I guess I’ve always been confused by the Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Physics and the fact that it’s taken seriously. Like is there any proof at all that universes outside of our own exist?
I admit that I might be dumb, but, how does one look at atoms and say “My God! There must be many worlds than just our one?”
I just never understood how Many Worlds Interpretation was valid, with my, admittedly limited understanding, it just seemed to be a wild guess no more strange than a lot things we consider too outlandish to humor.
I’m pretty sure the multiverse theory is baked into the big bang theory and cosmological theories, so I wouldn’t necessarily call it mostly science fiction.
Cosmological hypotheses suggest universes with different initial conditions are possible (different space-time geometries, different elementary particle masses, etc.). The big bang theory suggests multiple universes (not just ours) with different initial conditions were formed due to eternal inflation. As the multiverse continues to undergo this eternal inflation, there forms pockets where the inflation has ended and is “hospitable”. Our observable universe would be an example of such pockets, but since inflation is eternal, there should be many of these pockets.
https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/taming-the-multiverse-stephen-hawkings-final-theory-about-the-big-bang
I call it science fiction because there’s no real evidence for it. Not yet at least.
Most ideas of multiverse comes from making educated extrapolations of currently known science. But that’s not enough. Scientists must also design experiments which confirms the extrapolation to be correct. This hasn’t been done.
Maybe it’s harsh to call it science fiction. Correct wording is theoretical physics.
Hehe, yeah, it’s a bit harsh to call it science fiction, especially this day in age when a lot of new physics lives in theoretical physics.
Cosmological models are very difficult to test given their nature. In many cases they are tested in massive physics simulations. The general test is to simulate the cosmological theory and see if it produces a universe that has the same observable qualities as our current universe once the simulation reaches our present epoch.
Nevertheless, Hawkins had his own reserves regarding his theory due to it not being experimentally falsifiable; but one must understand that rejecting the multiverse theory = rejecting the big bang theory since they are currently coupled.