The ID Report
Archives for: July 2009, 15
07/15/09
Multiverse: Getting comfortable with a zillion of everything that is unique?
by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent
In "How to map the multiverse" (04 May 2009), Anil Ananthaswamy explains:
Greene's transformation is emblematic of a profound change among the majority of physicists. Until recently, many were reluctant to accept this idea of the "multiverse", or were even belligerent towards it. However, recent progress in both cosmology and string theory is bringing about a major shift in thinking. Gone is the grudging acceptance or outright loathing of the multiverse. Instead, physicists are starting to look at ways of working with it, and maybe even trying to prove its existence.AlsoIf such ventures succeed, our universe will go the way of Earth - from seeming to be the centre of everything to being exposed as just a backwater in a far vaster cosmos. And just as we are unable to deduce certain aspects of Earth from first principles - such as its radius or distance from the sun - we will have to accept that some things about our universe are a random accident, inexplicable except in the context of the multiverse.
However, if our universe is part of a multiverse then we can ascribe the value of the cosmological constant to an accident. The same goes for other aspects of our universe, such as the mass of the electron. The idea is simply that each universe's laws of physics and fundamental constants are randomly determined, and we just happen to live in one where these are suited for life. "If not for the multiverse, you would have these unsolved problems at every corner," says Linde.
Let's see. We don't need to prove fine tuning. It's just there. But there's no evidence for the multiverse; it is an attractive idea because it makes our current cosmological values and fine tuning appear random. I love this line: " ... starting to look at ways of working with it, and maybe even trying to prove its existence".
Question: How fit are people in this state of mind to evaluate what they are seeing?
Also just up at Colliding Universes, my blog about competing materialist and non-materialist theories about our universe:
Cosmology: Crisis of the month - gravitation
Podcasts in the intelligent design controversy: Origin of life (with Charles Garner)
Origin of life: This time it's salt water
Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).
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Complete zipped downloadable pdf copy of David Stove's devastating, and yet hard-to-find, critique of neo-Darwinism entitled "Darwinian Fairytales"
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Intelligent Design The Future is a multiple contributor weblog whose participants include the nation's leading design scientists and theorists: biochemist Michael Behe, mathematician William Dembski, astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, philosophers of science Stephen Meyer, and Jay Richards, philosopher of biology Paul Nelson, molecular biologist Jonathan Wells, and science writer Jonathan Witt. Posts will focus primarily on the intellectual issues at stake in the debate over intelligent design, rather than its implications for education or public policy.
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