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First Observational Test of the "Multiverse"
An anonymous reader writes "The theory that our universe is contained inside a bubble, and that multiple alternative universes exist inside their own bubbles – making up the 'multiverse' – is being tested observationally by UK physicists, who are searching for disk-like collision patterns in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation. Though CMB is generally thought of as a uniform schmear of radiation extending in all directions in our universe, in fact, they say if a multiverse exists, there ought to be imprints trapped in the muck like footprints of where our universe banged into others."
in this universe at least.
If universes can physically interact with each other, can each really be called a "Universe"?
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
They say a lot.
in an another universe
I think it's just another alibi to get government funding. Multiverse collision can be seen? Are you kidding me? If it is true then we must have been collided into pieces!
in another universe
I have been a captive in America my entire life. Everybody and everything uses customary units instead of metric.
Yes. Inaccurately perhaps, but life goes on, the sun will still rise and fall.
"Flaming Error" is claiming the sun will rise tomorrow...
It reminds me of Hume.
Somewhere, an Irony Universe has just bumped into ours.
=)
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
This is why I love Physics. The mere fact that we are considering such a colossal hypothesis and devise a method to verify/falsify it by observing reality...
I rarely respond to comments. Also, don't ask for clarifications: a brain and Google are faster, believe me!
Does this mean if shown to be true we'll need to change the name of our universes birth to the Big Bang Bang Bang Bang Bang Bang Bang Bang?
There is nothing testable about any multiverse hypothesis and nothing being measured here. The.CMB's variability is indistinguishable from noise.
Hopefully we can pick up some new television channels and radio stations. I'm getting pretty bored with the universe our universe offers.
Or multinet. Think of the porn!
Slashdot needs Geekcode | Can anyone recommend any good SCIFI? My tastes: Foundation, Startide Rising, CITY, Ringworld,
in this universe
(Ha!)
This can't be right, how can we, "inside" our own universe observe anything else "outside"our universe? Wouldn't anything we observe withing our universe be our universe? "Uni" - one. If there is some sort of a collision between "our" and "foreign" verses, wouldn't they be one verse? This is truly a bunch of bullshit.
If somehow there were multiple "universes" (whatever that would mean), why would they be colliding and what does it mean - colliding, in the sense that, our laws of physics with the gravity and space and time only make sense within our universe, so the word "colliding" wouldn't even mean anything on the outside, because on the so called outside there wouldn't be anything resembling what we have inside.
If there are multiple 'bubbles' of some sort, each one created from its own big bang, no way we can detect something that is on the outside, because anything we 'collide' with would mean that it can collide with us - it has similar enough physics to do it and whatever the bubbles are withing provides the opportunity for such collisions.
AFAIC this is all nonsense, there cannot be a division between physics that is used to observe our universe and physics that can be used to observe some form of external phenomena, so if somebody is getting a grant for it, they are just full of it and the government is again, paying for shit just because it can, it has money to burn and it has that type of a policy, not because it makes sense.
You can't handle the truth.
goatse
I'm way ahead of you.
Never say never. Ah!! I did it again!
A lightly-toasted half-torus of spacetime with knots of matter surrounding some capers and a brane of smoked salmon describes the perfect universe.
You know, my 11-year-old son said something kind of interesting last night, on this subject. This month's article in Scientific American is about multiverse theories, and he asked me (paraphrase), "If the universe is contained among a bunch of other universes, and the universe is expanding, isn't it possible that the other universes are exerting pressure on our universe as it's expanding?"
I'd never really thought about that before, and it may be an unanswerable question (along the lines of, "what are the multiverses contain in"), but I thought that was an intriguing thought.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Only if we can devise another test to show that the other universes experienced the big band at the same time as us.
Others worked on more pressing problems, like preventing catastrophic global warming, trying to avoiding using the remaining oil by fighting over it and making sure we are all fed.
Complete with Les Brown and his Band of Renown?
In the same way the router that sits in most living rooms is called a "cable modem."
It's not technically accurate, but most people know what it means.
It only gets confusing when discussing philosophical issues conflate the definition used in one realm for the definition used in another realm.
Two arbitrary lines in a 2D plane will meet with probability 1.0.
Two arbitrary lines in 3D space will meet with probability 0.0.
(In each case, the exceptions are vanishingly few relative to the norm.)
Extrapolating this to expanding 3D bubbles in almost any higher dimensional space the probability is again 0.0. Even more obviously, there is nowhere for collisions to happen if those bubbles are each creating their own space, not infecting some pre-existing space. The latter would have way too many other observable consequences to be a serious proposal.
(I have played with enough simplistic models to be currently comfortable with a notion that the implosion of a Type 1a supernova might be a good model for a cosmic egg which gives rise to a chaotic larval stage in which such conservative bubbles arise. (The political metaphor is not lost either.))
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
Morgan Freeman already told me all I needed to know about this a couple of months ago. Start around 14:14 in the video for the relevant info. Seriously - it's worth watching.
Just finished reading The Hidden Reality by Brian Greene, a respected string theorist. He explicitly mentions mining the CMB data for exactly this kind of observation.
I tend to think the double-slit experiment is evidence of a multiverse. The other 'verses are collide and cause the interference pattern on the other side of the slit.
For those who don't want to read the actual paper: they conclude that the average number of detectable collision events is <1.6, with a 68% confidence. Or to put it differently, the data is consistent with there not being any detectable collisions at all, and the number is certainly no more than a handful.
They should be able to say more once they get new data from the Planck satellite.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
that should have been a big bang
If there is even a hint of order in the cosmic microwave background radiation then there is only one possible conclusion and that is that there was an intelligence at work in the creation of the universe. What other possible explanation could there be?
"...trapped in the muck like footprints, of where our universe banged into others."
This may be true, depending on the definitions of the (perhaps metaphorically used) words "trapped", "muck", "where", "universe", and "banged".
Also, wasn't the same phenomenon cited as evidence of structure that existed "before" the big bang by someone else recently? Roger Penrose?
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
it was hard, but I managed to do it.
it's like saying when you try to extrapolate the end of the universe you say the...if the universe is indeed infinite then how what does that mean? How far is is t...is all the way and then if it stops what's stoppin' it and what's behind what's stoppin' it, so what's the end, you know, is my...question to you....
. .
Why doesn't the submitter link to the actual articles? Why don't the editors make sure those links are included before the story is posted? Why is there at all a link to ScienceBlog? All relevant information the blog post contains would fit into a Slashdot summary.
Does anyone have the links to the papers so we can actually read about this work?
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
After all it's quite possible that multi-verses don't exist as separate entities but as overlapping entities. Even each possibility being expressed by the same energy but phase shifting in and out of different universes. Quarks being a snapshot of energy as it pops into and out of our universe along its geometric progression. Could explain our problem of measurement as well, when we confine energy to where we expect it to be (our universe) we can't know all its possibilities, likewise when we know what it is capable of we no longer know which universe its in.
Oh god, let's just hope that i don't start over-using primary colours, bold, and start talking about cubes and the natuew of time.
Give it a rest syntax/grammar nazis i'm typing this on my n900.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
You can find anything you like in the CMB (see Penrose's last paper) if you go looking for it. The question is to what significance. In a related thought, I've also noticed that there's quite the selection effect in (pre-print) papers that get advertised here... But don't listen to me! I'm just a practicing astrophysicist.
The universe is space that contains matter. If there were two, and then they bumped into each other, the only interaction would be when the matter floating in the space of universe A collides with the matter in universe B. I doubt this would create a uniform disk-like collision pattern as the matter in our universe is not dispersed that evenly. If universes are within bubbles, where did that much soap come from and why is there still so much dirt?
Philosophical Theory: Not to be taken literally
This assumes the leading edge of the matter and radiation in the universe have reached the surface of this "bubble" and that the bubble isn't expanding in and of itself ahead of any sort of detectable edge.
Think "bubble inside a bubble".
The inner bubble represents the known universe, background radiation, matter, etc. The outer bubble represents the actual edge of our universe.
Now imagine being able to put a needle through the outer bubble and into the inner one, then introduce more air. The inner bubble gets bigger, but so does the outer one.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
It *is* turtles all the way down!
schmear of muck. And come on, who but Jewish people or deluded Seinfeld fans use the word 'schmear'. How bloody scientific is this summary. DNRTFA
http://www.acetonestudio.com
"Que" is not an English word.
Nobody has realized that the collision patterns might be from Superboy-Prime punching the walls of reality?
http://idle.slashdot.org/story/11/08/02/197239/Mysterious-Object-Found-In-Seabed
Table-ized A.I.
ghhrrrr
We are in our bubbles, bumping the bubbles of the others while living in our own universes.
could there exist *multiple* multiverses... [ducks]
...then it exploded.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
This show is pretty awesome. If I had mod points I would mod this Interesting.
Ubuntu users have been seeing it for years
Only if we can devise another test to show that the other universes experienced the big band at the same time as us.
I think some of them experienced a symphonic orchestra instead.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
all universes are contained within a bubble... it is this bubble which seperates negative from positive and creates mass and energy from nothing. without atleast one bubble i wouldn't likely be typing this.
It doesn't matter in the end with which epistemological view you adhere, as they are two sides of the same coin. If you are a verificationist, you keep doing experiments that will verify your hypothesis until you find one that doesn't. If you are a falsationist, you keep doing experiments that will falsify your hypotesis while you wait for the one that succeed in doing that.
It does matter, actually, in the sense that even if you are a "verificationist", you must design experiments intended to falsify your hypothesis. If you do not, you could be ascending "an endless stair of confirmation" of the wrong hypothesis which a single attempt to falsify could have shown.
One could reasonably state that a properly designed experiment by a verificationist would do that, but that's my point: A properly designed experiment must include a serious attempt to falsify for it to have value as verification. Whereas a falsification experiment inherently provides verification, if falsification fails. The relationship between the two is non-symmetrical.
So sure, once you've conducted your experiment it may not make much difference if you view a positive result as "another failure to falsify" or "more verification". But when designing the experiment, if you aren't thinking like a falsificationist, then you're quite possibly not doing it right.
The enemies of Democracy are
The idea of a multiverse is not hard to understand. Our universe is a VM. The multiverse is the hard drive.
I wonder how silly the guy who found the first black swan felt.
Never mind him. Think how silly the guy who put the black makeup on the swan felt!
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
This is only valid if you can prove the two A values are identical.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.