Dad, Tell Me About Multiverse And Anthropic Principle?
Written by Marko on March 19, 2008
My friend told me that his son came from school and said “Dad, guys at school discussed about multiverse. Do you know what it is“? My friend was not sure and he wanted to ask me because he knows that I write about this kind of things here in HomeboyAstronomy.Com. I said, “see what the name says, a multiple universe = multiverse“. I needed to explain a bit more, and later on I came up with idea of writing a blog post out of this. So what is multiverse?
Everybody knows what the term “universe” means, but let’s define it once more. According to Wikipedia, “the universe is most commonly defined as everything that physically exists: the entirety of space and time, all forms of matter, energy and momentum, and the physical laws and constants that govern them. However, the term “universe” may be used in slightly different contextual senses, denoting such concepts as the cosmos, the world or Nature“.
Now we understand what is meant by Universe. Let’s see what is then meant by multiverse. According to Wikipedia, “the multiverse (or meta-universe) is the hypothetical set of multiple possible universes (including our universe) that together comprise all of reality. The different universes within the multiverse are sometimes called parallel universes. The structure of the multiverse, the nature of each universe within it and the relationship between the various constituent universes, depend on the specific multiverse hypothesis considered“.
The theory of multiverse has raised discussion, especially between the representatives of science and theology. The idea of having an infinite amount of universes is just way too difficult to understand.
Latest findings indicate that our universe is infinite. It is not like the surface of a ball, but really infinite. Where ever you travel in space, there is an endless road. Here comes the weird part. Even though you are on an endless road, you might find a similar place in the universe with similar planets and people. How is that possible? “Infinite” is quite a strange thing. It is difficult to understand because everything we experience is finite. If the universe is infinite, there is an endless amount of structures inside of it, and there is a possibility that those structures are not unique.
Where is the copy of our planet and myself and you? How far should I travel in order to find someone like me? This is probably impossible to estimate. Choices are so many that most probably it is impossible to find another Earth.
Multiverse and anthropic principle
When we discuss about life, scientists usually expand discussion to include anthropic principle. As Wikipedia says, “In physics and cosmology, the anthropic principle states that humans should take into account the constraints that human existence as observers imposes on the sort of universe that could be observed. In other words, the only universe we can see is one that supports life. If it were a different type of universe, we would not exist to see it“. According to anthropic principle we are here just because we happen to have such conditions for life to exist in the universe. At this point many religious people usually start boiling…
Some time ago I read a publication of Hannu Karttunen, a Finnish scientist. Mr. Karttunen wrote few interesting lines about anthropic principle and multiverse. The anthropic principle is difficult to verify because there is no such an experiment that could test the principle. We cannot say if this principle is true or false. For some reason the conditions in the universe are optimal for life. Just a little change in the conditions could mean that life would not exist. It is easier to accept anthropic principle if there are multiple universes because in the conditions would differ between those universes. Most of the universes would not include life, but in some universes life would exist. Some scientists have gone even further and have introduced the idea of the evolution of universes. This means that universes evolve so that one day a universe could include life. This is thought to happen with black holes. As a universe turns to black hole and then explodes again, the condition in the newborn universe would be different and possibly the right for life to born. In this case the black hole causes mutations.
Well, do you think this is wild? Oh, yes it is, but parts might be true. This is speculating, but we cannot verify this yet. May be one day, but I bet not soon. Human being keeps on searching for answers to these difficult questions. And yes, the son of my friend was happy with the answer, even though he did not understand it 100%. Science is fascinating.
This article was written by Marko Pyhajarvi and its original location is in HomeboyAstronomy.Com astronomy blog. For more great astronomy articles, please visit HomeboyAstronomy.Com!
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03-22-2008
5:13 am
rvdavid
This is a crazy coincidence! I came to the same conclusion when thinking out loud with my friend. Mind you, we were very much filled with intellectual juice (alcohol) so in my head we were having a very civil and quiet discussion, about the existence of other universes out there, but I’d bet it was not civilised and had no chance of being a quiet discussion. Probably lots of swear words in it too.
Based on the last theory that’s been trumpted by astrologers and warp drive experts, the universe is ever expanding which means equates to it being infinite.
But parts of the universe is also contracting ie blue shifts. So what does that mean?
*drum fill*
Tada! … *crickets*
uhk… that didn’t sound right… anyway, it was something along those lines. Perhaps one needs to be drunk to understand because my friend and I were hi fiving all night after we came up with that, like we discovered the missing link of human evolution or something.
Have a good one bro. A good read – keep ‘em comin’
03-26-2008
1:08 am
Jesse
Interesting concept for a kid in school it come home and talk about…. I enjoyed your summary of the concepts, it seems that advanced physics in now being taught in school. Interesting stuff all around, thank you
03-27-2008
3:19 pm
marko
rvdavid, sorry for this late reply. Heh.. sounds like I should have been there discussing with you, especially if you have some “intellectual juice”
Thanks for leaving your comment.
Jesse, thank you. I appreciate you took the time to write a comment. I’m glad you like my posts in this blog. Thanks for leaving your comment and welcome back again!
11-18-2008
3:35 pm
nick
Interesting discussion. My sons talked about it at breakfast today! I recently heard astrophysicist Jeff Zweerink discuss the topic of Multiverse. He mentioned several levels – Level 1 involved the actual universe beyond our observable universe. Level 11 involved “bubble” universes. Then there were Level 111, IV and V multiverse model (!!!) He writes well on the subject at http://www.reasons.org, search “multiverse” for an expert primer. I highly recommend his articles.
Thanks for the space.