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posted by chromas on Sunday December 30 2018, @04:41PM   Printer-friendly
from the unterminated-strings-cause-inflation dept.

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Our universe: An expanding bubble in an extra dimension

According to string theory, all matter consists of tiny, vibrating "stringlike" entities. The theory also requires there to be more spatial dimensions than the three that are already part of everyday knowledge. For 15 years, there have been models in string theory that have been thought to give rise to dark energy. However, these have come in for increasingly harsh criticism, and several researchers are now asserting that none of the models proposed to date are workable.

In their article, the scientists propose a new model with dark energy and our Universe riding on an expanding bubble in an extra dimension. The whole Universe is accommodated on the edge of this expanding bubble. All existing matter in the Universe corresponds to the ends of strings that extend out into the extra dimension. The researchers also show that expanding bubbles of this kind can come into existence within the framework of string theory. It is conceivable that there are more bubbles than ours, corresponding to other universes.

Journal Reference:
Souvik Banerjee, Ulf Danielsson, Giuseppe Dibitetto, Suvendu Giri, Marjorie Schillo. Emergent de Sitter Cosmology from Decaying Antiā€“de Sitter Space. Physical Review Letters, 2018; 121 (26) DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.261301


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by zocalo on Sunday December 30 2018, @08:17PM

    by zocalo (302) on Sunday December 30 2018, @08:17PM (#780051)

    So people attempt to explain (hypothesize) in the most rigorous way a new theory that fits old and new data. Then they identify experiments that can prove or disprove this hypothesis.

    *Some* people do anyway. A common complaint leveled by critics of string theory is that its proponents have yet to provide any testable experiments to go with their hypothesis, and while I've not performed an exhaustive search this does appear to be the case. The flipside of that is that whenever a flaw *is* found in their hypothesis they just come up with an even more elaborate workaround to continue the research (or get more funding, to take the cynical view). All in all, it sounds remarkably similar to the whole flat earth thing, only with funding grants and tenure.

    Dark matter/energy advocates on the otherhand might not be having much luck (so far at least) working out what the stuff really is, but they are at least ruling out possible theories and once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. Of course, that might just turn out to be string theory. :)

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