Did you know that the universe was born as …

_{Denyse O'Leary

September 21, 2013

Cosmology, News}

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… as a space-time bubble that popped up inside an even bigger metaverse?

Metaverse = a bigger turtle:

In this picture, our universe arose from quantum fluctuations in a much bigger cosmos called a metaverse. The quantum effects caused a phase transition in the fabric of the metaverse, and our universe popped into being, like an air bubble forming in boiling water.

Can we know if this is true?

Probably not, says Marc Kamionkowski, a co-author of the 2008 paper and now at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. The bubble walls are expanding at the speed of light, so we could never catch up with them.

Is it fun? Yes, if you must watch water boil (for safety reasons, of course). 😉

Comments

because the original question implies the one asked by the author of the OP
No. It does not. Trying to pretend that it does, or that somehow the only confusion was introduced by the formatting error in my second post, is simply disingenous. News presented a quotation from the article as though it was an answer to the question, or to an equivalent question, that she herself had typed. It was not. It was an answer to a quite different question. The result is that the OP gives the misleading impression that Kamionowksi thinks that we cannot know whether the metaverse model is true. His answer (the part news didn't quote) actually implies that we may be able to - because "intruders" from a metaverse may have left traces in the form of extra-large galaxy clusters. And the main import of the article is that the metaverse model as proposed by Liddle would have left the kind of traces in the CMB that we actually observe. The most charitable explanation I can give for this extraordinary denial that
Can we know if this is true?
means something very different to
So what might be outside our bubble? Can we ever escape it, or could stuff come in from beyond?
is that people actually think that if cannot physically go somewhere, or see it, then we cannot know that that place exists. But this is patently false. We know that other other galaxies exist that we have no chance of reaching. We know that Big Bang probably occurred even though we cannot go back in time to observe it. Most of cosmology is based on observations of traces left by phenomena, not on direct observation of the phenomena themselves, including Big Bang, which seems to be really quite popular in the ID community, even with YECs. So there is absolutely no reason to think that the answer that Kamionowksi gave to the question he was actually asked would also have been his answer to the question news asked. He actually gave an example of what traces of a metaverse we might observe, as did Liddle. In fact, Liddle's hypothesis was advanced to explain observations.Elizabeth B Liddle_{September 22, 2013
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News may well have asked “the more important question”, and it may well “happen to follow from the original one” but it was not the question to which the answer she posted was addressed And her juxtaposition clearly implied that it was.
I don't know, EL. It seems to me that an attentive reader with a modicum of curiosity would have immediately noticed that the question asked in the OP was not part of the provided quote, but rather was introduced by the author. (They would have been more likely mislead by your #8 however.) This reader might have had the wherewithal to look at the original question (the link was provided) and discovered the reason why: because the original question implies the one asked by the author of the OP. It seems pretty clear to me that such was the intention. Juxtaposition benefits comparison. But the finer point was trampled on when you stampeded to condemn it. While it can be appreciated that you're apparently protective of the average, hapless and hasty reader, I can assure you that the primary audience for which these posts are intended are not so easily misled. The point certainly wasn't lost on me, and apparently it wasn't lost on Barb either. Regardless of whether you agree with the implication, it's pretty apparent -- without too much mental effort -- that there was a point to be made, and I thought it was made quite well. I'll understand if you all just can't get over it. Perhaps you can save yourself some strain by just plain skipping News posts going forward. Frankly I find your objections silly, given my interpretation of the OP's intent, which I believe to be correct.Chance Ratcliff_{September 22, 2013
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The response here is quite extraordinary.
As I said before, News asked the more important question, which happens to follow from the original one; she asked the more germane question: can we know if this is true? If anyone else has been mislead due to missing the point, I’m sure they’ll come forward.
News may well have asked "the more important question", and it may well "happen to follow from the original one" but it was not the question to which the answer she posted was addressed And her juxtaposition clearly implied that it was. Not only that, but the answer given to the question that was asked does NOT imply that the answer to news's question, had it been asked, would have been "probably not". No answer to that question is given in the article. However, two pieces of information suggest that the answer is, at the very least "maybe". 1. A metaverse, in Liddle's model, would have left traces in the CMB, and these traces may be what the CMB anomalies are. 2. An intruder from metaverse could have left traces in the form of an "oddly large cluster of galaxies". In other words the metaverse makes actual predictions about what we will observe. News, and clearly others, seem to assume that if the answer to the questions: "So what might be outside our bubble? Can we ever escape it, or could stuff come in from beyond?" is "probably not", then the answer to the question "Can we know if it is true?" is "probably not" as well. This absolutely does not follow. And in fact, the answer to the "could stuff come in from beyond?" part was, in fact "yes". It's not as though this is a YEC site, where people think that an "eye witness account" of six-day creation trumps evidence of a billion-years-old universe. Mostly people here rather like the idea of Big Bang, and yet the Big Bang inference is based entirely on directions of the traces it has left, not of the event itself. If a metaverse also left traces, then we could know about it in exactly the way that we know about Big Bang. And that article is about the traces it may have left.Elizabeth B Liddle_{September 21, 2013
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Flat fact: the quote in the OP is inaccurate and misleading.
It's not a quote, so that's not very flat a fact after all. It's a substitute question that just happens to be implied by the original question, which was quite apparent to me after juxtaposing the two. And for the part that is a quote, it's neither inaccurate nor misleading. Can we know if this is true?
So what might be outside our bubble? Can we ever escape it, or could stuff come in from beyond? Probably not, says Marc Kamionkowski, a co-author of the 2008 paper and now at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. The bubble walls are expanding at the speed of light, so we could never catch up with them.
If we could never escape our bubble, and if stuff couldn't come in -- that is, nothing could come in -- then there would be no way of ever knowing if it was true (that we are in a bubble universe existing within a larger metaverse) even if some effects, like ripples or what have you, might have left some sort of trace at a finite time in the remote past, because there would be no way to make any sort of empirical verification to validate the hypothesis. Such propositions are unfalsifiable, hence one could never know if such a scenario is true, if indeed nothing could transition the barrier. That was the point of the substitute question, as far as I can tell. Go ahead and cry foul; the point was made and it was relevant, even if it wasn't apparent to those rushing to complain. Probably nothing can penetrate the barrier, so probably we can't possibly know if the hypothesis is true. That's the point which seemed interesting to me for its own sake. I know that trying to impeach UD for any perceived transgression at every opportunity is far more interesting than the philosophical implications of unknowable realities posited as explanations for the existence of our universe, but some of us wallow in the mundane. As I said before, News asked the more important question, which happens to follow from the original one; she asked the more germane question: can we know if this is true? If anyone else has been mislead due to missing the point, I'm sure they'll come forward.Chance Ratcliff_{September 21, 2013
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Chance:
I’m alleging that EL’s quote of News is more misleading than News’ non-quote of the original question, which I didn’t find misleading at all, but rather thought provoking, since the two questions have strong equivalence:
Flat fact: the quote in the OP is inaccurate and misleading. Your attempt to rescue it by suggesting that the questions are "strongly equivalent" only compounds the problem with additional inaccuracies.
If nothing can breach the barrier in either direction, then we can't know the nature of what is beyond it; we cannot know if it is true.
The article does not say that "nothing can breach the barrier in either direction." The article plainly states, "if something could enter our universe from the metaverse, from our perspective it would seem to appear at the moment of the big bang, and would get mixed with the rest of the early matter. Today such an intruder would only be noticeable as an oddly large cluster of galaxies." To conjecture, "If something could enter" is to suggest the possibility that something could enter. Your paraphrased conjecture, "If nothing can breach the barrier in either direction..." conveys the opposite. Further, were something to enter it may have empirical consequences: oddly large clusters of galaxies. Perhaps that conjecture can be formalized into predictions subject to confirmation by further observation. If such predictions and observations are possible, perhaps we can know if the proposed scenario is true.Reciprocating Bill_{September 21, 2013
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I'm alleging that EL's quote of News is more misleading than News' non-quote of the original question, which I didn't find misleading at all, but rather thought provoking, since the two questions have strong equivalence: the original question implies the question that News asked. EL protests News' non-quoted substitution of the original question, then goes on to quote News as if she actually included the question as part of the quote. I just found that kind of humorous. Just to note, juxtaposition is generally for the sake of making a comparison, which is exactly what a thoughtful reader would be moved to do. When one compares the question asked with the one it implies, the relationship is revealing. Yes indeed, juxtaposition was probably the intention. But please feel free to continue. I think that others like myself might find the foot-stamping display of indignance at least mildly entertaining. EL: Hence the irony. In #8, perhaps in your zeal to scold, you make it appear as if News included the question as part of the quote. And if you can't see the similarity between both questions then I don't know what to say. If nothing can breach the barrier in either direction, then we can't know the nature of what is beyond it; we cannot know if it is true. And if we actually can detect traces, then something has passed in at least one direction at some time.Chance Ratcliff_{September 21, 2013
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blockquote fail.. was intended for elizabeth's quote - "If we cannot escape the solar system, how do we know that other star systems exist? If we cannot escape our own time, how can we know that Big Bang happened?"wentzelitis_{September 21, 2013
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you forgot the 2nd half of the question answered by the quote .. "could stuff leak in?" the reason we are able to know other star systems exist is because their light, evidence of their existence, leak through to us. if it is impossible for anything outside of our "bubble" to leak in..then the quote is really just answering the same question and there is no issue.
wentzelitis_{September 21, 2013
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ChanceRadcliffe
Ironically, it’s EL’s quote of News that makes it look like News’ question is part of the original quote. News made no such error, and modified no original text as far as I can tell.
I made what she did perfectly clear in my first post (#1). I could have formatted the extract from her OP better in the post 8, but I have made it abundantly clear that the issue is that News posted her own question and then juxtaposed an answer to a different question. Nobody is in any doubt that the question was news's. But the impression, reading the OP, is that news's question is some sort of precis at least or the question actually asked. It is not. It does not resemble it any way. News's question is not even addressed in the article. The import of the article is that Andrew Liddle has proposed that a metaverse model could account for observations. This is the very opposite of saying that we can't ever know whether the metaverse exists, and nothing that Kamionowski says implies that we cannot know either. In fact, he says that intruders from the multiverse could leave traces in the form of extra-large clusters of galaxies. I cannot believe the lengths people will go to argue that black is white if it is said by an OP on UD. It's dead simple: news posted a question, and then quoted, as though in answer to that question, an answer to a quite different question. That is extremely misleading, and a classic example of quotemining. It's the kind of thing TV news editors are taken to task for - editing an anchor asking one question to footage of an interviewee answering another. If news thought the questions meant the same thing, then, frankly, she shouldn't be reporting science stories at all. "Can we know if this is true?" does NOT mean the same as: "So what might be outside our bubble? Can we ever escape it, or could stuff come in from beyond?" The full answer given to the actual questions asked were, respectively; stuff that intrudes; no; and yes, but to us it would look like it happened at Big Bang. Nowhere does anyone say that we cannot know if this is true. The import of Liddle's work is that we can.Elizabeth B Liddle_{September 21, 2013
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Ironically, it’s EL’s quote of News that makes it look like News’ question is part of the original quote. News made no such error, and modified no original text as far as I can tell. No one is alleging that News modified the original text. The point is that he/she juxtaposed it with his/her own question, making it appear as if he/she was merely paraphrasing the question, in the original article, that the astronomer was answering. But this is a false implication--the astronomer was not answering that question. You believe that he would agree that the theory is unprovable, but that is not a statement made anywhere in the article. (And rather contradicted by the article's statement that there may be detectable consequences if the theory is true.) What News has done is only clever, not misleading. She has asked the more important question, which is implied by the actual question. The answer is the same in either case. “Probably not.” And I suspect this was the actual intention. It's not only misleading, it actually misled Barb into thinking the article supports News's opinion. More importantly, this is a "news" piece. News should be the reporting of facts, not relentless quote-mining to turn every piece of science journalism into propaganda. It's not the original misleading language that I find objectionable, as it could have been an inadvertent mistake. It's the response that's interesting to me--News's response was to attack Dr. Liddle for pointing out the misleading text, and yours is to defend News by insisting that the piece's objectively false implication* is unobjectionable. * Whether or not the astronomer would agree with the question as News phrased it is irrelevant. The piece here states that he did agree with the question, which is false--he was not presented with it.Pro Hac Vice_{September 21, 2013
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Ironically, it's EL's quote of News that makes it look like News' question is part of the original quote. News made no such error, and modified no original text as far as I can tell. If nothing physical can breach the barrier in either direction, then we cannot know the scenario is true, unless the claim is that something immaterial can break through in one direction or another to leave physical traces. If there are detectable consequences from the existence of a metaverse, then something has to breach the barrier one way or the other. Is there another way? "Probably not." ;) What News has done is only clever, not misleading. She has asked the more important question, which is implied by the actual question. The answer is the same in either case. "Probably not." And I suspect this was the actual intention. I really don't expect you all to appreciate it. I'm only saying that the equivalence of the two questions should not be lost on anyone giving it due consideration. If nothing can penetrate the barrier in either direction, then nothing can be known by us about the existence of the metaverse, empirically speaking. Back to your regularly scheduled nitpicking. :)Chance Ratcliff_{September 21, 2013
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If we cannot escape the solar system, how do we know that other star systems exist? If we cannot escape our own time, how can we know that Big Bang happened? The reason we know is that we can observe their effects, just as here. Your suggestion that
Can we know if this is true?
somehow means the same as
So what might be outside our bubble? Can we ever escape it, or could stuff come in from beyond?
is frankly ridiculous. In fact, it is obvious that the part of the answer that news quotes is to the second of those questions - "can we ever escape it?" to which Kamionowski answers "probably not...The bubble walls are expanding at the speed of light, so we could never catch up with them" (the other questions are addressed in the following paragraph). The important part of the article is the part above that - the part about Andrew Liddle (no relation) who proposes that a metaverse could leave traces in the form of assymmetries in the CBW, for which currently there is no good explanation:
Andrew Liddle of the University of Edinburgh, UK, and colleagues sought an explanation. They went back to a theory published in 2008 by Sean Carroll and colleagues at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, which suggested that the small variations are superimposed on a disturbance spanning the observable universe, like small waves carried on a big ocean wave. "The trouble with that is they just made it up," says Liddle. "There's no reason why that should be." But then he recalled a cosmological model called bubble nucleation, which he had worked on in the 1990s. In this picture, our universe arose from quantum fluctuations in a much bigger cosmos called a metaverse. The quantum effects caused a phase transition in the fabric of the metaverse, and our universe popped into being, like an air bubble forming in boiling water. Weaving the two ideas together, Liddle and colleagues have shown that when inflation happens in a bubble universe, it naturally gives rise to large disturbances in space-time that could account for the lopsided CMB (Physical Review Letters, doi.org/ns2).
In other words, like all cosmological theories, including Big Bang, the theory is advanced to explain data. Not direct observations of something happening here and now, but traces of something that happened in the remote past, far away, and clearly beyond our reach. If a metaverse leaves traces, then we can, in principle, know about it in just the same way as we know about Big Bang from its traces. And if Liddle can make some predictions from his theory, and then finds data that support those predictions, then just as Big Bang eventually supplanted Steady State, so may metaverse eventually supplant universe as the best explanation of the data. The simple fact is that news posted an answer to a question as though it was an answer to a quite different question. Trying to defend her by implying that it was either really the same question, or that it happens to be the right question to the answer she did ask, even though it wasn't given in response to the question she asked, and nothing in the article suggests that it is the right answer, is absurd. It was either extraordinarily careless or simply dishonest. Either way, she should correct it.Elizabeth B Liddle_{September 21, 2013
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CR, that is a strong effort. But even under your interpretation of the article, it is a misleading use of the quotation. News misquotes the answer to make it appear that Dr. Kamionkowski agrees with your interpretation of the answer, when in fact he was answering a different question. The article therefore makes the statement that Dr. Kamionkowski would agree with you, when that is far from certain. Your interpretation may be correct, and Dr. Kamionkowski may in fact agree with it, but it's not certain as News apparently hopes readers (like Barb) will be misled to believe. Under the circumstances, though, your interpretation is not clearly correct. It may be correct, but based on a (real) news item's interpretation of a complex physics theory it's almost impossible to tell. Given that the article suggests that there are potentially detectable consequences if the theory is true, though, it's not clear that it's fair to say that the theory can't ever be proven true or false. That may in fact be the case, but it's not certain based on the linked article. Again, even if your interpretation of the quoted text is accurate, it is simply false to suggest--as News does--that Dr. Kamionkowski believes the theory cannot be proved true or false. The article does not say what Dr. Kamionkowski believes. News does, and implies misleadingly that this is drawn from the article. The bottom line, though, is that News (a) misquoted an article in a misleading way, creating a false impression of what Dr. Kamionkowski believes, (b) was called on it by someone that many people at UD seem to hate bitterly, and (c) chose to attack Dr. Liddle rather than correct the misquotation. Why would the appropriate response to Dr. Liddle's comment be to snipe at her rather than update the piece to reflect that the quotation isn't answering the question with which it's juxtaposed? News's priorities are misplaced. What are Uncommon Descent's priorities? WJM implied that they are war and propaganda. News seems to subscribe to that belief as well. What about truth and accuracy?Pro Hac Vice_{September 21, 2013
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So what might be outside our bubble? Can we ever escape it, or could stuff come in from beyond? Probably not, says Marc Kamionkowski, a co-author of the 2008 paper and now at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. The bubble walls are expanding at the speed of light, so we could never catch up with them.
News asks,
Can we know if this is true?
Probably not, says Marc Kamionkowski, a co-author of the 2008 paper and now at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. The bubble walls are expanding at the speed of light, so we could never catch up with them.
If we cannot ever escape it, and nothing can come from there to here, then we can never know that it is true. In order to know that it is true, empirically speaking, then we need to be able to witness it, either by escaping this universe or by witnessing something from beyond leaking through. We can know the truth of the nature/existence of something if we can observe/experience its properties directly, otherwise we cannot. The two questions appear reasonably equivalent, with News' framing being more to the point, imo.Chance Ratcliff_{September 21, 2013
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Barb, this is disingenuous. The article says:
So what might be outside our bubble? Can we ever escape it, or could stuff come in from beyond? Probably not, says Marc Kamionkowski, a co-author of the 2008 paper and now at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. The bubble walls are expanding at the speed of light, so we could never catch up with them.
News wrote:
Can we know if this is true? Probably not, says Marc Kamionkowski, a co-author of the 2008 paper and now at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. The bubble walls are expanding at the speed of light, so we could never catch up with them.
News's question is a totally different question to the one that Kamionkowski answered. The article does NOT state "that we cannot know if it’s true" either literally or in different words. In fact, the paragraph following the one that Denyse quoted says:
And if something could enter our universe from the metaverse, from our perspective it would seem to appear at the moment of the big bang, and would get mixed with the rest of the early matter. Today such an intruder would only be noticeable as an oddly large cluster of galaxies.
In other words, the anomalies in the CMB could be accounted for by an intruder from the metaverse. The whole point of the article is that a metaverse could leave traces in the CMB that might account for anomalies in the CMB. Of course all scientific knowledge is provisional, but nothing in that article suggests that we could not know that this is true in the provisional sense that we know anything is true in science.Elizabeth B Liddle_{September 21, 2013
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News/Denyse: you just posted a highly misleading account of this report. You made up a question that was not asked, and then you pasted in an answer to a quite different question, giving the clear and utterly misleading impression that it was the answer to your question. It was not. Are you going to correct it?Elizabeth B Liddle_{September 21, 2013
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The answer is that we cannot know if it's true, which is what the article stated. News didn't make a mistake in posting it, and didn't alter anything. Everything she posted is directly from the article. The scientists combined bubble nucleation theory with inflationary theory in an attempt to understand the universe's beginning but, unfortunately, neither theory can be proven true. Dr. Liddle and Pro Hac Vice need to relax a bit.Barb_{September 21, 2013
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Her point seems fairly serious. "News" distorted the quoted text in a way that makes it appear as if the article supports a position that appears nowhere in the article itself. If that was intentional, then this is quotemining. If it was unintentional, then it was sloppy. Either way, I would expect the reaction to be an explanation or correction of the misleading material. Instead, UD provides another example of its simmering hostility towards Dr. Liddle. I can't see any legitimate reason to leave the misleading material up now that it has been called out. Is this an example of WJM's call for an increased focus on propaganda, or is News simply going to leave the misrepresentation up out of spite for Dr. Liddle?Pro Hac Vice_{September 21, 2013
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Elizabeth Liddle re taking a LOA from UD: We know of no reason you can't just do that. There's no form you have to fill out or anything. We don't really have an administration, exactly. People just show up and post. Some of us don't even have time away from our day jobs to moderate. Just every time you think you should hit the ENTER key don't, and then you will find you are free and clear. If that does not work for you, something else is the matter and we can only wish you well in dealing with it.News_{September 21, 2013
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In that case it should say so.Elizabeth B Liddle_{September 21, 2013
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It's not a news desk, it's a views desk!Kantian Naturalist_{September 21, 2013
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News: I was about to take a leave of absence from UD, but I really can't let this go. You write:
Can we know if this is true?
Then, as though the text you cite immediately afterwards is a response to someone actually asking that question, you post:
Probably not, says Marc Kamionkowski, a co-author of the 2008 paper and now at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.
In fact, in the link you gave, the question to which Mark KamionKowski gave that answer, is:
So what might be outside our bubble? Can we ever escape it, or could stuff come in from beyond?
What sort of "news desk" is it that alters a question before giving the answer?Elizabeth B Liddle_{September 21, 2013
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