Some scientific controversies arise over disputes over findings. Current flaps for James Webb Space Telescope data. Some sound like conflicts over philosophies — claims about the multiverse (the infinite number of universes) are a good example.

Theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder tackles the multiverse in her new book. Existential Physics: A Scientist’s Guide to Life’s Biggest Questions (2022). She also briefly (and wittyly) addresses the topic in her short video and the following blog post. Back (re)actionShe focuses on three popular multiverse models: many-worlds, eternal inflation, and string theory landscapes.

“Maybe we’ll never know.”

Here’s her take on eternal inflation:

We do not know how our universe began. We talked about this last week. However, according to the current popular belief called “inflation,” our universe was created from quantum field fluctuations called “inflationtons.” This field is thought to fill an infinitely large space, and our universe is made up of a very small part of it, the part where fluctuations occur.

However, since the field continues to fluctuate, countless other universes exist in fluctuation. This creation of the universe lasts forever, so it is called Eternal Inflation. By the way, eternal inflation goes on forever into the future, but it still requires a beginning in the past, so the problem of the big bang cannot be eliminated.

In Eternal Inflation, other universes may contain the same matter as ours, but with slightly different arrangements, so copies of you may exist in those universes. In some versions, she became a professional ballet dancer. Some have won Nobel Prizes. Yet another you is a professional ballet dancer who won a Nobel Prize and dated Elon Musk. And they’re all as real as this.

Where did this Inflationton field that supposedly created our universe go? Yeah, it’s a little sketchy.

Sabine Hossenfelderin “Multiverse: Science, Religion, or Pseudoscience?” Buckle (Action) (September 10, 2022)

Don’t miss her take on the landscape of many-worlds and string theory.Especially if you want to experience “an elephant that happens to be in an invisible room,” she’s oh, and Elon her marriage to the mask (but maybe that universe). Seriously, she later addresses certain claims from physicists that defend her ideas.

The concept of the multiverse arises from another interpretation of the motion of elementary particles in quantum mechanics, an alternative to the more widely accepted Copenhagen interpretation. In Copenhagen’s interpretation, the universe updates when particles move left instead of right. Another many-worlds interpretation creates a new universe in which the particles go right. There are other versions, but this is the best known.

read the rest at Mind Matters Newspublished by the Discovery Institute’s Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence.