A scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. –Max Planck

What is the latest News in #ParallelUniverses and/or the #Multiverse, According to #Science in 2014?

I’ve been collecting “Google Alerts” on these topics for the entire year. In this post, I will curate/annotate/collect some of the best of the news so you can decide what to think about it all. Or, if you’re older and entrenched in old thinking, keep right on going like that to your grave.

Those of us ready to embrace new thinking will ignore you! The Tractor Beam has become an actuality, too, and has got us all, so just relax and let it suck you in.

image from http://physicsworld.com

We are finding out almost daily that what we know is limited, biased and incomplete, at best, and flat-out wrong, at its worst. Whether or not you adhere to the tenets of a particular religion or faith or consider yourself outside of all that, science is blowing most ontological beliefs out of existence. I am excited, interested and thrilled by the latest discoveries.

I’m psyched! We’re getting more into White and Black Holes, Dark Energy and Dark Matter, Quantum Physics, Astronomy, Cosmology, Ontology and so much more! Can’t even do more than skim the surface in a blog post curating so much content, but here are some great tidbits.

Parallel Universes

How many of YOU can exist, and where are YOU all? Not just one “twin,” and not just an “evil” one, but infinite versions of every part of existence must exist somewhere. That is what physicists conclude after studying for decades. Whatever can happen is happening, many times, in every possible way, even ways we can’t even conceive of, to paraphrase many of them.

Most humans do not have direct knowledge of these alternate versions of ourselves, our world, the universe we inhabit. Some get the occasional “déjà vu” experience or dream. A few have psychic or extra-sensory perception understandings of a variety of futures or pasts. But, usually, what we live in is what we know.

image from http://www.rdanderson.com

Posted on November 2 by Talha’s Physics Academy on Google+ was a summary of some research conclusions that confirmed the existence of Parallel Universes. Here are some excerpts, below, and the link to the source material.

“Academics at Griffith University have published a paper stating that not only are there infinite parallel universes, but those worlds actually interact with each other all the time — and that interaction is what makes everything else not make sense.

“Yeah.

“parallel universes

“The Many Worlds theory was first proposed in 1957 by Hugh Everett, who said that the ability of quantum particles to occupy two states seemingly at once could be explained by both states co-existing in different universes. Instead of a ‘waveform collapse’ in which quantum particles ‘decide’ to occupy one state or another, they actually occupy both, simultaneously. And a new branch opens up every time such a ‘decision’ is made.

“This theory has risen in popularity since being initially dismissed, and while it’s still a subject of intense debate, a new paper seeks to move the theory on.

“In a new study, published in the Physical Review X, Professor Howard Wiseman and Dr. Michael Hall from Griffith’s Centre for Quantum Dynamics, and Dr. Dirk-Andre Deckert from the University of California, argue that parallel worlds aren’t just a bizarre get-out clause for why quantum mechanics is so strange. They argue that their existence itself explains quantum mechanics.

“They argue that parallel universes are able to repel each other with a subtle force. The interaction of these Newtonian worlds creates a more complex quantum substructure.

“‘In the well-known “Many-Worlds Interpretation,” each universe branches into a bunch of new universes every time a quantum measurement is made,’ said Wiseman to Phys.org via Griffith University.

“All possibilities are therefore realised – in some universes the dinosaur-killing asteroid missed Earth. In others, Australia was colonised by the Portuguese.

“But critics question the reality of these other universes, since they do not influence our universe at all. On this score, our ‘Many Interacting Worlds’ approach is completely different, as its name implies.’

“He argues that our world is just one among many, but that the repulsion between them leads to the very quantum mechanics that so confuse physicists.

“‘The beauty of our approach is that if there is just one world, our theory reduces to Newtonian mechanics, while if there is a gigantic number of worlds, it reproduces quantum mechanics'” said Hall.

“He suggests that physicists might even be able to test for the existence of these other worlds—and that by modelling their existence we might be able to explore new forms of maths and physics, potentially with practical implications.”

Summary from: talhaphysicsacademy.blogspot.com
Original source: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/10/31/parallel-universes-exist_n_6080934.html

Proof seems to be what 2014 is filled with, so far.

The Multiverse

Multiverse Theory: Avoiding Evidence of Design was posted Youtube on Jan 30, 2014, an 8-minute lecture (podcast with no video component) by David Boze. Boze supports the “Bubble Multiverse” theory and avoids supporting “intelligent design” or “God” as either is currently configured.

The intro offered: “Which requires more faith: a belief in multiple universes or a belief in the intelligent design of our universe? On this episode of ID The Future, host, David Boze, explores the ideas found in a recent Harper’s Magazine article by MIT physicist and author, Alan Lightman. Some physicists attempt to side-step the intelligent design implications of our finely-tuned universe by suggesting that ours is merely one of countless universes, each with its own laws and constants.

Then, Lightman is quoted as saying: “‘If the multiverse idea is correct, then the historic mission of physics to explain all the properties of our universe…is futile, a beautiful philosophical dream that simply isn’t true.'”
http://youtu.be/iM6nMiDMKNU

More like this from: http://www.idthefuture.com

image from http://space.mit.edu, The 4 Multiverse Theories of Max Tegmark

Then, the BIGGEST news (pun intended) of the year came in mid-March: “Big Bang discovery opens up possibility of multiverse” with this quote that reverberated across the globe: “…scientists announced this week that they found evidence of cosmic inflation, or the rapid expansion of the early universe, it supported the Big Bang theory. It also opened up the possibility of the existence of the multiverse — the idea that universes other than our own exist.”

This video from the article provided this evidence: “‘It’s hard to build models of inflation that don’t lead to a multiverse,’ said MIT theoretical physicist, Alan Guth (yes; the same Alan Guth who predicted inflation in 1980!). ‘It’s not impossible, so I think there’s still certainly research that needs to be done. But most models of inflation do lead to a multiverse, and evidence for inflation will be pushing us in the direction of taking [the idea of a] multiverse seriously.'”

A great summary statement: “The existence of other universes could also explain many of the weird astral phenomena scientists have witnessed.”

http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2014/03/21/Big-Bang-discovery-opens-up-possibility-of-multiverse/2011395411235/

Another article about similar topics later in the same month offered this insight about scientific experimentation: “The null result of the experiment should in no way color our perception of these tests as a failure; they are simply veils of ignorance being pulled away from the truths of the Universe.”
http://beforeitsnews.com/science-and-technology/2014/03/comments-of-the-week-4-from-null-results-to-the-multiverse-starts-with-a-bang-2684654.html

image from http://consciouslifenews.com

Then, on April 1, Katia Mosvitch posted that a Middle Ages’ mathematician/scientist/philosopher and Catholic Bishop, Robert Grosseteste, had written De Luce, which was recently translated from Medieval Latin into English. In it, Grosseteste posited the existence of the Multiverse mathematically and scientifically, using many astronomy facts not known in Medieval times but since proven true.

Upon learning of this early astrophysicist’s genius, one modern UK physicist, Richard Bower, stated: “…in future centuries, a new generation of physicists will look back at how we understand the universe today, and think, ‘How could they not see that?’ Bower said. “‘Modern cosmology is a grasping towards a more complete understanding of creation, but we do not yet see the full picture.'”
http://www.space.com/25301-multiverse-concept-middle-ages-grosseteste.html

This story, of the middle ages scientist’s having first heralded what is now a recent discovery, continued to spread across the globe via the internet and print journalism for many weeks.

Making an excellent connection to my sci-fi novels in The Spanners Series, especially Volume I, This Changes Everything, I have to mention that I “solve” problems of and offer explanations of seemingly out-of-sequence knowledge-holders by listing previously unrevealed dream-time or hologram visitations by our benevolent aliens from the Many Worlds Collective.

How would YOU explain these time warps? How could we know what we know before we seem to have been able to know it?

image from http://xi4.com

On 4/2/14, Marcelo Gleiser posted on the Cosmos and Culture blog of NPR (National Public Radio in the USA) using this title: What Universe Is This, Anyway? and this description of the multiverse and our place in it: “…an eternally replicating cosmos, filled with bubbles within bubbles. Ours would be but one of them.”

He went on to pose and then not answer some key questions: “…how common is our universe and its laws among the myriad universes belonging to the multiverse[?] Are we the exception or the rule? The problem is that we have no way to tell.”

Why is there “no way to tell” what is typical or common? Because of this quandary: “How are we to establish what is normal when, in the realm of the infinite, everything is possible?”

Sit with that for a while.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2014/04/02/297853038/what-universe-is-this-anyway

image from http://customerthink.com

Here is a 4/3/14 piece from a fun site with a great name and tagline: Exponential Times: THE FUTURE COMES FASTER THAN YOU THINK, posted by filmmaker and physicist, David Kaplan. The short video he narrates includes the transcript of it: Multiverse and Particle Fever. Kaplan asks basic questions, such as: “Is all the information we want…accessible? …Is it in our universe?”

He plainly states the ongoing scientific dilemma: “We are biased by what we measure by the fact that we are here measuring it” in reference to his team’s discovery of the Higgs-Boson particle (“The ‘God Particle'”) via the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

Kaplan and others repeatedly remind us that some of the most intelligent, creative, knowledgeable scientists in our generation can only know what we know and only know it the way we know it, but there is infinitely much more to know.

http://www.exponentialtimes.net/videos/david-kaplan-multiverse-and-particle-fever?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+exponentialtimes+(Exponential+Times)

image from http://richarddawkins.net

On 4/4/14, the creationists (Darwin/evolution-deniers, recently re-branded as “natural scientists” and/or “intelligent design” proponents) weigh in on the multiverse revelations (pun intended). Their website is unironically named “Evolution News.” Fabulous.

The author, Bruce Gordon (“Dr. Gordon is a Senior Fellow with the Center for Science & Culture and Associate Professor of the History and Philosophy of Science at Houston Baptist University. He is the co-editor with William Dembski of The Nature of Nature: Examining the Role of Naturalism in Science (Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2011″), makes many wild claims, surrounding them with complicated sentences intended to make him sound smart, but succeeding only in obfuscating the points he wants to make. Here is my favorite: “… taken seriously, the inflationary multiverse proposal completely undermines scientific rationality.”

This lengthy, pseudo-scientific post concludes with this punchy statement: “…it’s intelligent design all the way through and all the way down and that theophobic scientific materialists, once they get past knee-jerk denials, must come to terms with what is, for them, a worldview-defeating fact.”

I love how the author decides to allude to the infinite regression fable of creation—“nothing but turtles, all the way down”—making me laugh even more at his ridiculousness.

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/04/a_matter_of_con084001.html

Posted on 11/1/14, scientists revisited the same questions we started with back in early 2014 and before in a debate hosted in late October by Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, NY, USA, entitled: “An infinite multiverse: a bad idea or inescapable? Two areas of physics say there may be another you in a different universe.” They invited this trio to discuss/debate these topics:

Janna Levin, a mathematician and theoretical cosmologist who declared herself agnostic about the multiverse, acted as a moderator. Arguing in favor was Max Tegmark, a cosmologist at MIT. His MIT colleague, Frank Wilczek, (winner of the Nobel for his work on the strong force) took the opposing position.

What did this conversation offer? John Timmer wrote the summary. I quote from him above and here:

“Levin pointed out that some infinities are bigger than others, so we’re not sure whether there really is enough universe to produce infinite copies of us.”

“But Tegmark countered that if there are a finite number of ways to arrange quarks–—and some indications are that this is the case–—then ‘in that case, a small infinity should work to get us all the possibilities.'”

“But Wilczek’s issue wasn’t so much one of whether this form of infinite universes is likely to exist. He made it clear that he privileges the reality that we can interact with, and thus do science with. Even if multiple universes are a necessary outcome of the physics we discover in this one, he’d still rather focus on what goes on here.”

http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/11/an-infinite-multiverse-a-bad-idea-or-inescapable/

What do you think? And, which you is thinking it, when and where?