You can’t ground a discussion in basic reality, says one commentator, “without somebody, sooner rather than later, confidently pronouncing something like “our universe is just one of many universes that are constantly evolving and forever changing.” He offers a response, courtesy Regis Nicoll: Everett imagined that each split created a parallel universe in which particles […]
Multiverse
Mathematician: Our universe is really chaotic; we just don’t see it that way
Is it only selective attention that causes us to see order in the universe? There is another, more interesting, explanation for the structure of the laws of nature. Rather than saying that the universe is very structured, say that the universe is mostly chaotic and for the most part lacks structure. The reason why we […]
Astonishing! A pop science article on fine-tuning that isn’t just plain stupid
Get a load of this: More recently, scientists have pointed out that if one tweaks many of the dimensionless physical constants — numbers like pi that are independent of units and simply exist as fundamental ideas — none of the cosmos we see would exist. One of these numbers is omega, the density parameter, which […]
If quantum mechanics were a researcher, she’d be fired
And have to leave academic science. Factually correct answers do not matter now if they are not politically correct. In a review of Adam Becker’s What Is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics (Basic Books, 2018), mathematician and physicist Sheldon Lee Glasgow tells us No one can doubt that quantum mechanics is […]
Many worlds, many problems… one of them serious
To hear the multiverse enthusiasts tell it, many worlds theory offers no problems. But you probably sensed that that wasn’t very likely: It says that our unique experience as individuals is not simply a bit imperfect, a bit unreliable and fuzzy, but is a complete illusion. If we really pursue that idea, rather than pretending […]
The fight over the universe has turned ugly, with accusations of “cheating”
We are told: “Wherever you look in the cosmos, things don’t seem to add up.” And now physicists like Sabine Hossenfelder are accused of cheating: Ethan Siegel, astrophysicist-blogger behind Forbes’ Starts With a Bang! blog, responded with a post titled “There’s A Debate Raging Over Whether Dark Matter Is Real, But One Side Is Cheating.” […]
How to talk yourself into believing in a multiverse
It’s becoming obvious that post-modern science will have its multiverse irrespective of evidence from nature and will prefer it and its component beliefs to evidence from nature. That is why some of us think that the multiverse is science’s assisted suicide.
Startling admission about the science (i.e., non-science) basis for the multiverse
From Ethan Siegel at Forbes: So why do so many theoretical physicists write papers about the multiverse? About parallel Universes and their connection to our own through this multiverse? Why do they claim that the multiverse is connected to the string landscape, the cosmological constant, and even to the fact that our Universe is finely-tuned […]
At Prospect: Multiverse theory is undermining the integrity of physics
From Jim Baggott at Prospect: Over the last few decades “multiverse theories” have become increasingly fashionable within a relatively small—but publicly vocal—group of theoretical physicists. This group specialises in foundational problems in cosmology, particle physics, and quantum mechanics. These theories are advertised as science’s answer to much that we can’t otherwise explain about the universe […]
A skeptic’s take on the latest multiverse hype at New Scientist
From Columbia mathematician Peter Woit at Not Even Wrong: New Scientist today has a feature article headlined How to think about… The multiverse The idea of an infinite multitude of universes is forced on us by physics. It starts off quoting Sean Carroll: “One of the most common misconceptions is that the multiverse is a […]
At Forbes: Are we doing theoretical physics all wrong?
From astrophysicist Ethan Siegel, reviewing Sabine Hossenfelder’s new book, Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, at Forbes: The history of physics is filled with great ideas that you’ve heard of, like the Standard Model, the Big Bang, General Relativity, and so on. But it’s also filled with brilliant ideas that you probably haven’t […]
At Science: Hawking’s last work attempted to stick a pin in eternal inflation of the cosmos
In Adrian Cho’s interpretation at Science: When Stephen Hawking died on 14 March, the famed theoretical physicist had a few papers still in the works. Today, the Journal of High Energy Physics published his last work in cosmology—the science of how the universe sprang into being and evolved. (Other papers on black holes are still […]
Did the dying Stephen Hawking strengthen the case for God by reintroducing fine-tuning?
In his final paper, with Hertog, scaling back the multiverse? From Philip Goff at the Guardian: But if all of the universes have exactly the same laws – as in Hawking and Hertog’s proposal – the problem returns, as we now need an explanation of why the single set of laws that govern the entire […]
Astrophysicist as advice columnist: Question, should I study string theory?
From Sabine Hossenfelder at her blog BackRe(Action), responding to a physics major who has heard from cosmologist Brian Greene that string theory can be a grand theory of everything: Greene states very carefully that superstring theory “has the capacity to embrace” gravity as well as the other known fundamental forces (electromagnetic, weak, and strong). What […]
Are recent dark energy findings a blow for multiverse theory?
Dark energy. From Andrew Masterson at Cosmos: The question of dark energy in one universe does not require others to provide an answer. A hypothetical multiverse seems less likely after modelling by researchers in Australia and the UK threw one of its key assumptions into doubt. Dark energy is supposed to be responsible for the […]