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Two weeks before death, Hawking submitted a paper on parallel universes

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Re: Two weeks before death, Hawking submitted a paper on parallel universes

#61

Post by usrusr »

amelius wrote: post #7
epaga wrote: post #4

Something I've never understood and would greatly appreciate understanding: could someone ELI"5" how the concept of "parallel universes" will not always be a metaphysical instead of a scientific question? If there are truly separate "universes", then by definition wouldn't it be the case that there would be no way to test (or falsify) whether they exist or not, so would the question of their existence not be in the r…

I guess that if we can interact with (measure) a separate universe, then we should adjust our definition of "universe".

The definition of "separate" would be in similar trouble.

Re: Two weeks before death, Hawking submitted a paper on parallel universes

#62

Post by Symmetry »

pegasus wrote: post #49
codeulike wrote: post #40

Quite a lot of people worrying about the definition of the word 'universe' in this thread.

And with good reason. "Discovering a parallel universe" is nonsensical in the common acceptance of those words. Parallel lines never meet and the universe by definition contains all there is. So people are grasping for alternative definitions of the words that might make the statement satisifiable.

At one point "Split an atom" was by definition nonsensical because atoms were conceived of as the smallest, unsplittable bits of matter. But then we found out that we could split these pieces of matter we'd mistakenly called "atoms" and rather than renaming them we just changed the definition of "atom" to correspond to what we'd always been calling "atoms". In practice I don't think this was unreasonable and I wouldn't strongly object to doing the same with what we've been calling "The universe".

Re: Two weeks before death, Hawking submitted a paper on parallel universes

#63

Post by 24gttghh »

codeulike wrote: post #40

Quite a lot of people worrying about the definition of the word 'universe' in this thread.

Wouldn't we just use the word, "Multiverse"?

>Our conjecture strengthens the intuition that holographic cosmology implies a significant reduction of the multiverse to a much more limited set of possible universes.

Re: Two weeks before death, Hawking submitted a paper on parallel universes

#64

Post by exodust »

pegasus wrote: post #49
codeulike wrote: post #40

Quite a lot of people worrying about the definition of the word 'universe' in this thread.

And with good reason. "Discovering a parallel universe" is nonsensical in the common acceptance of those words. Parallel lines never meet and the universe by definition contains all there is. So people are grasping for alternative definitions of the words that might make the statement satisifiable.

Might we think of a new word to describe a "sub-universe", like the one containing all our galaxies? This would allow for "universe" to be the thing that contains many or infinite sub-universes? Okay.. I'm done, I just confused the hell out of my brain.

Re: Two weeks before death, Hawking submitted a paper on parallel universes

#66

Post by tim333 »

pegasus wrote: post #49
codeulike wrote: post #40

Quite a lot of people worrying about the definition of the word 'universe' in this thread.

And with good reason. "Discovering a parallel universe" is nonsensical in the common acceptance of those words. Parallel lines never meet and the universe by definition contains all there is. So people are grasping for alternative definitions of the words that might make the statement satisifiable.

The concept of another universe is pretty commonplace - see 'Star Wars expanded universe' and similar. The fact that we haven't found a real one doesn't mean the concept is nonsensical.

Re: Two weeks before death, Hawking submitted a paper on parallel universes

#67

Post by baytrailcat »

Looking forward to more and more discoveries and theories coming up in this field. Apart from providing a satisfactory answer to the quandary of "fine-tuned Universe" problem, there has been some observed anomalies for which multiverse theory provides explanation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMB_cold_spot

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_flow

Re: Two weeks before death, Hawking submitted a paper on parallel universes

#68

Post by erric »

tutts wrote: post #47
erric wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This statement is in the same domain as “thoughts and prayers”, which is the same as saying, ”I’m wishing at you really hard”. Rest implies an awaking or movement at some point in the future, but for Hawking, he didn’t believe in that. Maybe it’s just something to say, like acknowledging someone sneezing?

Or maybe it's a metaphorical expression of sadness over the recent death of a respected idol?

Maybe, but I suspect not.

Re: Two weeks before death, Hawking submitted a paper on parallel universes

#69

Post by msla »

SirRolin wrote: post #33
nanofortnight wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly it. Atom comes from atomos, meaning indivisible; if you take the literal meaning, it has no constituent parts.

but thing is we called it that because we thought there was nothing smaller than a atom.. although there is something smaller. atoms are made of protons neutrons and electrons each which is made of 3 quantoms.

> atoms are made of protons neutrons and electrons each which is made of 3 quantoms.

Electrons are currently thought to be indivisible, and protons and neutrons are made of three quarks each.

I've never heard of the word "quantom" before... where does it come from?

Re: Two weeks before death, Hawking submitted a paper on parallel universes

#70

Post by poelzi »

baytrailcat wrote: post #67

Looking forward to more and more discoveries and theories coming up in this field. Apart from providing a satisfactory answer to the quandary of "fine-tuned Universe" problem, there has been some observed anomalies for which multiverse theory provides explanation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMB_cold_spot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_flow

:)

The problem with physics is, that it went into the wrong direction in the last 100 years and as a result, everybody which looks beyond pop science papers knows, that it does not fucking fit. The fine-tuned Universe is a Problem of the model and the requirement of dozens of free chose-able variables required to make the model fit observations should give you a red sign. And even then it's a bad fit, in very aspect. 10%+ difference in calculations vs observations is a pretty strong hint that your model is far from reality.

The model I'm following does not have dark matter, because it does not require it. I have also expansion of the universe, without abstract higher dimensions etc. But of course, this can not be done without breaking paradigms and this is the problem.

Physicists have shown to be tho most short sighted and ignorant scientists of all:

http://www.pnas.org/content/112/24/7426.full.pdf

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