Did Alternative Worlds Exist at the Big Bang

How did the Universe begin is one of the most profound questions of all. But to Stephen Hawking, who has perhaps come closer than anyone to answering it, the question doesn't in fact even exist.

Hawking, who holds Newton's Lucasian Chair at the University of Cambridge, UK, and his colleague Thomas Hertog of the European Laboratory for Particle Physics at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, are about to publish a paper claiming that the Universe had no unique beginning. Instead, they argue, it emerged out of a profusion of beginnings, the vast majority withered away without leaving any real imprint on the Universe we know today. Only a tiny fraction of them blended to make the current cosmos, Hawking and Hertog claim. According to their article in Nature:

He and Hawking call their theory 'top-down' cosmology, because instead of looking for some fundamental set of initial physical laws under which our Universe unfolded, it starts 'at the top', with what we see today, and works backwards to see what the initial set of possibilities might have been. In effect, says Hertog, the present 'selects' the past.

Within just a few seconds after the Big Bang, a single history had already come to dominate the Universe, he explains. So from the 'classical' viewpoint of big objects such as stars and galaxies, things happened only one way after that point. Other 'histories', say, one in which the Earth formed only 4,000 years ago, have made no significant contribution to this cosmic evolution.

But in the first instants of the Big Bang, there existed a superposition of ever more different versions of the Universe, instead of a unique history. And most crucially, Hertog says that "our current Universe has features frozen in from this early quantum mixture".

In other words, some of these alternative histories have left their imprint behind. This is why Hertog and Hawking insist that their 'top-down' cosmology is testable. Hertog says that the theory predicts the pattern of the variations in intensity of microwave background radiation, the afterglow of the Big Bang now imprinted on the sky, which reveal fluctuations in the fireball of the nascent Universe. These variations are minute, but space-based detectors have measured them ever more accurately over the past several years.

What's fascinating about this theory is that, by extension, it may be transferable to you as an individual observers. By applying a stronger variant of the anthropic principle, one could argue that the cosmos has structured itself around your very own existence.
That, they insist, is the only possible conclusion if we are to take quantum physics seriously. "Quantum mechanics forbids a single history," says Hertog. “Quantum mechanics forbids a single history.”

The researchers' theory comes in response to a problem raised by 'string theory', one of the best hopes for a theory of everything. String theory permits innumerable different kinds of universe, most of them very different from the one we inhabit. Some physicists suspect that an unknown factor will turn up that rules out most of these universes.

But Hawking and Hertog say that the countless 'alternative worlds' of string theory may actually have existed. We should picture the Universe in the first instants of the Big Bang as a river of all these possibilities; like a projection of billions of movies played on top of one another.

Most crucially, Hertog says that "our current Universe has features frozen in from this early quantum mixture".

As the two researchers work out top-down cosmology in more detail, they hope to be able to calculate the spectrum of these microwave fluctuations and compare it with observations.

The theory also suggests an answer to the puzzle of why some of the 'constants of nature' seem finely tuned to a value that allows life to evolve. If we start from where we are now, it is obvious that the current Universe must 'select' those histories that lead to these conditions. Otherwise we simply wouldn't be here.

Now, how cool is that!

Posted by Casey Kazan.

Links:

http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060619/full/news060619-6.html
http://www.bioedonline.org/news/news.cfm?art=2617

Comments

[Levi Blackman]

Fantastic piece. I love thinking about how the universe began and theories like this just blow my mind. It almost makes it seem like our exsistance is a thought in the mind of god or something.

[Adam]

The Universe seems more divine, the more theories get spun about its origins. Selected its own history? Retrocausation could use this quantum superposition of Universes to select a viable one for observers - but which observer gets to select? All of us? Or One encompassing the Whole?

[Barrie O'Leary]

I applaud this research. The Big Bang fails in that it is supposedly connected to a singularity and a singularity is very, very small. The only place where sound 'might' travel could only be in that singularity and that isn't "big" at all. Also, the wall of light associated with this supposition woud not be instantaneously visible. If light cannot escape from a mere quasar, It would hav no chance whatsoever of doing so fom a unity containing all the mass of the cosmos.

I do believe the Big Bang is going to be laid to rest soon. Not a victory to religious sects of the American south but a triumph for the evolution of science. With more knowlede, truth emerges.

[Alan Rich]

I believe in God, but not all the stuff spewed at me from religious zealots. That is why I do not connect to any denomination. I believe science is the search into the very nature of God. Isn't the "Ultimate Truth" God? To say otherwise is denying the exotic and profoundly balanced clockwork we call the universe.

[Alexandru Cosciug]

Did you heard about knowledge big-bang? The scientific revelation of the man is a small knowledge big-bang and it is a heavenly data acquisition. We suppose that this is the alternative theory to the material big-bang. Because the universe is composed by nano-particles we think that for en engineer it is much easier to combine this nanoparticles, by scientific procedures, to form the universe, than to accelerate at maximum this particles to hope that you can obtain a logical constellation. The experience made at the Geneva Large Hadron Collider looks like some auto-racing started from two opposite points. It is very simple to explain what is happen with all this beautiful cars when they light together. A physical big-bang!!!
We believe that it is important for the humanity to know that somebody in the world (an engineer and a student from Cimpulung, Romania) discovered the new biological evidence of the central wireless communication technology between the individual body and the universe: the paternal mtDNA. We have discovered in sternum the anatomic evidence of the small biological part, scientific called paternal mtDNA, which comes only from man, like maternal mtDNA, which equipped all the body cells, comes only from woman. Using this discovery, we have developed a new theory about creation and evolution assisted by God and hardly transferred to the man, because Adam refused the softly access to the "knowledge tree".
Because we believe in God and in the man capacity and destiny to become a creator as God said in Genesis, we have compared some Bible's paragraphs about creation with the evolution scientific concept descriptions. We think that in the "seventh day", He made only the managerial selection for the heaven jobs, husband and wife, to start the nuclear family concept. "Life-giving breath", transmitted to Adam, is the concept of the conformance with the managerial plan, so called "credence or belief", and it can be obtained trough education, living and working together with the wise people. To fulfill the "nuclear family", He made another managerial selection for wife job, and "one of the man's ribs" is the encoded description of the place where exists the original of the communication bio-equipment, which is used in the same time for the male seed "copy centre", so called spermatogenesis. The woman creation description, "He formed a woman out of the rib and closed up the flesh", is not a miraculous process; it is the embryogenesis process, as a result between the spermatozoid and the ovule fertilization, with the help of the sperm midpiece placed in sternum, the human being communication nucleus. We can better understand this new theory if we compare the Bible's information ("at the end of the sixth day, He created male and female") with scientific information about the human being evolution (200000 years ago, "human Eve" apparition, and 60000 years ago, "human Adam" apparition) and again with Bible's information ("He took some soil of the ground – 'human Adam'- and formed a man", around 6000 years BC, 'heavenly Adam' – see 1 Corinthians 15.45). We suppose that this period was necessary for genetically engineering research made by God to ameliorate the human spermatozoid, acquired by natural evolution from animals. The human spermatozoid, designed not only to get it to the egg and to fuse with it, is among the most highly specialized cell types ever described. It is also used for the human body communication with the universe and it is installed in sternum to where the long bone marrow regenerate the blood and … "…to where soul and spirit meet, to where joints and marrow come together" (Hebrew 4.12). We presume that to prevent non controlled evolution of human being, He admitted only women evolution for around 140000 years. We simply believe that God creates and then assist and wait for evolution result. In the purpose to establish the family paradise concept, He starts in the seventh day the human being learning process, whose finality is the body and soul reorientation trough harmony with the cosmic censor ( see Stephen Hawking theories). "The descendants of human women and the heavenly beings" (Genesis 6.2) formed the actual earth population.
We simply say that the world was created by "The Creator" trough the divine rules for feedback auto control and now, in the "seven day of creation", He kindly assists and wireless supervise the natural evolution, analyzed and modified by His main creature, the man, into the unknown direction. Or maybe somebody knows?!
The science is “the sharp two-edged sword” and it is coming from the seventh divine angel, as Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islamism and Orthodoxy come.
I am finishing with Jesus words : “I have much more to tell you, but now it would be too much for you to bear. When, however, the Spirit comes, who reveals the truth about God, he will lead you into all the truth” (John 16.12-13).

[claudio]

It is a good 'theory'....that likely conflicts with what Hawking has previously stated...written amd confirmed....about the big bang.

We always have to learn...Hawking too.

However as he sustains and maintains in one of his most famous book....the equations that universally state the universal laws are NOT yet established ....

The theory of the 'initial melting pot' that for 'unknown' reasons exploded and expanded,...it still a good theory.

The Brane universe is NOT a bad theory ...

The universe in Strings is NOT bad....

Among a cluster of inferred theories...we as human beings ....available on this remote mini-planet..of a remote galaxy, will probably NEVER know how the so called 'big bang' and the so called 'start' began ...and how...

We can tantalize and theorize ....and at CERN likely they will re-create the magics Higgs boson or better the 'Hadron'....however...we likely will never be 100% sure....of the beginning.

We ALL should recall....(Hawking too) that physics means verification and testing of a 'fantastic theory' ...
If we cannot validate and verify we stay again in the boundary of 'INFERENCE'....or the like.

Regards to all , Mr Hawking ( a great brain ) included...

[Hamzah Ahmed]

ok Casey ur explaination was theoretical facts of hawkings and hertog, but Kristianna's explaination was altogether brilliant and quite possibly true. but i guess we'll never know.

[Fred]

Kristianna,
We know very little about the finer details of the fabric of the universe. Many of our theories are imperfect.

Our universe is currently ACCELERATING, meaning that it could expand forever.
This presents two interesting things:
1) Our universe had a beginning, and there was no other before it. Otherwise we would see deceleration and would be doomed to collapse.
2)The universe will be "cold" one day. All available energy will be spread out too far.

HOWEVER, we may not be doomed. There are theories that present the possibility that matter and energy are a function of the size of the universe. Meaning as the fabric of time-space grows, it allows for more energy and mass to be present. The only constant being the size-to-energy ratio of the universe.
In summary, your not correct in assuming our universe is part of a cycle. However, you may be correct in assuming that we are part of an infinite multiverse. Which would actually make sense. The math actually works out (or so they tell me)