Friday, May 08, 2009

AWT and multiverse concept

This post is a reaction to recent NewScientist article, promoting the string theory motivated view of multiverse concept by Brian Greene. The crucial problem here is, the multiverse concept is poorly defined even with respect to other concepts of mainstream physics, the AWT the less. How the scope of multiverse is defined? How is it related to "many worlds" or "parallel universe" concepts?
  • "Many worlds" concept was promoted by Hugh Everett originally (1957) and it usually means, different observers would see the same space-time event differently.
  • Parallel universe concept usually considers the existence of another, less or more similar - just causally separated - universe at the different place of space-time.
  • Multiverse in string theory interpretation usually means, at some (if not all) places of our space-time another space-time events may occur in hidden dimensions set alternatively.

If we define our universe like place, where known laws of existing physics remains valid, we can say, our Universe is defined as a place, where some sufficiently general theory of everything remains valid. If string theory is such a theory, for example, we can postulate our Universe as a place, where string theory remains valid and the parallel universe will be place, where string theory isn't valid. Such definition would mean, string theory isn't TOE anymore, or it even contradicts itself, as it predict something, which violates the string theory. Which is probably not, what the string theorists (prof. Brian Greene or Michio Kaku in particular) expects/promote.

OK, we can define a parallel universe as a place, where all existing physical laws remains valid, it just exhibits another configuration or different physical constants. For example, it's the place, where existing particles are creating different structures, then those, which we know from our Universe. For example, in tropic areas electrons and protons are forming rain forests, whereas in Arctic areas they're forming ice only - is that what the multiverse means? Supposedly not. So, we can consider, in multiverse only gravitons (axions or neutrino or black holes..) can exists, all remaining particles or structures are of different nature, stability, etc. As such multiverse could serve the interior of neutron star, after then. Which is still not, what we are looking for.

Another definition of multiverse may be based on relativity phenomena. Each of observer would see a bit different reality, while these realities are still tied together by common radiative time arrow. For example, observer in relative motion would see the same muon less stable or even decomposed, then observer at rest. It seems, such situation still doesn't fulfill the definition of multiverse, as it falls belong realm of predictions of classical relativity.

The uniqueness of radiative time arrow would be violated at the case, when light signals propagates through density gradient of vacuum, so that the gravitational lensing takes place. It means, a single space-time events has a multiple consequences at different places. Is this, what the multiverse means, already? We should realize, the violation of radiative time arrow would mean the violation of Lorentz symmetry as well, which is prohibited in strictly rigorous string theory, because this theory is using special relativity in its derivations and as such it uses Lorentz symmetry as one of its fundamental postulates.



At the case of rotating black hole, the location of event horizon would depend on polarization of light - vacuum exhibits a birefringence and related phenomena, vacuum analogies of Faraday and Kerr effects. It's the another, even deeper manifestation of quantum uncertainty at macroscopic scale. Everett's interpretation of quantum entanglement uses the many worlds concept - is such manifestation of quantum uncertainty what, the multiverse means in string theory? It seems not, as string theory itself is quantum mechanics based already - the prediction of quantum uncertainty in quantum mechanic way would become a trivial conclusion here.

In AWT the existence of multiverse depends solely on observational perspective and the scope of observations. From AWT perspective, which is most general possible one, no real place for multiverse concept can exists, because everything fulfills the very same theory here. If it doesn't, then the AWT cannot predict it in causal way. From the above follows, observational perspective is always defined by observer. Because people are the only known creatures, who can observe the things like electrons, photons and black holes, the observational scope is defined by abilities of people to observe these artifacts. It has no meaning to ask, whether the multiverse can appear differently, because we couldn't see them at all. Which effectively means, no multiverse can exist here, or it would become a part of our Universe.

Because the causal perspective of people is defined by transversal energy wave spreading inside of random system of Aether particles, we would see whole Universe exactly the same. If some newly revealed physical laws would enable us to see a larger portion from our Universe, then the newly revealed portion of Universe would share the same laws with the portion of Universe observed by now. For example, we can consider, if the observable portion of Universe appears like interior of black hole, then the outer Hyper-Universe would appear exactly the same, like the observable generation of Universe - or we could never interact with it, to predict or to see it the less.

Such conclusion fits the Copernican principle in particular, by which every observable portion of Universe doesn't differ significantly from another portions of Universe and our location in Universe is not significant in any way. This theorem corresponds the anthropic principle, in which every product of long term evolution would see its environment as a best place for its life - just because it's a product of long term adaptation to this environment. From this perspective anthropic principle becomes a sort of self-referencing tautology. Which means, you cannot predict nothing very much usefull with using it, but you cannot disprove it so easily as well.

Some positivistic people aren't convenient with antropic view of reality, though - as they believe, the random model of Universe isn't sufficient for explanation of "unique character" of observable reality. They didn't realize, inside of dense random particle environment only transversal energy can propagate at distance, because longitudinal waves compensate mutually even at short distance. To be able to see our Universe sufficiently large, we should become adopted perfectly to observation of Universe in causal way, i.e. with transversal waves, which puts rather strict limit to the possible appearance of universal randomness. And the deeper in space-time perspective we are supposed to see, the stronger such limit should follow.

11 comments:

Zephir said...

Galaxies which are not inside our own material universe, are supposed to fail to create some shadow on the 2.7 Kelvin CMB radiation.

Recent astronomical research did show us, that several (31) galaxy clusters do not produce a so called CMB radiation shadow. Reference: Lieu, Mittaz and Shuang-Nan Zhang, UAH, "The Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect in a sample of 31 clusters: A comparison between the X-ray predicted and WMAP observed decrement"

Zephir said...

Antimatter galaxies? These gallaxies are supposedly lacking dark matter effects...

A Dearth of Dark Matter in Ordinary Elliptical Galaxies, in Science 2003 (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1087441v1)
Dark Matter, Cosmology and Large-Scale Structure of the Universe
http://www.astro.queensu.ca/~dursi/dm-tutorial/dm0.html
Chandra: Dark Matter Mystery
http://chandra.harvard.edu/xray_astro/dark_matter.html
Dark Matter Telescope
http://www.dmtelescope.org/dark_home.html

Zephir said...

Is speculation in multiverses as immoral as speculation in subprime mortgages?

Zephir said...

Paul Davies, in his Op-Ed piece Taking Science on Faith, uses recent untestable speculation about multiple universes motivated by string theory to claim that “the mood has now shifted considerably” among physicists. He characterizes physics as being, just like religion, “founded on faith”, faith in the existence of intelligible laws describing nature and in a “huge ensemble of unseen universes”, the so-called “multiverse”.

Zephir said...

I always claimed, the multiple universes of string theorists is nothing less nothing more than the ancient many worlds concept - with the same (lack of) testable predictions and falsifiability. The Multiverse Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics [PDF] Michio Kaku and Brian Greene and many strings theorists are all Bohmians - Everettists on background.

And because contemporary physics is driven of meritocracy and impact, the opinion of Zephir has no weight here in the same way, like the opinion of Lubos Motl and we all should listen the opinion of Lenny Susskind.

Zephir said...

According to Lenny Susskind the multiverse is equivalent to ancient many word interpretation of quantum mechanics. It therefore doesn't bring anything new into it.

Zephir said...

This page by Max Tegmark picks the different versions of multiverse.

Zephir said...

Frank Wilzcek: Multiversality

Zephir said...

The multiverse is merely politically motivated concept, which should enable the search for new physics (which is good for grants of researchers and for their social credit) without replacement of existent theories (which is good for existing theorists, university teachers and their social credit). It's the logical compromise in an effort to maximize of investments into both branches of science, which are in natural opposition: both conservative, both investigative one.
..Why?! If the concept of multiverse would be accepted, then the theorists could always say: "Well, this observation doesn't fit the existing theories, but it's because we just found an evidence of another universe, which itself fits these theories well".
This particularly applies to untestable string theory with its landscape of 10^500 solutions and to mainstream cosmology based on dogma of expanding universe, which will be violated with every observation, where the omnidirectional expansion of space-time would appear broken. Therefore it's very fuzzy and untestable concept, and Brian Green himself distinguishes at least nine versions of multiverse.

Zephir said...

The Multiverse: is there evidence for it?

Zephir said...

The multiverse stuff overlaps with concept of macroscopic extradimensions. The string theorists already assume, there are microscopic extra-dimensions, but when we assume these macroscopic ones, then their projection into our 3D universe would appear like the multiverse. Some string theorists therefore do share opinion, that the multiverse is equivalent to many words interpretation of quantum mechanics, developed with Everett at the end of 50's. The mirror existence of microscopic extradimensions at macroscopic scale follows from AdS/CFT correspondence. The water surface analogy illustrates it as usually: if we would observe the 2D water surface with its 2D waves only, then at small distance scale our perspective will be blurred with presence of Brownian noise in third dimension. But the same blurring we would observe at the large scale, where the waves get scattered with underwater too.