Fecund universes

[bascule]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fecund_universes

 

Yeah, this idea is just so awesome, and finally I know the proper term with which to describe it!

[DV8 2XL]

According to Max Tegmark, the existence of other universes are a direct implication of cosmological observations. In an article entitled "Parallel Universes" in the May 2003 issue of Scientific American, he presents a clear and comprehensive picture of the idea of parallel universes. Tegmark describes the set of related concepts which share the notion that there are universes beyond the familiar observable one. He goes on to provide a taxonomy of parallel universes organized by levels.

 

Level I: (Open multiverse) A generic prediction of cosmic inflation is an infinite ergodic universe, which contains Hubble volumes realizing all initial conditions - including an identical copy of you about 10^(10^(29)) meters away.

 

Level II: (Andre Linde's bubble theory) In chaotic inflation, other thermalized regions may have different effective physical constants, dimensionality and particle content. Surprisingly this level includes Wheeler's oscillating universe theory as well.

 

Level III: (Hugh Everett III's many-worlds interpretation) An interpretation of quantum mechanics that proposes the existence of multiple universes, all of which are identical, but exist in possibly different states. It is widely believed that Everett's interpretation considered as a formal theory is a conservative extension of standard quantum mechanics, that is, as far as results expressible in the language of ordinary quantum mechanics is concerned, it leads to no new results. According to Tegmark "This is ironic given that this level has historically been the most controversial".

 

Level IV: (The ultimate "Ensemble theory" of Tegmark) Other mathematical structures give different fundamental equations of physics. M-theory would be placed here. Since this subsumes all other ensembles, it therefore brings closure to the hierarchy of multiverses: there cannot be a Level V.

[archer]

I just happened to stumble upon an article on this "theory" in Wikipedia, it sounds interesting but there's a quite obvious question I could not find answered, which I do not doubt was raised before. Namely, would conservation of energy still hold true in this "procreation" process?

1. If it does not, meaning that energy = matter can appear from nowhere, why invent all the complexity (Occam's rasor)? Any universe can just appear out of nowhere anytime (if there's such a notion as time anymore) and simply by the law of the chance, some of them will have conditions suitable for life.

2. If the energy is indeed preserved, then a child universe will only have a fraction of the energy/matter of its parent. The division process will only go on until finally none of the descendants will have enough matter to form one black hole. Even more importantly, collapsing the division chain backwards we're bound to get, in a finite number of iterations (each universe have finite amount of energy/matter therefore can form only finite number of offsprings), to the original proto-parent universe which had no ancestors. Unless the original universe had infinite mass in which case conservation of energy cannot hold, go to p.1.

But if its mass is finite, and it did not descend from any parent, it had to come into existence through some other process! Welcome back to bing bang (nothing's gained / explained).