Comment on Multiverse
reliv3@lemmy.world 5 weeks agoYou are correct. But this doesn’t restrict the big bang theory’s ability to conclude that other universes would have been created during the event.
Imagine analyzing a moving ball while simultaneously not knowing what caused the ball to move in the first place. We can still say a lot about this ball without the knowledge of how it started moving in the first place…
As Hawkings once said, seeking information about what caused the big bang is fruitless. Cause and Effect assumes a timeline, and there was no timeline before the big bang, therefore, asking what caused the big bang is actually a useless question. Therefore, it’s only fruitful to analyze the effect of the big bang, and through analyzing it’s effect, we conclude that other universes were likely created during the event.
A lot of this is based on the theoretical mathematics which define the big bang, but it’s also based on the standard cosmological model of our universe. The fact is cosmological theories already suggest the possibility of different universes which have different initial parameters. Our universe isn’t special, therefore it makes sense that other universes with different initial parameters could exist. The big bang theory aligns with this and suggests that a different universes with different initial parameters could have also been created during the event, therefore, the multiverse.
Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca 5 weeks ago
Sure, BBT doesn’t preclude other universes exsiting, and some details may even suggest other universes, but that’s outside the scope of BBT cosmology, and I’d hardly call that evidence when we still have inflation and axion theories floating around ready to radically change our idea of the early universe.
We have more evidence for Dark Matter, and we can’t even agree that that’s matter!
reliv3@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Sort of. It’s kinda similar to science’s conclusion about the existence of intelligent alien life. Have we directly observed evidence of intelligent alien life? No. Are we pretty confident that intelligent alien life exists? Yes. It’s a probability thing. If we can exist in this massive universe, then it’s almost insane to think that we could be the only intelligent life that exists: the principle of mediocrity.
When it comes to the standard cosmological model, it allows for universes with different shaped space-time continuums, different masses of elementary particles, etc. In the BBT, the multiverse hypothesis comes in during the inflation epoch. At some point our universe bubble expanded faster than the speed of light. This creates a sorta localized boundary. Since we observe light with our eyes and we cannot go FTL, then we cannot observe or go places beyond this localized bubble which exists within our localized space.
What is not vernacular know about the BBT, is that the BBT posits that other localized universe bubbles were also created during the epoch of inflation. Now keep in the mind that the multiverse hypothesis is pretty cutting edge, so yes, there is still a lot of argument regarding its validity. One argument is that it is not a scientific hypothesis because there is no feasible way to observe outside our own localized bubble. Nevertheless there are scientists who are designing tests. For example, some physicists posit that if our localized bubble collided with another localized bubble, then it could result in an effect on the cosmic background radiation.
Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca 5 weeks ago
We can see exoplanets though, and we know there are trillions in just this galaxy. This is more like Planet X in our solar system; there’s some observations that might suggest the existence of a large planet in the Kuiper belt, but we have no direct evidence whatsoever. Hardly anything we see would change one way of the other, according to our current understanding of solar system development.
reliv3@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
I am not entirely certain what point you’re making here. Is the premise that conclusions based on evidence that involves literally seeing the thing are stronger than any conclusions where we haven’t directly seen the thing? If so, then we better throw out a majority of our scientific hypotheses, since most of them have not are not based on evidence where we have directly seen the thing (most of quantum mechanics, most of general relativity, most of astronomy, etc.)
Human sight is a very restrictive window into observing our universe. We can only see a sliver of the light spectrum (visible light). We can expand this window slightly by using other senses to observe our universe (sound, taste, touch, scent). Where science shines is the practitioners ability to use abstract models and thought processes to draw conclusions about things we cannot observe. This expands our window into understanding our universe far more than leaning only on concrete models (things we can directly observed).
In simpler terms, most of science’s conclusions involve ones that are closer to Planet X rather than directly seeing an exoplanet. Therefore, we cannot cheapen these type of conclusions.
All science requires is models that make accurate predictions. For example, atoms. We have never seen an atom before, but we have used this model of the atom to accurately predict outcomes of experiments. Because of this, the atom still exists as a working hypothesis in science.