multiverse
Are there parallel universes? Universes in which, rather than reading this article, you are still asleep; in which you are happier, unhappier, richer, poorer, or even dead? The answer is "possibly". It's a controversial claim but one that has won more and more followers over the last few decades. |
Did the Big Bang mark the beginning of time? Not if we live in a bubble multiverse!
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Infinity is a pain. Its paradoxes easily ensnare the unsuspecting
reasoner. So over the centuries,
mathematicians have carefully constructed
bulwarks against its predations.
But now cosmologists have developed
theories that put them squarely outside
the mathematicians' "green zone" of
safety.
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Some of the things I overheard at Stephen Hawking's 70th birthday conference did make me wonder whether I hadn't got the wrong building and stumbled in on a sci-fi convention. "The state of the multiverse". "The Universe is simple but strange". "The future for intelligent life is potentially infinite". And — excuse me — "the Big Bang was just the decay of our parent vacuum"?! |
This is the second part of the lecture given by Astronomer Royal Martin Rees at Stephen Hawkings birthday symposium. |
This is an excerpt from Stephen Hawking's address to his 70th birthday symposium which took place on 8th January 2011 in Cambridge. |
Why can we remember the past and not the future? Why does time appear to move in only one direction when the laws of physics have no preferred direction in time? According to one physicist, it might be because we live in a bubble multiverse. |
