Using metamaterials, physicist Igor Smolyaninov at the University of Maryland in College Park thinks we can create analogies for some of the most interesting cosmological occurences like multiverses and even the birth of universes.

In the same way gravity bends light, metamaterials can bend electrical and magnetic fields to create a metamaterial version of relativity. We can, he says, create metamaterials with electromagnetic spaces that possess compactified dimensions.

We could create metamaterials in which the number of dimensions and compactified dimensions changes from region to region, with wormholes transiting from space to space. We might even be able to witness the birth of photons in these metamaterials, the transition of which would in some ways represent the spawning of a new universe within the metamaterial itself. We could even create a metamaterial multiverse in which different universes have different properties, or wherein different physical laws apply, and witness our own tiny Big Bang by engineering an optical “photon blockade” device in which topological transitions within the metamaterial resemble the birth of a universe.