, unlike a universe, of which there can be only one, a multiverse is a container for lots of universes.

This isn't that branching thing, with the universe splitting off every nanosecond into multiple alternate copies. The multiverse is the real reality, the eternal Place, the bedrock; while the universes within it come and go. The idea of a multiverse is one answer to where this particular universe came from.

Imagine a bubble of universe in the multiverse, sitting on a ledge. Or I should say "ledge", because it represents a stable energy level, a ledge-shaped hollow on a graph where a universe can sit for a while. This particular universe isn't much to look at, because the ledge where it's sitting defines the set of physical laws that can work inside a universe sitting on that particular ledge, and these laws produce a bland universe without any stars or pretty much anything else to look at. No life. Duller than dirt, because even dirt can't get started in this universe.

So then there's an "earthquake", and Dullsverse rolls off its ledge, to come to rest at a lower energy level. Different physical laws are possible here, and so the Dulliverse transforms itself, explosively, in something that, on the inside, looks a lot like what we call the "Big Bang", and voila! Life, the universe, and everything, made possible by new physical laws that are a lot more congenial to you and me and our kinfolk.

Our universe has always existed, according to this creation story; but not always in its present form.

Which brings me to those "earthquakes"...that's one of those quantum things, and that's the Game Over that the article about "quantum observers" destroying the universe is fretting about. The kind of change that birthed our present universe could happen again, and if the ledge we're resting on is precarious, it might not take much of a "quake" to knock us off.

You're a quantum observer. Suppose you concentrate real hard on my words (and suppose my words have any basis in reality), and think about nudging our universe a little, maybe setting it to rocking back and forth on its narrow ledge. As a quantum observer, you might actually be able to cause a little ripple doing that, maybe even tip our universe off its current ledge on to another, lower one.

But maybe that won't be totally catastrophic. Say the new ledge is only a little lower than our current one, so the laws are a little different, but not completely outside our tolerance. They might even be a little better. Maybe energy's easier to use, hydrogen fusion is suddenly easy and not always fifty years in the future. Maybe ice cream won't end up in the hips and beer won't go to the gut. Little things that make life a little more pleasant. One can always hope, right? What other choice do we have?