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Is our universe unique, or are there many universes?
Andrei Linde at Stanford has brought forward the cosmological model of a multiverse, which he calls the "self-reproducing inflationary universe." The theory is based on Alan Guth's inflation model, and it includes multiple universes woven together in some kind of spacetime foam. Each universe exists in a closed volume of space and time. Linde's model, based on advanced principles of quantum physics, defies easy visualisation. Quite simplified, it suggests quantum fluctuations in the universe's inflationary expansion period to have a wavelike character. Linde theorises that these waves can "freeze" atop one another, thus magnifying their effect.
The stacked-up quantum waves can in turn create such intense disruptions in scalar fields -the underlying fields that determine the behaviour of elementary particles- that they exceed a critical mass and start procreating new inflationary domains. The multiverse, Linde contends, is like a growing fractal, sprouting inflationary domains, with each domain spreading and cooling into a new universe.
If Linde is correct, our universe is just one of the sprouts. The theory neatly straddles two ancient ideas about the universe: that it had a definite beginning, and that it had existed forever. In Linde's view, each particular part of the multiverse, including our part, began from a singularity somewhere in the past, but that singularity was just one of an endless series that was spawned before it and will continue after it.
Your thoughts?
Blessings
3 Answers
- Anonymous1 decade agoFavorite Answer
Yes, our universe is unique, and yes, it is but one of an infinite number of universes---each one being different, but with similarities. There isn't another Earth out there, exactly like this one, but there may be others on which we would feel at home. The number of conceivable universes is infinitely greater than the number of possible universes, which is infinitely greater than the number of existing universes. (Just as the set of integers is an infinite subset of the infinitely larger set of real numbers.)
I see some parallels between Linde's model and my own Fractal Foam Model of Universes, but the differences are greater than the similarities. The foam he speaks of sounds like an abstract mathematical concept in at least 5 dimensions, and I am not sure what his 5th dimension is. The foam in my model is the large-scale arrangement of galaxies (revealed by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey), and my 5th dimension is scale. The cosmic foam of our universe is the ether foam of a super-universe, and the ether foam of our universe is the cosmic foam of a sub-universe.
I am open to the existence of a 6th dimension in which tangentuniversess branch off in the same place, time and scale---each having a common past. So there may be other "yous" in a tangent universe right here, but in another dimension where you made different sets of choices.
- 1 decade ago
At one point humans thought that our planet was the only to exist. Later we believed that our solar system was the only in existence. We would not want to make the same mistake that our ancestors did years ago when considering the possibility of a multiverse.
- OldPilotLv 71 decade ago
No one knows. The "Multi verse" view of Quantum Mechanics has been around for at least a decade.
It has many variations
