Sinister Security: multiverse

Yes, The Multiverse Is Real, But It Won’t Fix Physics

Read

“We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question that divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct.” Niels Bohr spoke these words to Wolfgang Pauli about the latter’s theory of elementary particles, but it could just as easily apply to many of today’s most controversial modern physics ideas.

One that’s gotten a lot of attention recently is that of a Multiverse. In short, it’s the idea that our Universe, and all that’s contained within it, is just one small region of a larger existence that includes many similar, and possibly many different, Universes like our own. On the one hand, if our current theories of physics are true, the Multiverse absolutely must exist. But on the other hand, as Sabine Hossenfelder rightly points out, it’s unlikely to teach us anything useful.

The observable Universe might be 46 billion light years in all directions from our point of view, but there’s certainly more, unobservable Universe, perhaps even an infinite amount, just like ours beyond that. Image credit: Frédéric MICHEL and Andrew Z. Colvin, annotated by E. Siegel.

Why must the Multiverse exist? Quite simply: there must be more Universe than the part that is observable to us. If you look just at the portion of the Universe we can see, you can measure its spatial curvature, and find that it’s incredibly close to flat. No regions repeat; no locations connect or loop back on one another; no large-curvature regions show themselves on a scale approaching that of the Universe we can observe.

If the Universe were a hypersphere, the four-dimensional analogue of a sphere, it must have a radius of curvature hundreds of times the size of what we can observe. There must be more Universe out there than what we can access.

Inflation causes space to expand exponentially, which can very quickly result in any pre-existing curved space appearing flat. If the Universe is curved, it has a radius of curvature hundreds of times larger than what we can observe. Image credit: E. Siegel (L); Ned Wright’s cosmology tutorial (R).

But this isn’t just a conclusion from observations; it’s the same conclusion that we’d draw from our leading theory of the Universe’s origin: cosmological inflation. Prior to the hot Big Bang, the fabric of the Universe was expanding at an exponential rate, where every 10–35seconds or so, it would double in scale in all dimensions. Inflation went on for at least as long as 10–33 seconds or so, but could have lasted far longer: seconds, years, millennia, trillions of years or an arbitrarily long length of time.

When inflation ends, the Universe we’re left with is stretched flat, the same temperature everywhere, and far, far vaster than anything we can ever hope to observe. Considering the finite nature of all we can see, inflation is the natural way to create a Multiverse of possibilities.

Inflation set up the hot Big Bang and gave rise to the observable Universe we have access to, but we can only measure the last tiny fraction of a second of inflation’s impact on our Universe. Image credit: Bock et al. (2006, astro-ph/0604101); modifications by E. Siegel.

Without a solid knowledge of how inflation began, or if it ever had a beginning, we cannot know how much “Multiverse” there is out there beyond our actual Universe. But based on the properties of inflation that imprint themselves on the Universe we inhabit, we can draw a few conclusions about it. In particular:

· The lack of spatial curvature,
· The adiabatic nature and spectrum of fluctuations imprinted on the cosmic microwave background,
· The magnitude of imperfections that gave rise to the large-scale structure we see,
· The constraints on the gravitational waves inflation could have created,
· And the super-horizon fluctuations that we observe (on scales larger than the visible Universe),

all give us some important constraints on the type of inflation that occurred, and teach us two very important lessons, if the implications of these verified and validated theories are correct, about our Multiverse.

Read More Add comment

With Quantum Suicide, You'd Go On Living Forever

By 0x000216

Read

0 Comments

The laws of the quantum world are so bizarre that if you follow them to their logical conclusions, you get some very strange results. That's why quantum physics is so full of thought experiments. You may have heard of Schrödinger's cat, for example: if you put a cat in a box with a vial of poison that has a 50/50 chance of killing the cat, the cat is both alive and dead—in a superposition of states, you might say—until you open the box. Well, try the quantum suicide thought experiment on for size: in that scenario, you're the cat—except you never die.

Quantum Suicide, Explained

The quantum suicide thought experiment was first posed by Max Tegmark in 1997, and it goes something like this: Imagine a gun is hooked up to a machine that measures the spin of a quantum particle every time the trigger is pulled. If the particle is measured as spinning clockwise, the gun will fire; if it's spinning counter-clockwise, it won't. A man points the gun at a sandbag and pulls the trigger 10 times. The gun goes off seemingly at random: "bang-click-bang-bang-bang-click-click-bang-click-click." Then, the man points the gun at his own head and attempts to pull the trigger 10 more times. What does he hear? "Click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click."He could keep on pulling the trigger for eternity, and the gun would never fire. How is that possible?

Now let's go back in time to the first moment he pointed the gun at his head. He pulls the trigger, and the gun fires. The man is dead. How can that happen when we already know the gun never fired? It's because every time he pulls the trigger, the universe splits into separate timelines: one where the gun fired, one where it didn't. When he was shooting the sandbag, he existed in the timelines created by that series of bangs and clicks. But when he aimed the gun at himself, the only timelines he could exist in were the ones where he survived—and thus, the ones where the gun didn't go off.

I Shot The Sheriff, But Only In This Timeline

This way of thinking is known as the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics, which says that our reality is just one in an infinite web of infinite timelines. It's controversial, but cool to think about nonetheless. With the many-worlds interpretation, every time you do anything, you cause a split in the universe. You're reading these words, but there's another timeline where you closed the article. You got out of bed at a certain time this morning, but there's another timeline where you slept later. You chose one career, but there's another timeline where you chose something wildly different. In each case, all you know is the timeline you're in.

In his 1994 paper, Max Tegmark pointed out an ironic twist to the many-worlds interpretation, which he calls the MWI: "Many physicists would undoubtedly rejoice if an omniscient genie appeared at their death bed, and as a reward for life-long curiosity granted them the answer to a physics question of their choice. But would they be as happy if the genie forbade them from telling anybody else? Perhaps the greatest irony of quantum mechanics is that if the MWI is correct, then the situation is quite analogous if once you feel ready to die, you repeatedly attempt quantum suicide: you will experimentally convince yourself that the MWI is correct, but you can never convince anyone else!"

Immortality Through Quantum Suicide

Article was originally published on Curiosity.

Read More Add comment

Michio Kaku: The Multiverse Has 11 Dimensions

By 0x000216

Read

0 Comments

Read More Add comment

Parallel Universes Could Solve One of the Biggest Mysteries in Physics

By 0x000216

Read

0 Comments

Image result for Parallel Universes Could Solve One of the Biggest Mysteries in Physics

BLACK HOLES AND REVELATIONS

Black holes are the source of a major quandary when it comes to our understanding of physics; either they can destroy information, which contradicts what we know about quantum mechanics, or they seemingly disregard Einstein’s theory of relativity. However, it’s now thought by some that the many worlds interpretation might help explain the situation.

Black holes have long since presented something of a contradiction considering our current understanding of physics. Now, the many worlds interpretation offers a convincing explanation.

It suggests that each one of the multiple possible outcomes of a quantum event splinters off into its own discrete world.

Now, a team of researchers at the California Institute of Technology led by Sean Carroll has suggested that this interpretation can explain away inconsistencies pertaining to black holes. They say that general relativity is upheld within each single possible world, while information is preserved across the entire global wave function, if not among individual branches.

MANY WORLDS

Aidan Chatwin-Davies, a member of Carroll’s team, told Futurism that other scientists have already suggested applying the many worlds theory, also known as Everettian, to the black hole information problem. “Cosmetically, we’re perhaps the first to cleanly label our perspective as Everettian,” he said. “More substantively, we wanted to perform some concrete calculations to mathematize otherwise abstract ideas.”

“Previous attempts considered statements of general relativity and quantum mechanics to be applicable to the same world,” Yasunori Nomura, professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley told Futurism. “My approach separates the two – quantum mechanics allows for a quantum state to be a ‘superposition’ of many classical worlds; statements of quantum mechanics apply to the entirety of these many worlds while those of general relativity apply only to each of these worlds.”

This line of thinking is important because it could potentially explain more about the nature of gravity and spacetime. Nomura suggests that these ideas have a broader relevance to how quantum gravity works at a fundamental level, particular in relation to the origins of the universe.

“We know that we need both general relativity and quantum mechanics to understand black holes, and so they are a good starting point for testing out ideas about quantum gravity,” explained Chatwin-Davies. “If we really understood how to describe black holes, then we would be a great deal closer to being able to describe quantum gravity in broad generality.”

By using the many worlds interpretation, scientists and astronomers are finding new ways to approach longstanding questions about black holes. With further study, this research might offer up further information about the very fabric of our universe that could fill in some persistent gaps in our knowledge.

References: New Scientist

Article was originally published on Fututrism.

Read More Add comment

Watch Michio Kaku Explain The 11 Dimensions Of The Multiverse

By 0x000216

Read

0 Comments

Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku has initiated the conversation as to why other universes in the multiverse could have many more dimensions, and has spoken out on the multiverse having 11 dimensions. Though merely theory, as has yet to be proven, it is an interesting one to reflect on nonetheless.

What exactly IS the multiverse?

The multiverse is the hypothetical set of possible universes, including the universe which we live in. Together, these universes comprise everything that exists: the entirety of space, time, matter, energy, and the physical laws and constants that describe them.

If we were, hypothetically, a mere fragment of a multitude of universes in which many dimensions existed, what does that say about our present perception of reality? How can we go about looking at this deeper and further understanding what this could mean for us as humans, a collective and our planet?

Michio Kaku states: We believe, though we cannot yet prove, that our multiverse of universes is 11-dimensional. So think of this 11-dimensional arena and in this arena there are bubbles, bubbles that float and the skin of the bubble represents an entire universe, so we’re like flies trapped on fly paper. We’re on the skin of a bubble. It’s a three dimensional bubble. The three dimensional bubble is expanding and that is called the Big Bang theory and sometimes these bubbles can bump into each other, sometimes they can split apart and that we think is the Big Bang. So we even have a theory of the Big Bang itself. Now you ask a question what about the dimensions of each bubble. Well in string theory—which is what I do for a living; that’s my day job—In string theory we can have bubbles of different dimensions. The highest dimension is 11. You cannot go beyond 11 because universes become unstable beyond 11. If I write down the theory of a 13-, 15-dimensional universe it’s unstable and it collapses down to an 11-dimensional universe. But within 11 dimensions you can have bubbles that are 3 dimensional, 4-dimensional, 5-dimensional. These are membranes, so for short we call them brains. So these brains can exist in different dimensions and let’s say P represents the dimension of each bubble, so we call them p-brains. So a p-brain is a universe in different dimensions floating in a much larger arena, and this larger arena is the hyperspace that I talked about originally. Also remember that each bubble vibrates, and each bubble vibrating creates music. The music of these membranes is the subatomic particles. Each subatomic particle represents a note on a vibrating string or vibrating membranes. So, believe it or not, we now have a candidate for the “Mind of God” that Albert Einstein wrote about for the last 30 years of his life. The “Mind of God” in this picture would be cosmic music resonating throughout 11-dimensional hyperspace.

Read More Add comment

Sinister Security

Yes, The Multiverse Is Real, But It Won’t Fix Physics

With Quantum Suicide, You'd Go On Living Forever

Michio Kaku: The Multiverse Has 11 Dimensions

Parallel Universes Could Solve One of the Biggest Mysteries in Physics

Watch Michio Kaku Explain The 11 Dimensions Of The Multiverse

Recent Posts

Facebook