From Natalie Wolchover at Quanta:
The controversial idea that our universe is just a random bubble in an endless, frothing multiverse arises logically from nature’s most innocuous-seeming feature: empty space. Specifically, the seed of the multiverse hypothesis is the inexplicably tiny amount of energy infused in empty space — energy known as the vacuum energy, dark energy or the cosmological constant. Each cubic meter of empty space contains only enough of this energy to light a lightbulb for 11-trillionths of a second. “The bone in our throat,” as the Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg once put it, is that the vacuum ought to be at least a trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion times more energetic, because of all the matter and force fields coursing through it. Somehow the effects of all these fields on the vacuum almost equalize, producing placid stillness. Why is empty space so empty?
While we don’t know the answer to this question — the infamous “cosmological constant problem” — the extreme vacuity of our vacuum appears necessary for our existence. More.
The vacuum problem is just an anomaly, period. Obviously, it isn’t the actual reason the multiverse is hot. The multiverse is hot because alternatives like fine-tuning are not philosophically acceptable, irrespective of evidence. Science will be thrown down the hole before they are considered.
That said, science that amounts only to privileged fluff from people who are designated for social reasons as scientists will seem like an acceptable substitute in the current environment.
See also: In pursuit of the multiverse’s black hole to infinity
and
The multiverse is science’s assisted suicide
Just more multiverse musings. No new science. No new empirical evidence. No new facts. Why this stuff is considered science is beyond me.
Specifically, the seed of the multiverse hypothesis is the inexplicably tiny amount of energy infused in empty space — energy known as the vacuum energy, dark energy or the cosmological constant.
This makes no sense whatsoever. First, if it’s empty, why say it has energy? Second, the energy in space (vacuum energy) is certainly not tiny. Physicist Richard Feynman once said that “there is enough energy inside the space in an empty cup to boil all the oceans of the world.”
Space itself is abstract: it does not exist. There are many abstract things that are ascribed “existence” by physicists but are nevertheless non-physical creations of the mind.
There is a foolproof way to determine whether or not something exists physically: just ask yourself simple questions such as “what is it made of?” or “where is it?”. If you cannot answer the questions, it does not exist. Examples are distance, space, time, volume, width, height, unemployment rate, etc. None of them exists.
So yes, distance is an illusion/creation of the mind. Once you understand this, 99% of the unexplainable paradoxes of physics disappear. For example, Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance” is no longer spooky. One day, in the not too distant future, we will develop technology that will allow us to travel instantly from anywhere to anywhere.
FourFaces @ 2: “One day, in the not too distant future, we will develop technology that will allow us to travel instantly from anywhere to anywhere.”
Sounds fascinating. What are the seeds of this technology? How far off?
Truth @ 3: Sounds fascinating. What are the seeds of this technology? How far off?
The first thing physicists will need to understand is that the location or position of a particle is not a property of space (which does not exist) but a variable property of the particle itself. This makes everything absolute, not relative as the relativists wrongly claim.
Second, we will need to figure out how to cause the position of a particle to change by a value greater than the fundamental discrete distance which some people call the Planck distance. There is no reason to suppose that this is impossible.
At this time, I don’t know how to achieve this but I suspect that some genius will figure it out and usher the golden age of instant long-distance travel onto a brave new world. I, for one, would love to travel to Mars instantly. Heck, I would be more than happy to be able to instantly travel to any place in the world at a moment’s notice.
Note to Christians: Instant transportation (not to be confused with teleportation) is mentioned in the New Testament. Look it up, if you’re interested.
FourFaces, sounds like you think we’re living in a algorithmically generated universe, i.e, a virtual reality (“simulation”, although I object to that term). I think there are some very good reasons to suspect that.
A few notes:
Firstly, it is interesting to note what Weinberg himself stated:
Secondly, another major problem in trying to unify quantum mechanics and general relativity is that when theorists try to combine the two theories, then the resulting theory predicts that spacetime, atoms, and the universe itself should all be literally torn apart. Here are a few references that get this point across.
Yet since both quantum mechanics and general relativity are both tested to extreme levels of precision, and we can thus have a high level of confidence that both theories are true,
,,, and since Godel’s incompleteness theorem requires something to be ‘outside the circle’ of mathematics,
,,, then it is fairly safe to assume that something very powerful must be holding the universe together. ,,, For the Christian this should not be surprising. Christianity predicts that in him all things hold together and also that Christ upholds the universe by the word of his power.
The following article gives us a small glimpse into just how powerful Christ word might be.
Some theoretical physicists have remarked that the failure to mathematically unify Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity into a mathematical “Theory of Everything” is ‘the collapse of physics as we know it’
On the other hand, since physics was born out of Christianity in the first place, I hold that this supposed failure for physics is actually a sure mark signifying Christ’s preordained victory over death:
Verses and music:
ba77 quotes Steven Weinberg as saying,
I absolutely agree with that. No matter what we figure out – how many layers of explanation we develop – the question of “well, why is it like that will always be there about the last current layer.
I really liked Weinberg’s book “Dreams of a Final Theory.”
Well jdk, since Weinberg is an atheist, I can see how he would say what he said, but, on the other hand, since physics was born out of the Christian presupposition of a ‘universal law giver’ (C.S. Lewis; John Lennox,, etc..), then the Christian is STILL sitting fairly comfortable in his presupposition that God is behind the laws of nature. As Hawking himself once asked ‘What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?’
And as long as Atheists continue to deny the reality of God, they will always be left with these supposedly unanswerable questions that were posed by Weinberg and Hawking!
The atheist’s worldview is insane on the face of it. Think about it. The atheist, especially in his multiverse conjecture, is basically claiming that random chaos gave rise to the universal laws and constants. It is hard to imagine a more self-contradictory claim than that!
In any other endeavor, such a self-contradictory claim would be soundly ridiculed as ludicrous. But alas, when an atheistic physicist makes the claim all is. apparently, business as usual.
This ought not be so. Sanity should kick in somewhere for the atheist. But alas, save for a very few, such as Anthony Flew, sanity is apparently a rare commodity for atheists.
mike1962 @ 5:
FourFaces, sounds like you think we’re living in a algorithmically generated universe, i.e, a virtual reality (“simulation”, although I object to that term). I think there are some very good reasons to suspect that.
It does seem like it could be virtual since the physical universe is just a bunch of particles with variable properties but I don’t think it can be simulated. I think it’s the real thing. Why? Because I believe that the spirit/soul that gives us consciousness requires a special configuration of atoms and properties to interface with the brain. You can’t get that in a simulation.
This is the reason that copying and uploading a human brain to a computer will not work. The soul cannot interface with the bits in the computer.
And so are monkeys flying out of my ass a logical result of the multiverse – something that explains everything, explains nothing – its a thought experiment with no actual physical evidence, and there never will be (my opinion). It was created specifically to counter ideas of fine tuning and their implications, so this should make one skeptical from the start – as they are literally relying on a near infinite or nearly so number of these already in existence. Oh there is a cold spot in the MBR, must be a multiverse clue!!! That’s not science. the real story was the Axis of Evil that kind of just went away….
News,
Speaking of theories that don’t work very well, see this:
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25767
Apparently there’s a galaxy out there that appears to have no dark matter in it, based on how it’s behaving. What The Heck (TM)???
Where did the empty space come from?
The logical outcome of the existence of empty space is a continuation of empty space.
From the wisdom of a kindergarten class.
“The controversial idea that our universe is just a random bubble in an endless, frothing multiverse arises logically from nature’s most innocuous-seeming feature: empty space. Specifically, the seed of the multiverse hypothesis is the inexplicably tiny amount of energy infused in empty space….”
Consider the Big Bang. Is this really entirely and completely explained (as per Hawking and others) by a random fluctuation of a point in the vacuum, so as to eliminate any need for some form of creative Intelligence? Whatever the “a priori reality” preceding the Big Bang was, it must have included the potentiality and “blueprint” of the process of the Big Bang and cosmic inflation leading to our present Universe. This potentiality and blueprint therefore contained the immense amount of specified information constituting the mathematical structure of the quantum physics underlying this process and our present Universe.
To say this potentiality and blueprint simply existed with no intelligent origin is like claiming that a portrait by Rembrandt had no creator, that the work of art was like a fundamental logical truth.