Why We Think There's a Multiverse, Not Just Our Universe 458
An anonymous reader writes "It's generally accepted that the Universe's history is best described by the Big Bang model, with General Relativity and Quantum Field Theory as the physical laws governing the underlying framework. It's also accepted that the Universe probably started off with an early period of cosmic inflation prior to that. Well, if you accept those things — as in, the standard picture of the Universe — then a multiverse is an inevitable consequence of the physics of the early Universe, and this article explains why that's the case."
You mean (Score:3, Funny)
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That universe was destroyed by the Living Tribunal as Too Stupid to Survive.
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on tonight episode of sliders
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Call in Fraa Jad -- he can fix it.
Re:You mean (Score:5, Informative)
Uhhh no. There's no serious cosmologist in the world who thinks we know even close to everything about the universe yet. The 14b year timescale works just fine as "the furthest we can see" because its well the furthest we can see. Nobody in their right mind claims that there's nothing beyond our ability to see.
And no the photons don't get "old" -- they get too far away. If your max speed is 100mph and I'm 150 miles away, there's no way you'll ever get to me in one hour. Same thing goes for photons. They have a maximum speed so if we see one, we know with absolute certainty that it can't have traveled more than a certain distance or it simply wouldn't be here yet. Short of discovering wormholes or other such objects that could somehow let light break c.
Though that's not quite right either. We actually can see a type of "edge" of the universe which is closer than the theoretical maximum range of a photon. Its the point in time when the CMB was hot enough that it was opaque to photons. Its essentially like looking at a wall of fog and not being able to see much more than an inch through it (though of course for different physical reasons!) If they ever manage to detect gravity waves to any great extent, its theorized that they could be used to gather information beyond the CMB wall (though gravitons would have their own version of the CMB wall at some point even further in the past.)
So yes, they do say "yep, that is as far as we can see" but there is definitely no "it must be the edge of everything!" conclusion drawn from that. There's all sorts of theories around regarding what was before / outside of the big bang. Trouble is, they're all unprovable because yeah.. its beyond what we can see or could ever see (again, barring the discovery of some way to break c.)
Even with gravity telescopes its pretty likely that we're just going to find a more detailed version of what we already know. Not guaranteed of course (there may be monsters out behind the CMB wall after all) but pretty likely -- still leaving the main "what came before time existed" question fundamentally unanswerable.
Universal Internet Repeaters and Disciplined Minds (Score:4, Informative)
If the "tired light hypothesis" was true, and the "observable" universe was actually much older than 14 billion years, if could be possible for a system at the edge of what we observe to take information it has observed from further way and repeat it in our direction. Thus, even if photons from further way could not make it to us, in theory information could -- potentially from a distributed internet spanning endless quadrillions of light years of space and time. Thus the idea of a cosmological horizon is incomplete:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_horizon [wikipedia.org]
By the way, Hugh Everett's life is another example of how poorly academia often rewards thinking outside the box: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Everett [wikipedia.org]
Too bad he did not know how to escape "The Pleasure Trap" (which can be hard under stress):
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx [drfuhrman.com]
Sci-fi author James P. Hogan used the Many Worlds Interpretation is some of his sci-fi novels from around the 1980s and 1990s (not sure exactly when the first was). Hogan often championed the academic underdog, arguing they should get a fairer hearing, whether they were right or not..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tired_light [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Universe_(physics) [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halton_Arp [wikipedia.org]
http://www.thesunisiron.com/ [thesunisiron.com]
Semmelweis is another example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semmelweis [wikipedia.org]
One can see more extreme examples in times now despised enough to admit of them like Deutsche Physik or Lysenkoism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism [wikipedia.org]
Something to think about for the modern day (a book recommend by JP Hogan):
http://www.disciplined-minds.com/ [disciplined-minds.com]
"Who are you going to be? That is the question.
In this riveting book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to subordinate their own vision and maintain strict "ideological discipline."
The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professional's lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals typically do not make a significant difference, undermining the creative potential of individuals, organizations and even democracy.
Schmidt details the battle one must fight to be an independent thinker and to pursue one's own social vision in today's corporate society. He shows how an honest reassessment of what it really means to be a professional employee can be remarkably liberating. After reading this brutally frank book, no one who works for a living will ever think the same way about his or her job."
A different-but-related take on that by Freeman Dyson:
http://edge.org/conversation/heretical-thoughts-about-science-and-society [edge.org]
Re:You mean (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody has measured what a photon looks like even at 1 AU, much less at a light year.
We collect photons from millions of light years away every night -- they're called stars. Not to mention we've collected pictures of the outer planets (all are well more than 1 AU from us) both at distance via telescopes and up close via probes -- and yep.. photons still look like photons out there.
Now you could go ahead and try to claim that we have no 100% proof that those stars and planets are as distant as they appear to be but your argument would have to be strong enough to counteract standard candles, gravitational lensing measurements and even simple triangulation (the earth's orbit around the sun is wide enough to triangulate plenty of the nearer stars' distances) and any other distance measurement techniques I'm not thinking of. Oh, and you'd have to account for the probes managing to go where we told them in the case of the outer planets having different photons.
"gee, the experiment doesn't match our prediction, so our prediction was wrong."
That's exactly what they do say. But its generally preferred to modify an existing somewhat working theory to match the new data over dumping it all and starting from scratch. In this particular case, adjusting certain factors in the less well known areas of our theories (expansion rate of the universe) was a hell of a lot simpler than trying to rebuild things that are fairly well measured experimentally (the speed of light, for example.) Not that it doesn't happen (string theory isn't a direct take off from quantum mechanics for example -- they share properties of course because they're trying to describe the same things but the math of strings is pretty different from that of points) but outright replacement is not usually the first choice.
Overall, its absolutely true that cosmology still has a long way to go. But to claim that they're total crap for not having figured out 100% of everything yet is kind of missing the whole point of research.
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Sorry that you got modded Flamebait. If it makes you feel better, all other universes modded you +5 Funny.
Re:You mean (Score:5, Funny)
However there is no universe where Java isn't a piece of crap.
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And I would absolutely live in that universe, because pot would probably already be legal there.
Re: You mean (Score:4, Informative)
Honestly... some random guy off the internet couldn't do much worse of a job then most of the morons we put in office.
Re: You mean (Score:5, Funny)
Re: You mean (Score:5, Funny)
The President is very much a figurehead - he wields no real power whatsoever. He is apparently chosen by the party caucus, but the qualities he is required to display are not those of leadership but those of finely judged outrage. For this reason the President is always a controversial choice, always an infuriating but fascinating character. His job is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it.
On those criteria Sarah Palin is one of the most successful Presidents the Multiverse has ever had.
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oooooooooooooooooooooo wow heavy man.
Re: You mean (Score:5, Funny)
There's that word again. "Heavy." Why are things so heavy in the parallel universe? Is there a problem with the Earth's gravitational pull?
Re: You mean (Score:4, Informative)
You know, I'm coming to believe the same thing. Give me a phone book and a week and I'll improve on every nationally elected official just picking names at random and asking them maybe 10 simple, straightforward questions.
The people I encounter in my life every day in the normal course of business are uniformly better suited for high office than the jackoffs that have been elected.
Re: You mean (Score:5, Insightful)
They won't suck like our current politicians.
They will suck in interesting new ways.
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Re: You mean (Score:5, Insightful)
"Give me a phone book and a week and I'll improve on every nationally elected official just picking names at randomâ¦"
You don't need a whole week.
Sociopaths rise to the top disproportionately (politicians and other power seeking people). Sociopaths make up about 3-5% of the population. Picking 10 names at random (forget even asking them any questions) would statistically get you at the very least a more decent set of human beings.
Re: You mean (Score:5, Insightful)
Sociopaths rise to the top disproportionately (politicians and other power seeking people)
You're quite correct. It's a phenomenon almost akin to some sort of natural law:
“Society is like a stew. If you don’t keep it stirred up, you get a lot of scum on top.”
Edward Abbey
It seems to me that we have the vote as our only real method of agitation. No surprise then, that our vote matters less and less as society marches on.
Greeks had that (Score:5, Informative)
The ancient Greeks had this system - it's called Sortition, or drawing of lots - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition [wikipedia.org]
The idea was that they didn't even vote, they just picked citizens at random for various committees, similar to how a jury is chosen.
Re: You mean (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Actually... (Score:4, Interesting)
Really things were set up rather well initially. But it broke down almost immediately.
The big problem was that we let the government reinterpret their own rights.
So the executive gets executive privilege which lets them basically lie/keep secrets from the legislature/judiciary and through interpretation the judiciary gets legislative powers by getting the power to change the meaning of laws.
There are other examples but they're all perversions.
The Executive has no right to keep secrets of any kind from the legislature or the judiciary... these are interpreted powers.
The Judiciary assumed the right to interpret laws because how could they rule on the constitutionality of a law if they couldn't strike one down. The issue becomes especially thorny when they start reinterpreting the constitution itself which is the highest law in the land.
In regards to how these two compromises should have broken down:
1. Give the Judiciary and legislative branch a joint investigative power over the Executive that reports to either the full house or the select committees as desired by the Legislative. The Judiciary likewise can receive the reports however they like. But a major flaw in the system is that the executive is the only branch allowed to directly investigate anything. Which means when it needs to be investigated there is a conflict of interest. Hold executive funds in bank accounts controlled by the legislative so that their checks literally bounce the instant the legislative branch desires it. And the Judiciary can pull legal authority from the executive if it fails to comply... so a government order to X by the executive would suddenly lack all legal authority if the executive stopped complying with the Judiciary.
2. In regards to Courts assuming legislative powers the courts have a point that they need the power to modify laws however those powers have been pushed far too much. All they really need is to say "rewrite this bill because it conflicts with X". Or in the case that there is a Constitutional law that needs clarification, simply cite precedence on the law and if required request a law from the legislature that addresses the case specifically. In that way, the courts wouldn't be legislating but rather pointing out a problem to the legislature and requesting their clarification on the issue.
In any case, your idea reminds me of Frank Herbert book. I think it was "the Whipping Star"... In this future society there is an American type governmental system with the three conventional branches but there is also a fourth branch called "bureau of sabotage" which has the sole function of screwing up government. Mostly slowing it down, frustrating it, cocking it up, leaking information... generally making things not work very well. The theory being that government becomes a problem when it becomes efficient and a confused and hamstrung government is less ambitious and more solicitous of its citizens. The government is always kept on the brink of collapse so if the government ever loses the consent of the governed it will fold instantly.
Its an insane idea but its also an amusing one in these times of rampant government arrogance.
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If there were one thing that could be different about the US Constitution that would make it better - it would be a 4th branch of government that had limited and enumerated powers over the other 3 branches. This fourth branch of government would be drafted, at random from among taxpayers. They would only meet once a year and all they could do is have absolute veto power, with 2/3 majority over ANYTHING that has been decided by the other branches of government in the last 2 years.
Nice idea, but as these panelist have less political experience than members of the other 3 powers, some more "seasoned" people would be needed to explain to them what their actual role and powers are. And these people would basically tell them: "no, you can't really veto anything, you're here just to take valuable time out of your busy schedules". Of course, there's the internet, and some of the panelist would know that they really do have more power, and will try to inform their peers. But here come's the
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The Iroquois had something like this. The "fourth branch" being a panel of women who could oust and exile a chief.
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Rising health insurance prices were doing that anyway, with or without Obamacare. At least pre-existing conditions are covered now when people do get insurance.
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Rising health insurance prices were doing that anyway, with or without Obamacare.
Really? How odd that the number of uninsured was at a pretty much constant level. Now with the ACA, you have people who can't get insurance at all, have people who's policies have been fully cancelled and can't get insurance at all, and even more people who's rates have climbed to a point where they could afford insurance, they now no longer can.
I'm sure that you also believe that you can keep your insurance, and your doctor too...well...if you can find a doctor.
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Except it seems the majority of tea-partiers still want the government to have more power in your private life in line with their religious choices.
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It's already there. At the very beginning it seemed like it just might have been grass roots, but if it ever really was it got co-opted some time ago. It's just another faction of the old party. Further, it seems to actually represent the same people as the old party but does so even more blatantly and makes less concessions to everyone else than ever before.
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How can you spot a liberal? When unable to relate to facts on an issue, they break down into insults and run off into wild directions while using ad-hom's.
I'm not sure that particular Modus operandi is monopolised strictly by Liberals. I do agree with you though; ad hominen generally concedes the argument.
So it's turtles all the way across. (Score:5, Insightful)
But the turtles appear out of nowhere and are very far apart.
Why do cosmological theories of any merit always sound like they were written by Douglas Adams?
Because its funny how we keep finding order (Score:2)
within chaos and then go "Wrong again!! Oh thats just brilliant!." Or something like that.
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Why do cosmological theories of any merit always sound like they were written by Douglas Adams?
Because Douglas Adams was a genius in all ways possible.
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Perhaps in an alternate universe, Douglas Adams wrote the following:
The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks do.
Not the quantum mechanical multiverse (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not the quantum mechanical multiverse (Score:5, Interesting)
And, since you might RTFA and I am certainly too lazy, are they proposing differing cosmological constants for these various regions, or more or less identical universes just starting with a different energy soup?
Re:Not the quantum mechanical multiverse (Score:5, Informative)
Now, the story I’ve told you is a conservative one. In this version of the story, the fundamental constants are the same in all the different regions of the multiverse, and the other Universes have the same laws of physics—with the same quantum vacuum and all—as our own. But most of what you hear about the multiverse these days are from people who have speculated much farther than that.
They don't discuss any of the ideas about differing constants although others have done so.
Can we just call it a "partitioned universe" (Score:5, Insightful)
or something less stupid, instead?
It doesn't make any sense to say that it's one big thing, but not one big thing at the same time.
Kind of like saying it's not one big cake sliced into wedges, it's lots of little cakes that have nothing to do with each other.
AND YET THEY OCCUPY THE SAME PLATTER.
Re:Can we just call it a "partitioned universe" (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem lies in the name 'UNIverse'.
You can not name something universe and then have something next to it.
Re:You can name something University and ... (Score:2)
You can name something 'university' and have another university next to it. Why not the same with universes. Both words come from a Latin expression that meant something like 'turned into one' or maybe 'rolled into one'. A 'university' was a sort of guild as in a guild of students, or students and teachers. Universe was probably meant to imply 'the whole deal' all of existence when it was first applied, just as 'the world' suggested there was only one world. Now 'the world' is 'our world' as opposed to
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No more bizarre than naming something an atom, then dividing it.
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or something less stupid, instead?
It doesn't make any sense to say that it's one big thing, but not one big thing at the same time.
Kind of like saying it's not one big cake sliced into wedges, it's lots of little cakes that have nothing to do with each other.
AND YET THEY OCCUPY THE SAME PLATTER.
Yes, and we call that platter... the multiverse, so we can discuss the cake we inhabit. Which is quite moist and delicious, by the way.
Get used to it.
Observable universe (Score:5, Interesting)
I thought there were already concise terms for it. The universe IS the multiverse / partitioned universe. The part that we are in is called observable universe.
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It doesn't make any sense to say that it's one big thing, but not one big thing at the same time.
Why not? Its been working just fine for Christians since the 2nd century with the Trinity. Call it a Holy Mystery of the universe.
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AND YET THEY OCCUPY THE SAME PLATTER.
That's the key, it's different platters. One cake may have eggs and the other doesn't have eggs. Or, in the universes theory, one may have gravity as we understand it, and another may have it slightly different, or not at all. Certain realities about our universe, like the distance of a circle's diameter to it's radius, may be different in other universes.
We cannot understand how this could actually be so, seeing as how we live in this universe, but the mathematical properties at their roots, could be
Words, words (Score:5, Interesting)
I think that this is a great article, but...
It is obvious that there are parts of the universe that are not (and never have been) causally connected with our universe.Those are just the parts of our universe we can't see, which are inevitable in an infinite universe with a finite duration and a finite speed of light. You don't need either quantum mechanics or inflation for that, and it has never been called the "multiverse."
The multiverse in my experience means exclusively the idea that there are other parts of the universe with different physical laws. That idea is connected to the anthropic principle, and (IMHO) evading tough issues about the nature of physical laws. (Find the cosmological constant to be inconveniently small? That's OK! In a multiverse there are a gazillion universe with large cosmological constants and no life like ours, ours with a small one and our kind of life, and nothing left to explain!) "We" might think that there is that kind of multiverse, but "we" in this case decidedly does not include "me." (People like me tend to call such ideas "Just so stories," which in physics is an insult.)
Re:Words, words (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree that he's only defined causally disconnected regions; this story actually has a definition of multiverse beyond regions outside of our lightcone. Note one of his later images: a single level 1 universe contained multiple regions which are not causally connected yet are part of the same clump that moved from the false vacuum to dumping energy into matter and radiation.
Any grouping like that is fundamentally isolated because the boundary region that remains in the false vacuum continues to exponentially expand, quickly isolating the clump. Even if the clump itself triggers a conversion of the false vacuum around it, it sounds like the isolation proceeds so much faster that it will be forever isolated by expanding false vacuum regions. With time, we could reach places that are not currently causally connected. It doesn't sound like we could overcome this expansion so easily.
My God... (Score:5, Insightful)
I know it's karma suicide to post on something like this saying "I don't get it", but, well, I don't get it.
I've been reading about inflation, multiverses, and whatnot for a very long time at this point, and I like to think that I can give a reasonable explanation comprehensible to nontechnical people. I've come across some articles that were a lot of work to get through, and I've given up on some because I don't have the necessary math.
But this article was terrible. Its grammar is good and not overly complex; it doesn't use a lot of obscure words. It's written like a nice popularization piece, with important parts called out in bold and lots of illustrations. But the illustrations are baffling -- what's that "getting closer to a sphere" four-panel diagram credited to Ned Wright, and where does the text refer to it? What the heck is going on with those diagrams from Narlikar and Padmanabhan? What's with the black space-balls rolling around on the mini-golf course at the end?
I'd wonder if this is a Sokol-type troll, but I don't see anything obviously wrong in it -- there's just a bunch of stuff there that looks like explanations, but apparently isn't. Or maybe I'm just having a bad night.
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The problem is that this is not science: the theory does not predict anything, and no experience can be done to test it.
In other words, this is faith. Faith is not bad, but there is always something wrong when you confuse it with science.
Re:My God... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well, here we do not talk about knowledge that have no immediate application. We talk about knowledge that by definition (the unobservable beyond the universe) will never have application.
That brings this "science" close to the same level as studying heavens, the only difference is that the process is rationale. It does not means it should not be studied, it just means we are on the edge of science and faith, and that it should not be mistaken with more solid science, like physics used us to.
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This version gets much closer to testable than the usual multiverse model. (The stock multiverse starts with an assumption that certain physical constants must be random - that's pretty much as untestable as saying those same constants cannot be random and must have been chosen by something). Unlike that, this version seems to be edging into the area of testability, at least in part.
We can test some of the predictions of the various inflationary models, to fine tun
Re:My God... (Score:5, Interesting)
+5 Inisghtful?
"the theory does not predict anything,"
Wrong.
1) The universe is close to flat
2) Regions that are currently causally disconnected were connected in the past - implying that both sides of the sky can exist at the same temperature
3) There are unobservably few magnetic monopoles even if such monopoles can exist
4) The primordial power spectrum of cosmological perturbations was almost, but not quite, Harrison-Zel'dovich
5) There is a relic background of primordial gravitational radiation
6) There is very litte primordial vorticity; observed vorticity has arisen through later processes
etc.
1, 2, 3, 4 are observably verified, by such experiments as COBE, Boomerang, WMAP, Planck, 2dF, SDSS, WiggleZ and their like. 5 is likely to be verified or rejected in the next year or two. 6 is currently very safely within bounds and looks far the most sensible explanation.
"no experience can be done to test it."
Wrong, though arguable if you insist on "testing" rather than "observing". In this context they're the same thing -- make a theory, make a prediction from said theory, and then find an observation to test it. For instance, ekpyrosis is likely to die in the next year or two since it predicts zero primordial gravitational radiation. But if you want to wank about definitions of words (which in my experience has been the practice of those with limited education in the field) be my guest; you can certainly argue it can't be "tested", even while the professionals are, um, testing the theories.
"In other words, this is faith."
No it is not. It is founded on a pair of solid theories -- general relativity and quantum mechanics -- and on a method of tying aspects of those theories together. The limitations are well known and well explored and the techniques are mathematically solid. Whether the physics is being applied the right way is a totally different question, but that's a matter for experiment and observation to determine, not one of "faith". I'm not suggesting for one moment that too many cosmologists haven't been educated into a theory that is far shakier than they believe, because they have, but even that isn't faith. It's merely a sign that we're overspecialising our cosmologists... and that there are no credible alternatives anyway, including from the likes of myself who have attempted to pursue fundamental issues at the heart of cosmology. A "credible alternative" explains all the data at least as well as a standard inflation+dark energy+cold dark matter big bang cosmology. There is a hell of a lot of data, and LCDM fits practically all of it remarkably well. Can't say that for almost any alternative.
"there is always something wrong when you confuse it with science"
No argument from me here, but it's not me getting confused.
Re:My God... (Score:5, Insightful)
> Is this testable?
I spent a good bit of time trying to explain this to laycreatures at my own Website. Karl Popper pretty well summed up the rules for scientific theories:
1. It must adequately explain that which is known about the thing being observed.
2. It must be falsifiable. In other words, it must make concrete predictions that can be tested empirically. If not, it is NOT a scientific theory.
3. This is the key: the SIMPLEST (i.e., the most "economical") theory that adequately explains the observations is preferred.
This is extremely important: just because you come up with a theory that seems to work does NOT mean that you're right. It simply means that you've found a mathematical model that works as far as you are able to understand and test it.
These guys seem to believe that inflation compels a belief in multiverses. They are certainly not alone in that. But in the interest of equal time, there are PLENTY of other cosmological-types who insist that there are alternate explanations. The "math" does NOT lead only and exclusively to that conclusion. In fact, while researching this for my Website, I found a flooding TON of physicists who went all the way back to Andre Linde (who was one of the first to popularize this) and beyond, and poked all sorts of holes in these arguments.
Disclaimer, I'm not a physicist and don't claim to be. But I'm about as up to speed on it as a layman can get and still remain sane. :)
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I'd wonder if this is a Sokol-type troll, but I don't see anything obviously wrong in it -- there's just a bunch of stuff there that looks like explanations, but apparently isn't. Or maybe I'm just having a bad night.
Don't worry, science is ridiculously poor at describing singular events. The creation of the universe is - as we know it - a singular event. That life - and indeed moderately intelligent life - exists on this planet is yet another singular event. It can't be reproduced and so far we've got no evidence that life exists anywhere outside Eartn. Until proven otherwise we might still be the only living thing in all of Creation, though I wouldn't put my money on that.
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I wasn't talking about the science, I was talking about this particular article's attempt to explain it. Which, in my opinion, was a terrible failure, regardless what I may think of the science itself.
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Thank you. I'm glad it wasn't just me. You've done a great job of explaining some of the things that were bugging me.
Others in the thread seem to be debating the science itself. My problem is with its presentation. I've seen some articles on Medium.com over the last few weeks that I considered quite good, but this one was really jarring.
I guess that's ok (Score:5, Interesting)
I mean, I can handle the concept... so long as there's just ONE multiverse.
Take heart, men (Score:2)
Because this probably means that somewhere there is a universe where desperation is considered sexy and Slashdotters are studs.
In another universe that is a webpage (Score:3)
But in this world the link leads to nothing but a teaser blurb and an invitation to blindly execute whatever arbitrary code another server might decide to hand me. No thanks.
Meanwhile, here's another theory. (Score:2)
If you remember a bit of calculus, you right appreciate the idea presented here. This one postulates that time varies according to Mass. We already know that black holes slows down time so...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oy47OQxUBvw [youtube.com]
Even if you think this guy's a crack pot, it damn interesting.
Um, no. (Score:2)
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The universe is, by definition, EVERYTHING. Therefore, there is no multiverse.
No, that doesn't even make one proper definition, let alone all of them. What is "everything" ? You probably end up with a circular definition.
You need to start by defining "existence", which is not trivial.
In TFA, multiverse refers to contiguous space-time, but there are many other uses of the term, e.g. Many Worlds Interpretation.
Our "universe" is now detached if I understand correctly? But was connected to these other universes in the early days (nanoseconds?) of the big bang?
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2. "In TFA, multiverse refers to contiguous space-time, but there are many other uses of the term, e.g. Many Worlds Interpretation." And that is the problem, right there from the getgo. When they came up with "many worlds interpretation" they trivialised the universe, and abused its defini
Misleading summary (Score:5, Informative)
It's generally accepted that the Universe's history is best described by the Big Bang model, with General Relativity and Quantum Field Theory as the physical laws governing the underlying framework.
No no no. It's generally accepted that each one of these theories taken individually is the best currently known description within its particular domain. It is not generally accepted that you can just throw them together and get an accurate description of the fundamental nature of the universe! In fact, we know you can't do that because general relativity and quantum field theory are deeply incompatible with each other. People have been working for half a century to find a single consistent theory that can reproduce the predictions of both. They've made a lot of progress, but we're still a long way from having any confidence about what the true fundamental theory is.
The picture of eternal inflation described in this article is plausible based on what we know. But it's still very speculative. That's true of any discussion of cosmology. Our current knowledge is just way too limited to have any confidence about it.
terminology (Score:3)
Why do we always try and segragate things like this? We seem to have some need to put everything in it's own little box. Atoms, molecules, planets, solar systems...
The definition of "Universe":
all existing matter and space considered as a whole; the cosmos.
So, if there is no need for the term "Multiverse" The universe contains it all. Our universe is just a tad more complicated than we had assumed.
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And as soon as we're sure what 'existing' means, there'll never be confusion again!
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We seem to have some need to put everything in it's own little box. Atoms, molecules, planets, solar systems...
The definition of "Universe":
all existing matter and space considered as a whole; the cosmos.
So, if there is no need for the term "Multiverse" The universe contains it all.
Definitions change with time. Once upon a time the Earth was the universe, until people decided that the stars weren't just stuck up like a sheet in the Earth's sky.
Makes sense to have moons orbiting planets in planetary systems, orbiting stars in solar systems, orbiting galaxy centres in the galactic plane, orbiting super structures (Great Attractor, etc.), and finally you reach a boundary that is the "edge of the universe" with the current laws of physics that we know and love. If this universe is formed
Tangent on an old train of thought (Score:2)
If you took the time to read the article; Google: "dark matter" "vacuum energy"
and see where it takes you, it's an interesting ride.
FTA: "The ideas that you hear—multiple false vacua, the landscape, connections to quantum gravity, etc.—are ones that people have speculated upon in recent years. These are mostly driven by including connections to string theory, and they present a whole host of difficulties as well as a great many interesting avenues to investigate. I will not touch upon them here
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This is really talking about eternal slow roll inflation, so let me fix this for you :
There has always been nothing, and it has always been exploding.
Re:Big Bang, rove you wrong time. (Score:2)
First there was nothing. Then it exploded.
Correction: Before the beginning there was nothing. The nothing was everywhere itself, filling every possible probability. It was incredibly unlikely that nothing would explode, thus everything did so instantly as far as anyone can tell.
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Correction: Before the beginning there was nothing.
Actually, there wasn't any "before" the beginning . . . because the beginning created time itself . . .
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Actually, the time we understand only existed after the beginning, before that, we do not know if time existed or not. But according to our definition of time, it had to of existed to some form or another, we just do not comprehend it well because time is relative ans constructed to our understanding of it.
In short, time is like a circle, no real beginning and no real end, only reference points placed on it by people trying to understand a concept of or with it.
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Time is, AFAIK, the presence / state of change. How can time be created by the thing to which time will apply? If time doesnt exist, then "the beginning" wont randomly explode.
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By definition "nothing" cannot explode. If its doing anything, then it isnt "nothing".
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If there wasn't nothing, what was there and where did it come from- or how did it get there?
Are you a religious nutter? Your rhetoric seems to indicate that.
Billy Preston (Score:3)
All you need to know about it is here [youtube.com]. After listening to this, your understanding of cosmology won't be that much better, but you'll be happier.
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It'd explain wave particle duality...
Rendering optimisations.
Re:I Quit... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the next greatest feat in physics will not be a new discovery, but just figuring out how to explain the current state of knowledge to a high school student. How can the field progress if only a handful of people actually understand the information we now possess?
I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Are you saying we should only pursue theories and bodies of knowledge if the average idiot can understand them? I'm sure you'll agree that if it makes sense for physics, it makes sense for all areas, including... engineering.
So say goodbye to television, GPS (oops, there's some relativity physics in that too), computers of all sorts, and possibly even non-electronic internal combustion engines.
I'm willing to continue relying on people who deal in knowledge I don't understand, as long as I'm satisfied they're constrained by peers who are incented to find flaws in their arguments to keep them honest.
Hell, most people don't understand what *I* do for a living, and I'm just a senior manager in healthcare information systems.
Some better interpretations (Score:3)
I think the next greatest feat in physics will not be a new discovery, but just figuring out how to explain the current state of knowledge to a high school student. How can the field progress if only a handful of people actually understand the information we now possess?
I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Are you saying we should only pursue theories and bodies of knowledge if the average idiot can understand them?
I don't think so.
One interpretation of the OP's comment is essentially related to Feynman's famous quote: "I couldn't reduce it to the freshman level. That means we really don't understand it.". In other words, if the practitioners don't take the time to be able to explain their work to laymen, they are moving too fast even for their own good.
Another interpretation is this: we are all constantly asked to take action (e.g., vote) on questions that depend more or less on information that many, even the major
Re: multi-options (Score:2)
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"God"=="supernatural"=="not allowed by physical (natural) law." All of the multiverses are supposedly governed by physical law.
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"God"=="supernatural"=="not allowed by physical (natural) law."
Where did you get that definition? Millennia ago, when gods started to form in people's minds, physical (natural) law was not exactly a hot topic. Gods were defined as [nearly] omnipotent beings who did things. At no time a god (except FSM, perhaps) was claimed to be supernatural.
As matter of scientific truth, an existing god would have to be natural, such as allowed (in a certain form) by physical laws of the Universe where he is present i
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We have plenty of places in this Universe that are ruled by different (from Earth) physics (inside a black hole, or a neutron star, etc.)
No, they are the same physics. The effects (time dilation, etc) are simply more prominent because the inputs (mass density, etc) are at such high extremes.
Re:multi-options (Score:4, Informative)
"God"=="supernatural"=="not allowed by physical (natural) law." All of the multiverses are supposedly governed by physical law.
Nothing in natural law (i.e. physics) forbids the existence of something that does not follow natural law. It does forbid something natural (or possessing natural qualities) from not following natural law (insofar as it possesses such quantities), but that does not mean something supernatural cannot exist.
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"God"=="supernatural"=="not allowed by physical (natural) law."
Ah... argument by definition you just made up. That's not the empiricist way... more like a theologian's.
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Actually there is a universe with tooth fairies trading teeth for coins unless of course they can't make change, then the pliers come out. In the same part of the multiverse there are numerous gods and to stand outside and declare that you're an atheist is inviting a lightning strike so you better be made out of clay to last as an atheist.
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The Big Bang - Because the universe appears to be expanding now, it must have been expanding always, since the beginning. Before the Big Bang, there was nothing and boom, out of nothing came everything.
Not to say I have a better theory, but I would not be the least bit surprised if one of those two things I've been told about the big bang were proven wrong. You suggest we should be believers in this everything from nothing theory without the least bit of skepticism?
Re:Generally accepted? (Score:4, Insightful)
Scientists are not so naive as to simply think "it is expanding now, therefore it has always been expanding." The main reasons why we think there was a big bang are (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang#Observational_evidence):
1) The universe is not just expanding, it's expanding in such a way that the relationship between distance and speed matches up neatly along smooth curves.
2) We can see (in microwave telescopes) the cosmic background radiation just where it should be, at just the frequency that was predicted if there had been a big bang (note the prediction was made in 1948, but the microwaves were not measured until 1965).
3) We can see gas clouds in the far distance (12 billion light years), which we see as they appeared 12 billion years ago, which are made of hydrogen and helium in the proportions that we expect would have been made in the big bang, and without the heavier elements that we think would not have been made in a big bang, and there is no other theory that has been able to explain the proportions of the light elements.
4) The way galaxies and quasars are distributed and the way they appear to have developed over time matches what we think would have happened if there had been a big bang (and rules out other ideas such as a steady-state universe).
You also asked:
You suggest we should be believers in this everything from nothing theory without the least bit of skepticism?
No scientist would suggest that you believe any theory without skepticism. Certainly, be skeptical! But skepticism is not the same as refusing to accept an idea just because it sounds far-fetched. If someone does come up with a better theory (where "better" = "makes predictions that match what we actually observe more closely and more efficiently than other theories"), then by all means, out with the old theory and in with the new. And it's certainly fine to attempt to poke holes in the current theory -- indeed, there is surely a Nobel Prize waiting for the person who proves that there was no big bang! But poking holes in the theory has to be done by either finding out that the theory contains contradictions, or finding that it fails to explain something that we can see happens in reality. One doesn't get the Nobel Prize for saying "that doesn't sound right."
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> You imply the Big Bang is generaly accepted nowadays because Koch brothers managed to make money of it?
Indeed. I had to put my helmet on just to consider that one.
My head still might explode.
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Your comment is moderated 2, on a more intelligent 0 statement. I will explain. Koch brothers energy company makes money selling fossil fuels, Global Warning activism is a threat to that, therefore large amount of money are used as reality distortion field to suppress scientifically respectable Global Warming hypotheses. So think analogously with Big Bang replacing Global Warming.
Curiously, the author of non-consensus "The Big Bang Never Happened", Eric Lerner, has his own fusion energy research company. He put his effort where his mouth is. lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com [lawrencevi...hysics.com]
My comment is actually a question asking for some clarifications. Rationale - the original comment (with my emphasis):
If the Koch brothers find out a way to make money out of SOMETHING ELSE ...
may be interpreted as suggesting that Koch brothers make money on the base of Big Bang.
An ambiguity I wanted clarified and, if no metaphor/forced analogy was involved, I was curious about how.
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Math lies like a dog.
History lies prefer a burger.
Economics? All custard.
Anything else doesn't cut the mustard
That's the way I feel.
Maybe it's all surreal.
Entropy of all that's real.
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We accept the things like General and Special Relativity and the tweaks and add-on theories that came afterwards because they are the best theories we have for explaining what we see, and they haven't been dis-proven yet, at least not to the satisfaction of the scientific community.
But what if we are wrong?
Mike Rowe (from the TV series "Dangerous Jobs")" Rowe narrates "How The Universe Works" (1st series) (Discovery Channel), one of the fist episodes he starts out; "if you accept the premise of the big bang and inflation", (you'll eat anything, so the rest is just down hill) - Not those words, but the point that came across as I heard it through his inflection on the words. Whether Mike Rowe meant it or how I interpreted it, I don't know, but it was good stuff, humorous.
Until Relativity and quantum physics w