Do We Live In The Multiverse? - Alternative View

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Do We Live In The Multiverse? - Alternative View
Do We Live In The Multiverse? - Alternative View

Video: Do We Live In The Multiverse? - Alternative View

Video: Do We Live In The Multiverse? - Alternative View
Video: Do we live in a multiverse? | The Economist 2024, March
Anonim

On the eighth day, God created the multiverse …

2011, March 2, I had the opportunity to take part in the most unpleasant public debate in my life. It was a debate with a physicist whom I once considered my friend, or at least a good acquaintance. Brian Greene had recently published the book Hidden Reality. Parallel Worlds and Deep Space Laws”and toured America, telling a wide audience about it.

The Boston Science Museum commissioned me to interview Brian for a television interview. Having known Brian Green for many years, I gladly gave my consent. But my expectations were not met. Almost every time I asked Green to clarify the assertion that there are other universes, and to give at least some experimental evidence, he declined to answer.

This talented scientist did not give a single convincing proof that there are other universes in the world besides ours. He answered the questions asked something like this: "This is what mathematics tells us, and I believe in this science." But mathematics tells us nothing about other universes - more precisely, about real universes. All speculations about the "multiverse" as a cluster of possibly existing universes are entirely hypothetical. The debate turned out to be unsuccessful mainly because we were dealing with things about which we, as scientists, did not have any objective data. We might as well argue about how many angels fit on the head of a pin.

Atheists readily seized on the idea of a multiverse, believing that if there are many universes, then the creation of one universe looks less impressive, which, therefore, could have happened without a divine act. They greeted Green's book noisily.

In it, the author has brought together 4 different theories, according to which, according to Green, our Universe is only one of many, and perhaps an infinite number of universes: some of them are similar to our Universe, some are not.

One such theory is Alan Guth's theory of inflation. According to this theory, the Universe went through a period of very rapid expansion (called by the author inflation), which then slowed down significantly. This theory was supplemented by Andrey Linde and Alexander Vilenkin to the chaotic theory of inflation. Linde and Vilenkin believe that, based on quantum concepts, it can be argued that the inflationary process that gave rise to our Universe continues in nature continuously and forever.

According to these theorists, the inflationary process “goes everywhere” in the wider Universe, where it continues to inflate other segments of it that are inaccessible to our observation due to the huge distances generated by the rapid expansion of space. When these small parts of the Universe grow incredibly quickly, they move further away from us, and we begin to consider them as separate universes, because they become absolutely inaccessible for observation.

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The question, however, is: What value do all these statements have? They explain how parts of our universe can evolve when rapid inflation begins in them, which has already stopped in our part of the vast universe. So far so good and logical. But there is no question of a true "multiverse" here. We are talking only about theoretical assumptions, where there are distant segments of one Universe, of which we ourselves are a part.

Other than that, we have no confidence that this theory is correct. Physicists do not know how to "stop" inflation, and since we know that our part of the Universe is no longer in a state of inflation (it is expanding at a more moderate rate), we assume that inflation has moved to some other part of the Universe. However, if we cannot observe such distant parts of our own Universe and obtain information about them, then what is the use of such a model?

Hugh Everett's interpretation of quantum mechanics leads us to the concept of the multiverse in a different way, and it is this path that Brian Greene supports. Everett's multi-world theory is even less plausible than the chaotic inflation theory. Everett argues that because we do not have a theoretical way to "collapse the wave function" of quantum mechanics, which allows us to give certainty to its vague essences, insofar as every opportunity (potential result of our experiments), which did not take place here, can be realized in some "Another universe".

We do not know exactly where these universes are. Moreover, there are so many of them: every possible outcome of a quantum event takes you to another universe! Quantum events happen all the time and everywhere: every time a photon is released in a light bulb as a result of the transition of an electron to a lower energy level. Quantum events take place during any chemical reaction. An unthinkable, incredible number of quantum events are happening every moment.

If, driving your car, you decide to turn right at an intersection, then there is another world, very similar to ours, in which you turn left. There are universes where Hitler won World War II and where the Nazis rule the world; there are universes in which the 9/11 attack did not take place and the World Trade Center still stands in its place. This bizarre theory is not supported by any experimental data and has very few supporters.

String theory

String theory is another area of physics where advances have led Green and his associates to conjecture that there are multiple universes. What is string theory? This direction arose in physics over 40 years ago. According to its adherents, the main elements of nature are tiny vibrating strings. String theory was proposed by the Italian scientist Gabriele Veneziano when he underwent an internship in Israel at the Weizmann Institute in the 60s of the 20th century.

“Once I was looking at the equations governing the motion of particles,” he told me in 2005 in Genoa, “and suddenly noticed that these equations resemble the equations of behavior of strings, for example, for violins.” Veneziano analyzed his observation, and in fact, it turned out that there is a similarity between the vibration of strings and the movement of elementary particles. This is how string theory was born.

But since its inception, it has come a very long way. Mathematical physicists such as Edward Whitten of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton have introduced such a sophisticated and powerful mathematical apparatus into string theory that it is now considered a branch of pure mathematics. In fact, for developing the theory, Whitten received the Fields Medal, awarded for achievement in mathematics.

According to mathematical physicists, string theory has a grace that has drawn many scientists to it. True, this theory has yielded few experimental results. Other theoretical approaches do not lead to the same conclusions. “The only real success in string theory is the definition of the entropy of black holes,” Roger Penrose told me when I interviewed him. He meant that string theory made it possible to reproduce the result of theoretical determination of the physical characteristics of black holes, performed by other methods. No experiments have yet been developed to support the predictions of a mathematically rigorous but overly abstract string theory.

According to this theory, the Universe is located in a space-time that has more than 4 dimensions familiar to us, since the equations governing the behavior of strings make sense only in spaces with 10 or 11 dimensions. Some scientists have accepted these theoretical requirements of string theory and believe that the real physical universe in which we live must additionally have from 6 to 7 hidden dimensions. String theorists like Green refer to them as "curled dimensions," believing that they are hidden in the three spatial dimensions and one time dimension that we know for certain.

But does the fact that some equations use more than 4 dimensions really means that the real universe described by these equations actually has additional dimensions? To paraphrase theoretical physicist John Bell, one might ask: are these extra dimensions “existential”, are they real, or are they introduced only for the convenience of mathematical calculations?

Because string theory has yet to provide any reliable predictions and is unlikely to present them in the near future, the actual, rather than mathematical, existence of extra dimensions remains a big question. Are these measurements just a mathematical quirk, a mathematical requirement of theory, or are they really telling us something about the universe?

Green and his colleagues use the extra dimensions of string theory to argue that other universes may be "hiding" somewhere within those dimensions. I want to emphasize once again that, since none of the predictions of string theory has yet been experimentally confirmed, hypotheses about "hidden" universes hiding in curled up behind-the-scenes dimensions seem very doubtful.

Other worlds

The fourth line of reasoning regarding the existence of other universes, which Green considers, is based on the anthropic principle. This principle led some physicists to the assumption that, since the emergence of our Universe was a one-time event, there are other universes that are inaccessible to our observation. We only explore those places in space that are suitable for our habitation, and we cannot observe universes where conditions are incompatible with life.

The idea is that there are many things in our Universe that are inaccessible to today's understanding: its parameters and properties are too well tuned for life in order to arise by chance, and all the values of these parameters are ideal for our existence. Therefore, other places (other universes) “should” exist, where the parameters are different, not suitable for life.

In order to avoid the need to acknowledge the fact of "creation", which itself suggests itself as an explanation for the emergence of a universe so perfect that life could arise in it, these physicists adhere to the following view of the universe. If we are here and the parameters of the Universe are ideal for our existence, then there must be countless other worlds and universes whose parameters cannot be suitable for supporting life. We live in our Universe, because only its parameters are suitable for life.

The problem with this explanation of the existence of the multiverse is that it does not mention the mechanism behind the creation of other invisible universes. For all its drawbacks, chaotic inflation theory, string theory, and multiple worlds theory still offer their own mechanisms for such creation. Anthropic theory is the weakest of all theories of multiple universes.

The fact that abstract equations may require more measurements than we observe does not mean that these measurements are real. The fact that we do not know how to “stop” inflation does not mean that it is it that creates other universes, just as the fact that we understand so little the meaning of the wave function of quantum mechanics does not mean that the wave can exist in other worlds. …

New atheists have seized on the idea of a multiverse, as speculative as it is, simply because it seems to get rid of the creator figure. According to the new atheists, the laws of physics and mathematics lead to the emergence of the universe from nothing; and because it could happen once, in so far as it can happen again and again, whence comes the possibility of the existence of innumerable universes.

If an infinite set of universes does exist, then ours is an infinitely small part of the universe and, perhaps, does not require divine power for its control. On the other hand, based on the same argument, it is possible to argue that the force that created an infinite number of universes must be immeasurably greater than the power of any creator, which has been discussed so far in all religions. In any case, we can only observe one universe.

The worst feature of the multiverse theory is the lack of frugality. This is a model that, like the ancient theory of Ptolemy about the solar system with its cycles and epicycles, decisively swept away by Copernicus, has a lot of free parameters. In reality, an infinite multiverse has infinitely many parameters. There must be parameters describing each of the many other universes that individual experts believe to exist in some way somewhere. The infinite multiverse does not meet Einstein's criterion for grace and simplicity, and simple and graceful models best fit nature.

But even Dawkins, who is not a mathematician, got carried away with the idea of the multiverse, because it provides an opportunity to avoid recognizing the existence of God. Here is what he himself wrote about this:

It is very tempting to think (and many have succumbed to this temptation) that postulating the existence of an abundance of universes is a wasteful and completely unaffordable luxury. If we allow ourselves the extravagance of many universes (these people say), then seven troubles, one answer - we can recognize the existence of God. Are not both these ad hoc hypotheses equally wasteful and equally unsatisfactory? The consciousness of people who think this way was clearly not brought up by natural selection.

Dawkins greatly underestimates the true "extravagance" of the "abundance of universes" idea. Why does he think that the physical universe has something to do with biological "natural selection" and how can one "cultivate consciousness" through natural selection in order to understand the infinity of universes? One can only guess about all this.

The main problem in the idea of a multiverse is the complete impossibility of confirming its theories experimentally or using any data obtained from observations of the real world. The idea of a multiverse requires the use of a mathematical apparatus that cannot be applied to real physical phenomena. Any hypothesis - God exists, or God does not exist - remains unproven if we accept the hypothesis of many universes. The multiverse only makes the hypothetical creator even more omnipotent. The multiverse and infinity lead us into the realm of mathematics and its relationship with physics and cosmology.

Recommended for viewing: "Multiverse - Parallel Universes"

Azel Amir D.