Martin Rees On The Multiverse, Scientific Research & Reality

There's an interesting piece by Martin Rees about the nature of the Uni/Multiverse, as well as some of the underlying mechanics. Also, a good bit on the nature of scientific research. You can get the text or the Real version. Good stuff.

Comments

Re:I thought this was interesting

[Dale Dunn]

Well, until a multiverse theory has actualy observational data pointing to it, perhaps it should stay restrained to sci-fi and comic books.

I'm not aware of any widely accepted theory that says we can make observations to prove or disprove any multiverse theory, so it hardly seems logical to classify them as scientific. SciAm should know better, or at least admit that the article is philosophical speculation, and not scientific.

Whats wrong with you?

[m4g02]

Don't encourage idiots...
I hate to say that such things shouldn't be written, but they may actually do more harm than good

Elitist crap. Its ok if people dont understand now what he is saying, they dont need to, a lot of persons reading such an strange theory (to current common knowledge) is enough to do good for civilization. Is not like they are going to be in charge of a nuclear reactor, so why in the first place are you whining?, this kind of "for common folks" inspired documents are good to introduce ideas to the base culture, maybe it wont be undertood until 2050, but thanks to documents like this, that little by little introduce new ideas, it will be undertood some day.

So, without prolonging more this stupid thread of yours, my guess is that you think you are way too special with your selfish elitist crap.

Its a bunch of pop-science gooblygook

[rufusdufus]

Scientific American's article is a confused mess of ideas in an attempt to take a lot of speculation in unrelated areas of theory and make it look like science. The magazine has gone down hill in credibility in the last few years, and this article is the crowning achievement so far; Scientific American is the new OMNI.

Re:Don't encourage idiots...

[hbo]

Off-topic response to flaimbait warning.

Afterall, everyone who's read one of Hawking's books thinks they could carry on a conversation with a high level theorist (in topics such as cosmology, quantum mechanics, etc), which is absolutely not the case.

Heh. Well, the general public can carry on conversations with high level theorists that aren't elitist jerks.

I actually have personal experience to back that up. For six years I worked as a system administrator at a UC Physics department. We had two Nobel Laureates. One could hardly speak to other people, including other Physicists. But that wasn't from elitism; it was more a question of poor socialization. 8) The other was quite accessible. A true gentleman, he would take the time to explain things if you asked. But I learned the most from the gradual students, many of whom seemed not to have caught the elite bug yet. (I wonder if they point a HERF gun at Physicists when they get tenure?)

After all those years, I learned quite a lot about Physics, despite having only a rough conceptual understanding of what a differential equation is. I also learned much about human nature as it applies to Very Bright People. Some of them are the most wonderful people I've known. A few I would put in the category of "monster." And of course most fall in between the extremes.