Multiverse

Possibly struggling to survive, New Scientist claims there is a 2500 year struggle between God and the multiverse: Modern physics has also wrestled with this “fine-tuning problem”, and supplies its own answer. If only one universe exists, then it is strange to find it so hospitable to life, when nearly any other value for the gravitational or cosmological constants would have produced nothing at all. But if there is a “multiverse” of many universes, all with different constants, the problem vanishes: we’re here because we happen to be in one of the universes that works.More. The rest is an avoidable paywall. Put simply, the multiverse idea only ever got started because New Scientist types needed a universe that originated randomly. Read More ›

From Ethan Siegel: From everything we can observe, and from all the theoretical hints the Universe gives us about its topology, shape, curvature and origin, we fully expect that there’s more Universe out there — identical in properties to what we observe — beyond what we can see. It’s only due to the fact that the Universe has been around for a finite amount of time that we can only observe a specific part of it. This is the most simple definition of Multiverse that’s out there: the idea that there’s simply more, unobservable Universe out there beyond what we can see. That’s a very conservative definition of multiverse compared to most that one hears. And sure enough, soon: The Read More ›

Over on a recent thread there has been much interesting discussion about a recent debate between theist philosopher Rabbi Daniel Rowe and atheist philosopher A.C. Grayling.  HeKS provided a review of the matter, focusing largely on his analysis of Jerry Coyne’s responses.

I agree with HeKS’s general observation that Coyne failed to adequately address the issues.  Indeed, it seems Coyne failed to adequately understand some of the issues, a situation that is all too common.

However, I want to focus in this post on a specific aspect of the discussion, namely, some of the points raised by sean samis, starting @37 on that thread.  In his comments, samis urges caution in drawing any conclusion from the Big Bang about deity’s existence or involvement.  I do not necessarily share all of his conclusions, but I think a number of his points are worthy of additional discussion.

First of all, let me apologize to HeKS for starting a new thread.  I initially began this as a comment to the prior thread, but it became long enough that it required a separate post.  Additionally, I want to focus on a specific issue that tacks in a slightly different direction than the prior thread.

If the Universe Had a Beginning, then What? Read More ›

By mathematician (and string theory skeptic) Peter Woit at Not Even Wrong: It seems that Carroll was arguing that the multiverse shows that we need to change our thinking about what science is, adopting his favored “abduction” and “Bayesian reasoning” framework, getting rid of falsifiability. Using this method he arrives at a probability of the multiverse as “about 50%” (funny, but that’s the same number I’d use, as for any binary option where you know nothing). So, from the Bayesians we now have the following for multiverse probability estimates: 1. Carroll: “About 50%” 2. Polchinski: “94%” 3. Rees: “Kill my dog if it’s not true” 4. Linde: “Kill me if it’s not true” 5. Weinberg: “Kill Linde and Rees’s dog if Read More ›

Repackaged by PBS as defending “beauty”: From PBS: For example, while the Large Hadron Collider has so far failed to show evidence of supersymmetry, many have essentially said that the collision wasn’t powerful enough or that some small modifications are all that’s needed to fit the theory they love with the data they gathered. “Supersymmetry has been around since 1974, for 42 years, and it doesn’t really have any evidence that it’s there. But people really bet their careers on this,” Gleiser explains. “Many physicists have spent 40 years working on this, which is basically their whole professional life.” That may change in in ten years or so, he says, when further advances to the LHC could force the hangers-on Read More ›

From Columbia mathematician Peter Woit at Not Even Wrong: One possible reaction to the phenomenon of hype in fundamental physics is to not worry much, figuring that it should be a self-limiting process. While there’s a huge appetite in the media and elsewhere for the “exciting new idea”, overhyped “new” ideas sooner or later should pass into the category of no longer “new”, and less capable of producing “excitement”. The problem is that this doesn’t seem to be happening: favored physics hype keeps getting promoted as “new” and “exciting”, no matter how old it is. More. Woit perhaps doesn’t grasp that some theses in cosmology are not held on a rational basis, and evidence for or against them does not Read More ›

June 10–11, 2016 From NY/NJ Philosophy of Science group: ===========ABSTRACTS================ Title: Everettian Quantum Mechanics and Evil Author: Jason Turner Abstract: The problem of evil has been around for a long time: How can an all-powerful and all-good God allow evil of the sorts we see in the world? If the Everettian interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct, though, then there is a lot more evil in the world than what we see. This suggest a second problem of evil: If Everettianism is true, how can an all-powerful and all-good God allow evil of the sort we don’t see? If the original problem of evil already pushed you into atheism, worries about Everettianism aren’t likely to make much difference. On the Read More ›

Yes, we know. It’s complicated. Science writer John Horgan might have expected some pushback from his advice to Skeptics: Bash Bigfoot less, pop science more, and he got his wish (!) via Steven Novella at Neurologica blog: Horgan gives a very superficial analysis, in my opinion to the point of being wrong. He claims they [multiverse, string theory] are not falsifiable, therefore they are pseudoscientific, “Like astrology.” For those of you playing logical fallacy bingo, that is a false analogy. There are many problems with astrology that do not apply to string theory. Indeed. Astrology eventually became testable* and flunked. It’s not clear that the multiverse or the computer sim universe will ever become testable. The “non-falsifiable” criticism has been Read More ›

In a 1614 mathematical attack on multiverse by Locher From Christopher M. Graney at the Catholic Astronomer: The most surprising things can be found in astronomy’s history—like “the multiverse,” that collection of parallel universes that is the central theme in Brian Greene’s 2011 book The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos. You might not expect to encounter a multiverse in an astronomy book from four hundred years ago, but in fact you will if you look through a 1614 book entitled Disquisitiones Mathematicae de Controversiis et Novitatibus Astronomicis (or Mathematical Disquisitions Concerning Astronomical Controversies and Novelties) written by Johann Georg Locher of Germany. … Locher’s discussion has multiple parts, and is not that brief, but Read More ›

Sarah Scoles at the Smithsonian Magazine on the multiverse: Astronomers are arguing about whether they can trust this untested—and potentially untestable—idea Detailing the objections of those who want evidence, she then explains, Other scientists say that the definitions of “evidence” and “proof” need an upgrade. Richard Dawid of the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy believes scientists could support their hypotheses, like the multiverse—without actually finding physical support. He laid out his ideas in a book called String Theory and the Scientific Method. Inside is a kind of rubric, called “Non-Empirical Theory Assessment,” that is like a science-fair judging sheet for professional physicists. If a theory fulfills three criteria, it is probably true. First, if scientists have tried, and failed, to Read More ›

Barbara Drossell is a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Darmstadt in Germany.  In this article she talks about the origin of the universe, the fine tuning argument and the implausibility of the multiverse theory. The fine-tuning argument is not proof. It is not science to conclude that God exists because the Universe appears to be finely tuned. But it’s a very convincing philosophical interpretation of the observation of fine-tuning. . . . If you start with the assumption that there is no God, then matter and natural laws are the ultimate reality. Therefore, it is not unnatural to conclude that there is a multiverse. It is always dangerous to attribute motives to other people, but I think Read More ›

From Robert Lawrence Kuhn at Space: On the other hand, when asked his view of the anthropic principle, physicist David Gross at the University of California at Santa Barbara said, “I hate it.” “Anthropic considerations acquire real physical meaning only if one has many potential options,” Linde explained to me, “but only if some of them are compatible with the existence of observers. “The multiverse provides these options”, he asserted. “The most famous problem addressed by anthropic considerations is the size of the cosmological constant.” In other words, in studying the energy density of empty space, the vacuum, why is the cosmological constant so astonishingly small but still not zero? Linde said there are multiple problems in physics and cosmology, Read More ›

From the BBC: Why there might be many more universes besides our own … The fundamental constants of the laws of physics seem bizarrely fine-tuned to the values needed for life to exist. … For example, if the strength of the electromagnetic force were just a little different, atoms would not be stable. Just a 4% change would prevent all nuclear fusion in stars, the process that makes the carbon atoms our bodies are largely made of. … This has made some people suspect the hand of God. Yet an inflationary multiverse, in which all conceivable physical laws operate somewhere, offers an alternative explanation.More. So there it is. Brits pay taxes for this, believing it is some kind of science. Read More ›

At Greg West’s follow-worthy blog, The Poached Egg, Wintery Knight summarized cosmologist Alan Lightman on the multiverse (in Harper’s 2015, but worth repeating): If such conclusions are correct, the great question, of course, is why these fundamental parameters happen to lie within the range needed for life. Does the universe care about life? Intelligent design is one answer. Indeed, a fair number of theologians, philosophers, and even some scientists have used fine-tuning and the anthropic principle as evidence of the existence of God. For example, at the 2011 Christian Scholars’ Conference at Pepperdine University, Francis Collins, a leading geneticist and director of the National Institutes of Health, said, “To get our universe, with all of its potential for complexities or Read More ›

From Not Even Wrong: It turns out the multiverse does exist, just off the A76, 25 miles north of Dumfries in Scotland. It’s called the Crawick Multiverse and is now open 10 am to 4 pm. Admission is 5 pounds, but parking is free. … The idea seems to be that the park is a modern take on Neolithic monuments such as Stonehenge, which paid tribute to the movements of the Solar System – but this time the focus is on the latest advances in physics, such as chaos theory and the idea of parallel universes. More. But wait! Stonehenge was actually useful, wasn’t it? Figures these days they’d be building a monument to flapdoodle. See also: The multiverse: Where Read More ›