The idea of a multiverse has been popular in movies and books recently, but do you know what that actually means? ⬇️
Since childhood, I've obsessed about existence. What is existence? What's the extent of existence? What's the purpose of existence? Now, six decades on, having explored many things, I'm no surer , but I continue my pursuit.
Linde portrays"universes" as painted balloons or bubbles on canvas,"squeezing off" from one another via eternal chaotic inflation. Each of his bubbles is a separate universe, each with different laws of physics. The whole collection of universes, the multiverse, is incomprehensibly vast — and growing ever more so.
In this inflationary scenario, Guth said, the exponential expansion ends, because the false vacuum that's driving the repulsive gravity is unstable, and so it decays, much like radioactive elements decay. Each decay generates a single so-called"pocket universe," which is Guth's term for a connected region of space-time. Because the rate of expansions is much faster than the rate of decays, new regions are created — with potentials for new decays, and hence potentials for new pocket universes.
But how to commence cosmic inflation? Some physical material, however minuscule, is required. So from where does this primordial matter come? Yet lines of corroborating evidence have convinced many cosmologists to such a degree that cosmic inflation and eternal chaotic inflation have become, in essence, the"standard model" of cosmology. As for cosmic inflation, it seems to solve, at the same time, several, separate enigmas in the origin and structure of the universe .
Thus the vast expanse of our visible universe, Guth said, is but an insignificant speck within just our own inflating pocket universe. And this universe itself is only one pocket universe among an innumerable or even an infinite number of other pocket universes. Was Linde talking about centimeters or kilometers? Or for that matter, about nanometers or kiloparsecs ? It seemed impossible to describe absolute size with just a number, no units. Why was Linde frustrating me by not using units?
In comparison, even the vast expanse between the Planck length and the diameter of the entire visible universe — 62 orders of magnitude — becomes meaningless! It's not the difference between 62 and 1 trillion . It's the difference between 62 and 1 trillion orders of magnitude, the difference between multiplying by ten 62 times and multiplying by ten 1 trillion times. That is, this is a difference in sequential multiplications of 10 of 999,999,999,938.
If, indeed, many Big Bangs generate an immense variety of physical laws, then, Rees said, only science fiction can describe all that might happen. It's a neat picture. String theory would provide the landscape of all permitted laws of physics, and cosmic inflation would provide the mechanism to generate actual universes to populate that landscape. This would mean that for each pocket universe, string theory would provide a particular set of physical laws. The smallest structures would determine the largest structures. Max Tegmark, a cosmologist at MIT, goes further.
All this shows how far and how fast our knowledge of the cosmos has expanded: Generating multiple universes by eternal chaotic inflation, a theory developed in the last four decades, is now the standard model of cosmology. But to achieve such immensity and diversity, wouldn't there still have to be, at a deeper level, some rock-bottom, fundamental"universe-generating laws" to create all the multiple universes in the first place, each of which has its own different laws? Where is bedrock reality?Not every cosmologist is a full convert to the multiverse. As cosmologist George Ellis told me,"I don't like the word 'multiverse.' I like the idea 'universe.
"That is simply not true," Davies said, because to get a multiverse, you need a universe-generating mechanism,"something that's going to make all those Big Bangs go bang. You're going to need some laws of physics. All theories of the multiverse assume quantum physics to provide the element of spontaneity, to make the bangs happen. They assume pre-existing space and time. They assume the normal notion of causality, a whole host of pre-existing conditions.
"I suppose, for me, the main problem [with a multiverse] is that what we're trying to do is explain why the universe is as it is by appealing to something outside of it," Davies told me."In this case, an infinite number of multiple universes outside of our universe is used as the explanation for our universe."
Different temporal periods of our ordinary space-time could exist in our own pocket universe, such that multiple universes arise in sequence, not in parallel . Whatever can be expressed by consistent mathematical systems can in fact exist in some kind of reality .
Australia Latest News, Australia Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Two new books challenge the sense of inevitable permanence of the Chinese party stateTwo new books challenge the sense of inevitable permanence of the Chinese party state — China After Mao: The Rise of a Superpower and Never Turn Back: China and the Forbidden History of the 1980s.
Read more »
China Covid: The politics driving the hellish lockdownsParts of Beijing are now being locked down as China's Communist Party holds a historic Congress.
Read more »
Fleeing Xi’s China, journalist makes fresh start abroadThe journey of investigative journalist Wang Zhi’an from on-air personality in China’s vast state media apparatus to reporter in exile illustrates how even government-backed critical reporting has been curtailed under Xi Jinping.
Read more »
Fleeing Xi's China, Investigative Journalist Continues Work in ExileChinese investigative journalist Wang Zhi’an once exposed corruption, land seizures, and medical malpractice for state broadcaster CCTV.
Read more »
China holds emergency talks with chip firms after U.S. curbs -Bloomberg NewsChina's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology convened a series of emergency meetings over the past week with leading semiconductor companies, seeking to assess the damage from the U.S. chip restrictions, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday.
Read more »
China Gifts Qatar Two Pandas Ahead of This Year's World CupA pair of giant pandas sent as a gift from China have arrived in Qatar ahead of next month’s World Cup.
Read more »