The multiple universes theory

[Queso]

i'm curious about this theory. could somebody tell me how valid it is in the world of science, and more information about it?

i heard that the universe splits itself into infinite copies of itself at every moment. ;) ;) something as of right now i can not comprehend...........

[Fishteacher73]

IMO it is all conjecture. It is about like living in a cave and assuming there are other caves. We have no real imperical data that either supports nor refutes the theory. I like it becasue it give some credence to the concept of infinity. It also is another chink in the armor for those that are a bit anthrocentric. We are not really that special after all.

[Queso]

We are not really that special after all.

ahh yeah i love the thought of that. as sad as it is, it's beautiful. so this is just another one of those theories floating around blah blahhhhh, alrighty then.

[Buffy]

It has a couple of purposes:

1. Relative to the anthropic principle, we have seen through physics that with a lot of the parameters measured for basic things in the universe--e.g. the strength of gravity, masses for the basic particles, strength of electroweak forces--if any of them were different, the Universe wouldn't look anything like what it does today, and might not even have lasted at all! The concept here is to say, Universes with all the different parameters do exist "out there somewhere" and we just happen to be the one that works the way it does. Physical laws are what they are just because we by chance ended up in this one.
   
2. Relative to Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle, this concept is used to explain that everytime anything happens by "chance" multiple universes are created with *all* the possible outcomes! ;) (linda's gonna weigh in on this one I'm sure!)
   

As Fish sez, its all conjecture, no way to know whats going on outside our Universe...

 

This is all *completely* different than Andre Linde's similarly named "multiverse" theory which concentrates on other universes popping into existence in different dimensions....

 

Cheers,

Buffy

[Tormod]

This is the "Many Worlds" theory that was formulated a while back in the 50ies by Hugh Everett.

 

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-manyworlds/

 

I read a book a few years ago called "The Universe Next Door" by Marcu Chown which has an essay about this. The concept was so infuriatingly stupid that I literally threw the book at the wall...but the theory remains. Some people think it is a necessary result of quantum mechanics.

[Queso]

hahahaha, great story. well, i think that about sums it up. thanks guys.

[Qfwfq]

It came about in the earlyish days of the Born interpretation of quantum mechanics, before decoherence became established as the way out of absudities such as the dilemma of Schrödinger's cat. It is not a necessary consequence of QM and, if some people still think it is, they ought to read up a bit.

 

The idea was, at first, that the outcome of "observing" the value of some quantity, for a QM state that isn't an eigenstate of that quantity, would be somehow determined by the "conscious observer" and this was, of course, an idea going from epistemology toward metaphysics. The multiverse idea was imagined to avoid the necessity of this determination in the first place. There is no determination at all, each outcome occurs, but each in a new copy of reality. If you see one outcome, it is only one copy of you that sees it and the other copies of you are seeing the other possible outcomes. Obviously, each copy of you doesn't communicate with the others and only percieves the one reality.

 

Considering that many observables can have many eigenvalues, even continuous spectra, further to the number of interactions taking place every picosecond, just think how many more copies of reality are being spawned every picosecond!!!!! The growth is clearly exponential.

 

Something must be wrong, somewhere, just as something must have been wrong with the cat being in a combination of dead and alive until a human being opened the box...

[Buffy]

It came about in the earlyish days of the Born interpretation of quantum mechanics, before decoherence became established as the way out of absudities such as the dilemma of Schrödinger's cat. It is not a necessary consequence of QM and, if some people still think it is, they ought to read up a bit.

Haha! Yup, but its also not proven that its not possible! I actually think its a pretty silly notion ("where are they going to *put* all those universes?"), but there still lots of people working on it for different reasons... There was an article in SciAm about a year or so ago where they explained how many different universes you would have, and how big the whole kit'n'kaboodle would be if you had to represent every permutation of every possible state of every Planck-sized volume of space in our Universe. Pretty wild....

 

I don't like cats either, but I also don't agree with Hawking's hatred of Schroedinger's cat: hope he keeps his gun holstered...I've always thought it would be perfect torture for that cat to have to stay in both states at once! :Alien:

 

Cheers,

Buffy

[Qfwfq]

"where are they going to *put* all those universes?"

You don't have to put them anywhere!!!!! Certainly not all in any one universe, each one of them just bes.

 

I would never do such things to a poor cat! :Alien:

[Raelian1]

Multiple universes? There are infinite universes. The universe has alwas existed and will always exist. The universe is infinite in space. Within an atom, there are infinite universes and within the atoms of those universes are more infinite universes, thus the infinitely small. We are part of an atom in another universe and that universe is part of another atom, thus the infintely large.

[Tormod]

Multiple universes? There are infinite universes. The universe has alwas existed and will always exist. The universe is infinite in space......

 

Please...this is a science forum. Such posts as your own require some sort of backing up in the form of links, scientific data - or rewriting so that it does not sound like a fact. Because there is no evidence that our universe is one of many - no matter how much you or I would like it to be so.

[paultrr]

You don't have to put them anywhere!!!!! Certainly not all in any one universe, each one of them just bes.

 

I would never do such things to a poor cat! :circle:

 

There also may be a limit on possible states given that some possible states may be unstable to begin with. Something Hawking has pointed out himself. The problem is that by definition we exist in this one universe, irrespective of how many other universes there may be its this universe that concerns us. We can only directly study this one universe. While those in the multiverse camp would point out that our universe may be the result of the interface, so to speak, of all the rest. We can still only hope to study this one. I like aspects of the multiverse approach. But I would also agree its hard to varify something we cannot observe or study directly. Testing such a theory, unless you count in absence of evidence is not at least at this time possible. At that point its rather like bringing the whole faith question into science. On a personal note I suspect this is not the only universe that exists. But finding absolute scientific evidence for such is another thing.

 

I like cats and dogs. Have always had some of both around along with other animals like rabbits, etc. My cats are alive and tend to stay outside of boxes unless they are playing with one. :shrug:

[quantum quack]

Just a thought or two if I may add to the discussion.

 

There is some interest in the idea that the universe is essentially two dimensional in a thee dimensional format. The main consideration being the issue of time and how time is a two dimensional laminar of three components. past, present and future all poised on a zero duration event called the NOW.

 

So in answer to the question about where would we put all these universes the answer could be simply any where in the time line you like as the universe has a zero rest dimension.

Of course what I have just said is about as silly as the multi verse theory itself, but hey in my defense, I didn't start the thread....[chuckle] :circle:

[Kirk Gregory Czuhai]

Just a thought or two if I may add to the discussion.

There is some interest in the idea that the universe is essentially two dimensional in a thee dimensional format. Of course what I have just said is about as silly as the multi verse theory itself, but hey in my defense, I didn't start the thread....[chuckle] :shrug:

 

so perhaps, my comments will be silly too?

 

when we discuss our universe, does not that pretty much encompass the whole bannana?

i mean everything we can exist in and/or measure? there is no more? no sense talking about multi-universes as how could we ever measure them unlese we meant in some future time or past time we were to hook up with them or had been hooked up to them and then they were to be or were part of our universe anyway!

 

i believe as others do that our universe is COMPLEX in that it is neither completely predictable nor is it completely random and it has many, many ways that it is BOTH! so

it will be quite the challenge to us in life times to come forever i believe.

 

its randomness will always be a manner of fate or maybe could be influenced as some

may believe by a spirtual being and faith but that may not be appropriate to discuss here.

or it could just be just sheer luck as some would believe.

 

if one does not believe that the universe is subject to randomness i urge them to look into chaos theory where infinitely small perturbations of a system can result in very large deviations of motion down the line. Indeed there is no gaurentee that the Earth's orbit is even stable during the safe lifetime of our sun because of this effect ignoring large metor and comet impacts, just the orbital motions of the planets.

 

peace and love,

and,

love and peace,

(kirk) kirk gregory czuhai LOVES ! :circle: Allendale, MI. USA, My Home Town Info, etc.

p.s. and whether one likes it or not a cat is both alive and dead until some measurement

tells you otherwise in a box that you know already that a cat is in a box. Indeed the cat

could have quantum tunneled out of the box to another box (although this scenario has

and EXTREMELY small probability!)

[quantum quack]

so perhaps, my comments will be silly too?

 

nope I thought it was quite uhmm.......non-silly....I guess when we start talking about the hyper- hyperthetical it can seem to be somewhat silly......but of course that is where abstraction and speculation can take us.....

I appologise if my comment has offended.........

[Bo]

two other main theories on multiple universe-stuff

 

- Chaotic inflation: The pre-bigbang universe (at least: pre-inflation): The universe is an infinite 'sea' of some field, with a mass just below a critical value. Due to quantum fluctuations, this mass can localy become obave the critical value, triggering LOCALLY inflation (very rapid expansion of the universe). One of these 'bubbles' is our own universe, but infinitely more should exist.

- String theory probably allows some 10^120 different, stable vacua. each with it's own physical behaviouir. these other bubbles don't have to have the same vacuum configuration as we have...

 

Bo

[IMAMONKEY!]

Hey! Thats exactly what i was thinking in Science class the other day! My teacher was tlaking about atoms and subatomic particles and stuff like that and i was noticing similarities between atoms and the universe, such as the similarity of space. Between both there is tons of space. And Raelin's talk of infinite UNiverses sums it all up. I came upon the multiple Universe theory from reading Timeline by Michael Crichton. did i spell his name right?

 

oh well... anyway. I was thinking... what if our entire universe was part of a subatomic particle like a quark and that part of a quark... or maybe a whole quark, was part of another atom.... Thats suggesting that every quark in our universe is another universe! Thats a lot of universes... and i remember reading a post by Buffy asking where you would put all of these infinite universes being made every second! Thats the answer! Matter can and is being created because matter is an entirely seperate universe! Maybe we are as big as it gets, and someday you may be able to "read an atom" and see events of the past! It would certainly help history's horrid record-keeping. Anyway. I believe in the Infinite Universe theory. The great thing about it is it helps explain god's existence, and how he only acts inderectly. I think that somewhere in our universe there is a hole in space. Since i recently read the debate on whether space is generally a fabric or not ill say for the moment that space is not a fabric, but is an infinitely dimensional medium that we can only comprehend as a fabric...

 

if uve read my post on sophistication phases you will understand why we cant seem to grasp this concept in our minds. And somewhere in that tear of space-fabric, there is a place where matter is constantly being made! And God is a diety that has access to that place. Hence he can change the matter- thus changing events. The idea of infinite universes to me is quite a valid theory although it is not acknowledged by everyone of you guys since you are the only scientists i know, being thirteen years old i can imagine you would understand why i dont exactly have the pleasure of tlaking to scientists and philosophers every day... :(

Anyway thats my belief on... uhhh... the infinite universes theory. I thank Micheal Crichton... (did i spell that right?) for helping me discover this possibility! Good day all!

 

PS: IM sry TORMOD that my posts are so long. i guess i have yet to learn how to express myself in fewer words.