Friday, August 5, 2011

Testing the Multiverse... Observationally!

The multiverse theory is famous for its striking imagery. Just imagine our own Universe, drifting among a veritable sea of spontaneously inflating “bubble universes”, each a self-contained and causally separate pocket of higher-dimensional spacetime. It’s quite an arresting picture. However, the theory is also famous for being one of the most criticized in all of cosmology. Why? For one, the idea is remarkably difficult, if not downright impossible, to test experimentally. But now, a team of British and Canadian scientists believe they may have found a way.
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Full story at Universe Today.

1 comment:

  1. If total energy of the universe is zero, as claimed by some scientists, then based on this data it can be shown that multiverse theory is probably not true. This is because total energy being zero, total mass will also be zero due to mass-energy equivalence. Scientists have shown that anything having mass will always occupy some space. So anything that fails to occupy any space for some reason or other cannot have any mass. Our universe perhaps fails to occupy any space, and that is why its mass is zero. It will fail to occupy any space if our universe is the only universe, and if there is nothing outside it, no space, no time and no matter. But if multiverse theory is true, then our universe will definitely occupy some space within the multiverse, and thus in that case its mass cannot be zero. But as this mass is zero, therefore multiverse theory cannot be true.

    Here it may be argued that radiation occupies space but its mass is zero. So here is an example that something occupying space can still be without mass. So our universe can also be without mass even if it occupies some space within the multiverse. In reply we will say that the example cited here is a bad example, because our universe is not any kind of radiation. So if it is without mass, then that can only be due to its not occupying any space, and not due to its being some sort of radiation.

    However, if total energy of the universe cannot be taken to be zero, then the conclusion drawn here will not stand. In that case multiverse theory may be true, but we cannot say whether it will be necessarily true.

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