Very interesting thread, dude. 2 thumbs up!!!!! I'm just a backyard astronomer and my knowledge of quantum mechanics and other fields of advanced physics has more holes than a Swiss chees so some questions about the universe have been bugging me, hopefully you can help me clear them up . Ok, here's the 1st question: According to S. Hawking in his newest book, The Grand Design, Feynman's Sum Over Histories leads to the idea that our universe doesn't have a unique history that is independent of the observer, and there might be histories in which stars are made of all kinds of crap other than hydrogen and helium as in our present universe. I've been royally mind f**ked by this idea, it just doesn't make sense, I mean common sense. Would you mind elaborating on this alternative-histories-of-the-universe matter? What do some physicists at CERN think about Hawking's comment?