In “Welcome to the Multiverse” (The Daily Beast, May 21, 2012) cosmologist Brian Greene tells us, “The latest developments in cosmology point toward the possibility that our universe is merely one of billions.” Then he offers the evidence:
… if a proposal that invokes the multiverse gains our confidence by making correct predictions about things we do have access to, things in our universe, then our confidence in its prediction of other universes, realms we don’t have access to, would rightly grow too.
As of today, we are far from crossing this threshold. Inflationary cosmology makes accurate predictions about microwave background radiation; dark energy accurately explains accelerated expansion. But string theory remains hypothetical, largely because its primary distinguishing features become manifest at scales billions of times smaller than we can probe even with today’s most powerful accelerators.
More direct evidence for the multiverse might come from potential collisions between our expanding universe and its neighbors. Such a cosmic fender bender would generate an additional pattern of temperature variations in the microwave background radiation that sophisticated telescopes might one day detect. Many consider this the most promising possibility for finding evidence in support of the multiverse.
Utterly convinced yet?
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