tagged w/ Parallel Universes
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Scientific American...
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The Case for Parallel Universes
Why the multiverse, crazy as it sounds, is a solid scientific idea
By Alexander Vilenkin and Max Tegmark | Tuesday, July 19, 2011 |
Editor's note: In the August issue of Scientific American, cosmologist George Ellis describes why he's skeptical about the concept of parallel universes. Here, multiverse proponents Alexander Vilenkin and Max Tegmark offer counterpoints, explaining why the multiverse would account for so many features of our universe—and how it might be tested.
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PART ONE…
Welcome to the Multiverse
By Alexander Vilenkin
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The universe as we know it originated in a great explosion that we call the big bang. For nearly a century cosmologists have been studying the aftermath of this explosion: how the universe expanded and cooled down, and how galaxies were gradually pulled together by gravity. The nature of the bang itself has come into focus only relatively recently. It is the subject of the theory of inflation, which was developed in the early 1980s by Alan Guth, Andrei Linde and others, and has led to a radically new global view of the universe.
Inflation is a period of super-fast, accelerated expansion in early cosmic history. It is so fast that in a fraction of a second a tiny subatomic speck of space is blown to dimensions much greater than the entire currently observable region. At the end of inflation, the energy that drove the expansion ignites a hot fireball of particles and radiation. This is what we call the big bang.
The end of inflation is triggered by quantum, probabilistic processes and does not occur everywhere at once. In our cosmic neighborhood, inflation ended 13.7 billion years ago, but it still continues in remote parts of the universe, and other “normal” regions like ours are constantly being formed. The new regions appear as tiny, microscopic bubbles and immediately start to grow. The bubbles keep growing without bound; in the meantime they are driven apart by the inflationary expansion, making room for more bubbles to form. This never-ending process is called eternal inflation. We live in one of the bubbles and can observe only a small part of it. No matter how fast we travel, we cannot catch up with the expanding boundaries of our bubble, so for all practical purposes we live in a self-contained bubble universe.
The theory of inflation explained some otherwise mysterious features of the big bang, which simply had to be postulated before. It also made a number of testable predictions, which were then spectacularly confirmed by observations. By now inflation has become the leading cosmological paradigm.
Another key aspect of the new worldview derives from string theory, which is at present our best candidate for the fundamental theory of nature. String theory admits an immense number of solutions describing bubble universes with diverse physical properties. The quantities we call constants of nature, such as the masses of elementary particles, Newton’s gravitational constant, and so on, take different values in different bubble types. Now combine this with the theory of inflation. Each bubble type has a certain probability to form in the inflating space. So inevitably, an unlimited number of bubbles of all possible types will be formed in the course of eternal inflation.
This picture of the universe, or multiverse, as it is called, explains the long-standing mystery of why the constants of nature appear to be fine-tuned for the emergence of life. The reason is that intelligent observers exist only in those rare bubbles in which, by pure chance, the constants happen to be just right for life to evolve. The rest of the multiverse remains barren, but no one is there to complain about that.
CONTINUED…Scientific American...
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The Case for Parallel Universes
Why the... more
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Extra dimensions are old news. The newest mind-bending descriptions of reality dreamed up by the world’s smartest physicists, and explained by superstar superstring theorist Brian Greene in his latest book The Hidden Reality, include untold numbers of extra universes. A million universes isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? Ten to the 500th power universes. Greene likes to drop you into the middle of the action first and then explain the backstory (and sometimes it does feel like a full-scale intellectual invasion is happening), but he has an elegant knack for anticipating questions and immediately dealing with any confusion or objections. http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/your-details/32324-superstring-theorist-brian-greene-and-his-idea-of-an-infinite-number-of-universesExtra dimensions are old news. The newest mind-bending descriptions of reality dreamed... more
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worrg
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1 year ago
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Our universe might be really, really big — but finite. Or it might be infinitely big.
Both cases, says physicist Brian Greene, are possibilities, but if the latter is true, so is another posit: There are only so many ways matter can arrange itself within that infinite universe. Eventually, matter has to repeat itself and arrange itself in similar ways. So if the universe is infinitely large, it is also home to infinite parallel universes.
Does that sound confusing? Try this:
Think of the universe like a deck of cards.
"Now, if you shuffle that deck, there's just so many orderings that can happen," Greene says. "If you shuffle that deck enough times, the orders will have to repeat. Similarly, with an infinite universe and only a finite number of complexions of matter, the way in which matter arranges itself has to repeat."
(click on the link for the full story)Our universe might be really, really big — but finite. Or it might be infinitely... more
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Physicists probing the origins of the cosmos at CERN's Large Hadron Collider hope that next year they will turn up the first proofs of the existence of concepts once reserved for the scifi world. Despite centuries of increasingly sophisticated observation from planet Earth, only 4 per cent of that universe is known -- because the rest is made up of what have been called, because they are invisible, dark matter and dark energy.
Billions of particles flying off from each LHC collision are tracked at four CERN detectors -- and then in collaborating laboratories around the globe -- to establish when and how they come together and what shape they take.
The CERN theoreticians say this could give clear signs of dimensions beyond length, breadth, depth and time because at such high energy particles could be tracked disappearing -- presumably into them -- and then back into the classical four.
Parallel universes could also be hidden within these dimensions, the thinking goes, but only in a so-called gravitational variety in which light cannot be propagated -- a fact which would make it nearly impossible to explore them.
As the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN near Geneva moves into high gear, they are talking increasingly of the "New Physics" on the horizon that could totally change current views of the universe and how it works.
"Parallel universes, unknown forms of matter, extra dimensions... These are not the stuff of cheap science fiction but very concrete physics theories that scientists are trying to confirm with the LHC and other experiments," according to the center's Theory Group, which mulls over what could be out there beyond the reach of any telescope, wrote in the CERN Bulletin this month.
At full throttle, the LHC could provide scientists with new insights into the nature of mass, dark matter and the origins of the universe. But many of them hope that instead of confirming string theory, dark energy, the Higgs-Boson, etc. — something entirely unexpected will emerge from the CERN-run experiment, for example the detection of certain types of supersymmetric particles, that could be seen as what physicist Michio Kaku calls, “signals from the 11th dimension.”
The detection of certain types of supersymmetric particles, aka sparticles, could be seen as what physicist Michio Kaku calls, “signals from the 11th dimension.”
Several of the world's leading cosmologists, Michio Kaku a prime example, believe that we are but one of many universes. As yet, as we know, there is no evidence of there being other universes out there. Some versions of this theory suggest that there is at least one other universe very close to our own, separated perhaps bu a membrane as little as a millimeter away, which, if true, could be detectable by some energy or forces such as gravity leaking through.In fact, as predicted by brane theorists, this "leakage" could be responsible for the production of dark energy from a parallel universe, its influence felt in our own through its gravitational pull.
Many of the multiple universe proponents are awaiting eagerly for the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva to smash the basic components of the universe together at near the speed of light along a 84-kilometer-long underground racetrack, causing an awesomely high energy reaction similar to the temperatures involved at the Big Bang and spew out the secrets to the cosmos. More exciting than the discovery of Higgs Boson, who's function is giving mass to the particles of matter, could be the possible creation of tiny, particle-sized black holes. Real data from these experiments will rewrite the theorists' "Guide to the Quantum Universe."
According to current physics these nano black holes could not be created at the energy levels the LHC is capable of producing. They could only be created if a parallel universe act.
As particles are collided in the vast underground LHC complex at increasingly high energies, what the Bulletin article referred to informally as the "universe's extra bits" -- if they do exist as predicted -- should be brought into computerized, if ephemeral, view, the theorists say.
Optimism among the hundreds of scientists working at CERN -- in the foothills of the Jura mountains along the border of France and Switzerland -- has grown as the initially troubled $10 billion experiment hit its targets this year.
By mid-October, Director-General Rolf Heuer told staff last weekend, protons were being collided along the 27-km (16.8 mile) subterranean ring at the rate of 5 million a second -- two weeks earlier than the target date for that total.
By next year, collisions will be occurring -- if all continues to go well -- at a rate producing what physicists call one "inverse femtobarn," best described as a colossal amount, of information for analysts to ponder.
The head-on collisions, at all but the speed of light, recreate what happened a tiny fraction of a second after the primeval "Big Bang" 13.7 billion years ago which brought the known universe and everything in it into being.
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2010/10/-cern-scientists-eye-parallel-universe-breakthrough.html#morePhysicists probing the origins of the cosmos at CERN's Large Hadron Collider hope... more
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Oh look out now! Buster White is in action and he isn't playing around!
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wej7
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2 years ago
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That there exist parallel universes, exactly like our universe. These universes are all related to ours; indeed, they branch off from ours, and our universe is branched off of others. Within these parallel universes, our wars have had different outcomes than the ones we know. Species that are extinct in our universe have evolved and adapted in others. In other universes, we humans may have become extinct.That there exist parallel universes, exactly like our universe. These universes... more
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As I touch the guy, my hand went through him as he turned into a mist that went through my skin, up my arm and disappeared within me.
I could feel him enter, it was an unsettling feeling, much like being drugged, it wasn't frightening, just weird.
Artwork is reversed painting on glass with acrylic.As I touch the guy, my hand went through him as he turned into a mist that went... more
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Are we just a spec of cosmic dust in a universe which is one of many? I find this to be fascinatiing, and actually, possible.///// excerpt/////"The idea of multiple universes is more than a fantastic invention -- it appears naturally within several scientific theories, and deserves to be taken seriously," said Aurelien Barrau, a French particle physicist at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), hardly a hotbed of flaky science./////
"The multiverse is no longer a model, it is a consequence of our models," explained Barrau, who recently published an essay for CERN defending the concept./////There are several competing and overlapping theories about parallel universes, but the most basic is based on the simple, if mind-boggling, idea that if the universe is infinite then logically everything that could possible occur has happened or will happen./////Try this on for size: a copy of you living on a planet and in a solar system like ours is reading these words just as you are. Your lives have been carbon copies up to now, but maybe he or she will keep reading even if you don't, says Max Tegmark, a cosmologist at MIT in Boston, Massachusetts./////The existence of such a doppleganger "does not even assume speculative modern physics, merely that space is infinite and rather uniformly filled with matter as indicated by recent astronomical observations," Tegmark concluded in a study of parallel universes published by Cambridge University./////"Your alter ego is simply a prediction of the so-called concordance model of cosmology," he said./////Another type of multiverse arises with the theory of chaotic inflation, which tells us that all these parallel worlds are expanding so rapidly -- stretching further and further in to space -- that they remain out of reach even if one could travel at the speed of light forever./////end of excerpt.
Are we just a spec of cosmic dust in a universe which is one of many? I find this to... more
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I just came from seeing the movie that has got many in the Catholic and Evangelical Christian Communities in an uproar. The film is about a totalitarian government that has control of both the political and religious institutions. It is called the Magesterium. According to Mrs. Coulter, the part played by Nicole Kidman, the job of the Magesterium is to tell people what to do and what to think for their own good. However, disobedience is dealt with swiftly and painfully.
The story tells us that their are many parallel universes with their own unique realities. However the Magesterium wishes to be able to cross over from one universe to the other so that they can eventually control all the universes; all of them. This is megalomania to the extreme and on steroids.
I can see why Religions like the Catholics and the Evangelicals are afraid of this movie. One of the witches in the movie says that "a war is coming, you may not think that it is your war but it is your war, you just don't know it yet." Sam Elliot who plays a character named Lee Scorsby asks the witch, "what is this here quarrel all about?" And she responds, "Nothing less than your free will."
Catholic and Evangelical religion is about taking away your free will and bringing it under the authority of the church. That is why this story hits home because the Magesterium is very much like their own authority.
The Alethiometer is a device that helps you to find out the truth. In my view the Alethiometer is an allegory for our own conscience, when it is properly tuned to the source of all life, it acts as an internal compass to guide us and to protect us from lies.I just came from seeing the movie that has got many in the Catholic and Evangelical... more
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jubal
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4 years ago
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