Testing the multiverse hypothesis requires measuring whether our universe is statistically typical among the infinite variety of universes. But infinity does a number on statistics.
If modern physics is to be believed, we shouldn’t be here. The meager dose of energy infusing empty space, which at higher levels would rip the cosmos apart, is a trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion times tinier than theory predicts. And the minuscule mass of the Higgs boson, whose relative smallness allows big structures such as galaxies and humans to form, falls roughly 100 quadrillion times short of expectations. Dialing up either of these constants even a little would render the universe unlivable.
To account for our incredible luck, leading cosmologists like Alan Guth and Stephen Hawking envision our universe as one of countless bubbles in an eternally frothing sea. This infinite “multiverse” would contain universes with constants tuned to any and all possible values, including some outliers, like ours, that have just the right properties to support life. In this scenario, our good luck is inevitable: A peculiar, life-friendly bubble is all we could expect to observe.
http://www.quantamagazine.org/20141103-in-a-multiverse-what-are-the-odds/
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @05:53PM
This sounds like philosophical musing when they can't get the numbers predicted by the theory to work out.
It's like modern-day religion, nothing can be proven or disproven, you can take it or leave it as a matter of faith and social practicality.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday November 08 2014, @06:24PM
No, it's not like religion. Religion provides you with a claimed purpose of the world. This is just as far from religion as it is from science.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @08:35PM
Far from it. When reality and expectations differ, religion tells you "Ignore reality!", science asks "Why?"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MrGuy on Saturday November 08 2014, @07:24PM
You've discovered the Anthropic Principle. [wikipedia.org]
Which is a very interesting idea from a philosophical perspective. But hardly news.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Saturday November 08 2014, @10:26PM
Pretty similar to how I feel about that question, "Why do we exist? The odds are so hugely against it!" if I'm reading that article correctly. It strikes me as a tautological exercise...how does it really matter how unlikely it is? If it hadn't happened, we wouldn't be here talking about it. But it did, so here we are, so either it wasn't as long odds as we think, or the universe is infinite in expanse/duration/whatever.
The meager dose of energy infusing empty space, which at higher levels would rip the cosmos apart, is a trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion times tinier than theory predicts.
Unless this is just stupid hyperbole, sounds like we expected the density to be infinity and found it to be .1
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Saturday November 08 2014, @10:28PM
Hmm, exactly the same, actually. I really have to stop posting before reading the whole article (or in this case, lead section).
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1) by Anonoob on Saturday November 08 2014, @11:36PM
Ah ha, since I am here typing about being here, therefore I must exist.
(Score: 2) by jelizondo on Sunday November 09 2014, @05:01AM
You perceived yourself typing and now you perceive you received a reply... but it is all an illusion created by your senses.
Look out the window, do you see two moons on the sky?
No? That proves you are an illusion and I am real...
(Score: 2) by TheLink on Sunday November 09 2014, @07:08PM
To me the remarkable things are:
0) That there is anything at all
1) That the something that exists isn't completely boring stuff
2) That we exist and have consciousness[1]. In theory we could exist and be philosophical zombies - no consciousness: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie [wikipedia.org]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness [wikipedia.org]
So much so that some are sidestepping the problem and proposing that consciousness is a fundamental of this universe ;).
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Sunday November 09 2014, @12:16AM
The article starts out with:
But what do they mean "statistically typical"? (I could also ask which particular Multi-World hypothesis they were testing, there being several.
So they jump directly from that "teaser" of a headline to "we shouldn't be here" without saying where "here" is. In an EWG Multi-World system, ALL plausible states of the universe will exist, so we should indeed be here, though as what level of probability (if measured from "outside") it's difficult to say. And state transitions should happen in accordance with probability as determined by the observed reactions as displayed by Feynman diagrams. That most of the multiverse should not find us present is no bigger surprise than that we aren't living on most of the known planets. You only start getting into that stupid "We shouldn't be here" if you start thinking of the rest of the multiverse as imaginary. We'd be here even if someone on some world with a related history in the multiverse couldn't find us. And probability is a measure of the density of state transition. (You may find an electron anywhere around an atom, but it probability is higher in certain areas than in others. And by our math there are an infinite number of places around every single atom.)
FWIW, I'm a finitist. I don't believe the universe is continuous. Just that the discontinuity happens down around 10^-33 cm. But that's not necessary for the first paragraph to hold. (And a discontinuous universe has it's own problems *because* the number of possible states is finite.)
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