Atoms and the Multiverse
“This idea that the universe has multiple histories may sound like science fiction, but it is now accepted as science fact.” - Stephen Hawking, former Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, University of Cambridge.
THE FINAL MYSTERY
DISCOVERING THE UNIMAGINABLE
The Mystery Beyond the Multiverse
“A mystery lurks beneath the magic carpet of science, something that scientists have not been telling, something too shocking to mention.” - John D. Barrow. (Professor of Mathematical Sciences, University of Cambridge.) The Mystery
in Action
“When we start to look closely at all this complexity, surprising patterns begin to emerge. It is these patterns that I believe point to an underlying code at the very heart of existence, and that controls not only our world and everything in it, but even us.” - Marcus du Sautoy (Professor of Mathematics, University of Oxford) The Magic of Infinities
“There are no more moments in all of eternity than there are in, say, one minute. In both cases there is an infinite number.” - Paul Davies, Director of the Centre for Fundamental Concepts in Science, Arizona State University. The Final Mystery
“It is a matter of contention whether anything resembling a ‘theory of everything’ will ever be found.” - Sir Roger Penrose, Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics, University of Oxford.
“A mystery lurks beneath the magic carpet of science, something that scientists have not been telling, something too shocking to mention.” - John D. Barrow. (Professor of Mathematical Sciences, University of Cambridge.) The Mystery
in Action
“When we start to look closely at all this complexity, surprising patterns begin to emerge. It is these patterns that I believe point to an underlying code at the very heart of existence, and that controls not only our world and everything in it, but even us.” - Marcus du Sautoy (Professor of Mathematics, University of Oxford) The Magic of Infinities
“There are no more moments in all of eternity than there are in, say, one minute. In both cases there is an infinite number.” - Paul Davies, Director of the Centre for Fundamental Concepts in Science, Arizona State University. The Final Mystery
“It is a matter of contention whether anything resembling a ‘theory of everything’ will ever be found.” - Sir Roger Penrose, Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics, University of Oxford.
The Superposition
When you step inside the world of the atom everything changes dramatically, so dramatically that no one understands it. Richard Feynman (Nobel Prize in Physics, 1965), a legend of twentieth century science, is often quoted as saying:
“It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don’t understand it. You see, my physics students don’t understand it either. That is because I don’t understand it. Nobody does. ”
Figure 1. Experiment to show the Superposition
The central mystery of the world inside the atom is that bits of atoms don’t travel in a straight line from one point to the next like an arrow or a bullet, they travel within a wave by an infinite number of paths called a superposition. It is only when we measure them that the wave collapses and they settle in one place.
It’s like stepping into somewhere far more weird than Alice’s wonderland, something never conceived of by humans before.
And yes, infinities lie within atoms, the things that make up you and me, and the whole observable universe. Not only that, but it is the infinite paths that somehow support the real path taken by particles. Richard Feynman described it like this:
“When all possible paths are considered, each crooked path has a nearby path of considerably less distance and therefore much less time…The nearby nearly straight paths also make important contributions. So light doesn’t really travel only in a straight line; it ‘smells’ the neighbouring paths around it.”
This includes all atomic particles, not just photons of light. John Bell (author of Bell’s Inequality), had this to say about these waves:
“It is the mathematics of this wave motion, which somehow controls the electron… In the case of the waves of wave mechanics we have no idea what is waving.”
Mathematics that controls the electron? About these waves Sir Roger Penrose says:
“so even material substance seems able to convert itself into something with a more theoretical mathematical actuality.”
This is more evidence that everything is constructed from mathematics and that infinities are intimately involved. In their attempt to understand what is going on a majority of the most prominent scientists in the field now favour what is called the “Many Worlds” interpretation first put forward as long ago as 1957 by Hugh Everett. Since then research has led them to what must be the craziest thing ever come up with by serious science. Instead of the wave collapsing into one definite result, they believe that the universe branches into many parallel copies of itself, not just occasionally, but every time two particles meet each other which is countless trillions of times a millisecond all over the universe! It’s like some hysterically bizarre cloning bedlam.
Quantum Computers
Although extremely hard to believe, there is now proof that these parallel worlds actually exist! It comes from the construction of quantum computers. Scientists realised that if you could actually make use of the parallel worlds you could process information on a scale that would make current supercomputers look like dinosaurs. David Deutsch explains that quantum computing,
“will be the first technology that allows useful tasks to be performed in collaboration between parallel universes. A quantum computer would be capable of distributing components of a complex task among vast numbers of parallel universes, and sharing the results.”
Figure 2. A working quantum computer
There are many university laboratories all over the world as well as big companies like IBM engaged in the race to build the first commercial quantum computer. There are also many collaborations between universities and public companies. Because quantum computers would be able to crack all existing secret codes, many governments are deeply involved. One of the biggest quantum computing laboratories in the world is at Los Alamos where the first atomic bomb was built.
Superstrings and 'M-Theory'
Superstrings are the smallest things ever considered by science. They operate at the Planck scale which is extravagantly tiny, 10-35 meters or a decimal point followed by 34 zeros and then 1. So small that they are twenty powers of 10 smaller than a proton inside an atom! Superstring theory or ‘M-Theory’ has had a few ups and downs since it was first discovered in 1969, but is still the field in which nine out of ten theoretical physicists operate, and is still the chosen route to find the ‘Theory of Everything’.
Figure 3. Leonard Susskind
The great attraction of superstrings is that they can link up gravity which operates on the scale of the universe, with the tiny world of the atom, and so explain everything. However, there is a major stumbling block. The theory describes literally trillions upon trillions of different universes, each with its own constants and basic laws, and there is no way to tell which one is ours. Leonard Susskind, one of the original founders of string theory, says that when there were just a million or so solutions he wasn’t particularly worried, but the tipping point came for him when in the year 2000 Joe Polchinski and Raphael Busso published a paper showing that there might be somewhere in the region of – hold your breath – 10500 solutions! That’s when he started to have serious doubts!
This is an absolutely colossal number. In all the planets, stars and galaxies we can see there are only 1080 atoms. If you think how ‘powers of ten’ actually work, then you’ll see that 10500 is a horrifyingly monumental number! It is even thought that the number of solutions to the equations of M-Theory (what they call ‘landscapes’), is actually infinite and may be an accurate description of every mathematically conceivable universe. Is it perhaps describing the Multiverse?
The Multiverse
About the multiverse Stephen Hawking once said:
“this idea that the universe has multiple histories may sound like science fiction, but it is now accepted as science fact.”
Figure 4. Illustration of Chaotic Inflation
The realisation that there is more than one universe arose initially from what is called ‘Cosmic Inflation’. It was discovered by Alan Guth (now Professor of Physics at MIT) in 1983. It describes a seriously dramatic expansion of the universe micro-seconds after its creation. This helped to explain some of the major problems with the Big Bang model. Unfortunately it had one big drawback – it predicted that there had to be many more universes than our own! And not a few either, the most favoured version, known as ‘Chaotic Inflation’, was discovered by Andrei Linde (Professor of Physics at Stanford University) and predicts that there are an infinite number of universes!
Our universe is just one bubble of an infinite number of bubble universes being created all the time. Here’s how Max Tegmark, describes it:
“Each such bubble is infinite in size, yet there are infinitely many bubbles since the chain reaction never ends. Indeed, if this exponential growth of the number of bubbles has been going on forever, there will be an uncountable infinity of such parallel universes”
Over the years more and more evidence for Inflation has accumulated, principally from studies of the heat left over from the Big Bang, known as the cosmic microwave background.
The Energy of Emtpy Space
Another big influence that has led scientists to believe in the multiverse comes from the discovery of the energy of empty space known as the vacuum energy. When they first tried to do this the answers kept coming out as infinite which was obviously no good, especially because they expected it to be close to zero. It was eventually found to be ridiculously tiny. Leonard Susskind says:
“as absurd as it seems, the vacuum energy exactly cancels for the first 119 decimal places but then in the 120th place, bingo! A bit of vacuum energy. How can such a situation possibly be explained?”
Figure 5. John Wheeler
What it means is that our universe is unbelievably special. Had the vacuum energy been only slightly different from the staggering precision of 10-120 we wouldn’t be here!
In addition to this, had the constants of nature like the speed of light or the strength of gravity, or the mass of the proton, been only marginally different from what they are – then galaxies and stars and people could never exist.
John Wheeler, another iconic figure of twentieth century physics whose doctoral students included Richard Feynman and Hugh Everett, once wrote:
“It is not only that man is adapted to the universe. The universe is adapted to man. Imagine a universe in which one or another of the fundamental dimensionless constants of physics is altered by a few percent one way or the other? Man could never come into being in such a universe... According to this principle [the Anthropic Principle], a life-giving factor lies at the centre of the whole machinery and design of the world.”
Figure 6. Sir Martin Rees
How does anyone begin to explain why our universe is so special?
The answer is remarkably simple. If an infinite number of universes exist, then the fact that our one is so precisely designed is not surprising at all.
If there are an infinite number, then one exactly like ours has to exist.
Lord Rees of Ludlow (Sir Martin), Astronomer Royal, previously Master of Kings College Cambridge, and President of the Royal Society, and a frequent media figure, explains it neatly like this:
“The cosmos may have something in common with an off-the-rack clothes shop: if the shop has a large stock, we are not surprised to find one suit that fits. Likewise, if our universe is selected from a multiverse, its seemingly designed or fine-tuned features would not be surprising.”
From the evidence presented by the superposition within the atom, and the proof of parallel universes through quantum computing, to superstrings, cosmic inflation, and the energy of empty space, it certainly seems as though we exist within a reality that is dominated by, and dependent upon, infinities - from the quantum world of the very small to the gigantic world of the multiverse.
What does this mean?