Luke Barnes: What would happen in a hypothetical universe in which the fundamental constants of nature had other values? There is nothing mathematically wrong with these hypothetical universes. But there is one thing that they almost always lack — life.
Multiverse
Another evidence-free whoop for the multiverse
Let’s be clear here. We have evidence for fine-tuning in the only universe we know to exist. To argue against it, we must posit universes for which we have no evidence and maybe cannot ever have any evidence. This makes sense, WHY again? Isn’t it all becoming a bit of a scandal?
Rob Sheldon has some questions for the multiverse
Sheldon has some fun with the logical nonsense of the concept.
At The Conversation: Can the laws of physics disprove God?
This seems to be a rather light piece intellectually but it gives some sense of what the wine bar would be saying about God and science if COVID-19 crazy hadn’t put it out of business: “But God isn’t a valid scientific explanation. The theory of the multiverse, instead, solves the mystery because it allows different universes to have different physical laws. So it’s not surprising that we should happen to see ourselves in one of the few universes that could support life. Of course, you can’t disprove the idea that a God may have created the multiverse.”
Michael Egnor on why the multiverse is just a way of evading reality
Michael Egnor: The fact that the universe is tuned — that is, the fact there is any consistency at all in the laws of physics — demonstrates God’s existence. This is Aquinas’ Fifth Way, which is the proof from design.
Michael Egnor on why we don’t live in a multiverse
Egnor: The problem is, to make their claim credible, [Novella and Goff] must show that there actually are localities in the universe in which the laws of physics differ in a way that would make fine tuning likely by chance.
Science writer: Multiverse is based on zero empirical evidence
Jim Baggott doesn’t like ID either but he also doesn’t appear to understand it.
Astrophysicist Ethan Siegel tells us why a multiverse must exist
Siegel: “… if the theory of inflation is a good one, and the data says it is, a multiverse is all but inevitable.” Our physics color commentator Rob Sheldon writes to offer a response.
What? A logical flaw in multiverse reasoning? Aired at Scientific American?
There is no scientific evidence for a multiverse. There are a large number of intellectuals who need it to be true. At one time, there was a large number of similar people who needed witchcraft to be true.
Peter Woit, whom we sometimes follow because he is fun, looks back on string theory
He doesn’t seem to get the fact that string theory was a religious movement that was bound to end badly. The most distressing victim is science. But then that was well before the war on math, wasn’t it?
Pumping the multiverse from dark matter
Well, from a novelist’s perspective, it sounds logical but from a science perspective, if you must invoke the “multiverse,” you are in trouble.
At Quanta: Are we looking at the end of physics?
Ah yes, the problem of dead-endedness that Sabine Hossenfelder often writes about. As does Columbia mathematician Peter Woit, on the subject of string theory. But surely much of the nonsense around string theory and the multiverse is in part due to a practical failure—the inability to find even a single particle of dark matter or similar evidence for dark energy.
Eric Holloway: An experiment can test the idea that there is an infinite number of universes
An essential part of the process of discovering the truth will be the disintegration ray gun… Read the fine print.
Wintery Knight: Does the multiverse counter the fine-tuning argument for God’s existence?
Knight: The multiverse is not pure nonsense, it is theoretically possible.But even if there were a multiverse, the generator that makes the universes itself would require fine-tuning, so the multiverse doesn’t get rid of the problem. And, as Lightman indicates, we have no independent experimental evidence for the existence of the multiverse in any case.
Multiverse physicist Max Tegmark switches gears; seeks AI to combat “news bias”
Readers may recall him from the four levels of multiverse he advocated in Scientific American in 2003. But forget that. He now thinks there is too much bias in American media and he is working on an AI program to combat it