Posted on 11/29/2006 4:19:47 PM PST by LibWhacker
Is this a joke? No, say a bunch of physicists. One day, it may be possible for a person to create a universe!
This is not going to happen tomorrow. Not even close. But according to Columbia University physics professor Brian Greene, it is theoretically not impossible (which is his way of saying the possibilities are not zero) that one day, a person could build a universe.
The very idea is so startling it's hard to know what this means.
Think about it this way: One day (far off, no doubt), it may be possible to go into a laboratory on Earth, create a "seed" -- a device that could grow into a universe -- and then there would have to be a way to get that seed, on command, to safely expand into a separate, infinite, unexplorable but very real alternate universe.
Got that?
This isn't Greene's notion. But he was willing to describe, in very broad outline, how it might work.
The seed, he suggests, could be a black hole. Not the big black holes that sit near the centers of so many galaxies, but what he calls a "mini black hole." Black holes, he says, don't have to be big. They can, in theory, be very small.
I asked him how small, and together we conducted an imaginary (very imaginary) experiment. If you listen to my interview, you will hear us build a mini black hole from an ordinary watermelon.
It's a fanciful experiment done with imaginary sound effects, but it playfully suggests these mini black holes might be manufactured one day. There may even be a real-life attempt. Plans are afoot to detect mini black holes at the new Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.
Greene also describes a kind of energy, called a "repulsive force," that might be capable of turning that seed into a new universe. The problem is, no one is yet sure how this force works or why. But Eduardo Guendelman, a physicist at Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheva, Israel, and Nobuyuki Sakai and his team at Yamagata University in Japan are working on the problem right now.
But suppose it is possible to create something that grows infinitely and becomes a universe somewhere else, why do it if you can't go and visit your creation? If you can't pop in, take a look and come back, why bother?
In the July 8, 2006 issue, New Scientist writer Zeeya Merali put that question to Stanford cosmologist Andre Linde.
"I sat down and really thought about why we should even care about creating a universe in the laboratory, " he told New Scientist, "We don't seem to be able to communicate with it at all."
Once it's formed, the inventor couldn't meet its inhabitants, mine its minerals, collect souvenirs or judge his or her success. The biblical god who many believe created our universe inspected us on the first through sixth day and decided that what He'd done "was good."
That's not an option for the human scientist who creates.
So why do it? Well, Greene says given the chance to make a universe of his own, "I might have a little trouble resisting this possibility. Just because it's so curious, this idea that because of your volitional act, you are creating a universe that could give rise, perhaps, to things we see around us."
Linde seconded that in his New Scientist interview.
"Just imagine if it's true and there's even a small chance it really could work," he said. "In this perspective, each of us can become a god."
Oh, the vanity of it all!
Professor Hubert Farnsworth has already done it.
Don't liberals already live in their own universe?
Mr. Grene, what color is the sky in your universe?
Boy, this is gonna send real estate prices tumbling.
Ok. This just begs the question...
Intelligent design?
The "shock value" of this idea relies on misusing the term "universe." By definition, there is only one universe. To speak of "multiple universes" necessarily involves a new, different meaning of "universe."
Of course, the same fate befell the term "world."
My prediction: This new meaning of "universe" will eventually come to be accepted as its canonical meaning, and some new term will have to be adopted with the same meaning as the term "universe" had originally.
I thought the US treasury was a black hole.
Seems so. Except in this scenario, the creator could be far from all-knowing.
I don't know about you but, I haven't finished exploring the universe we have now to even consider building another one.
isn't San Francisco in an alternate universe?
You're right, it does open one hell of a can of worms. The metaphysics of it all is mind-boggling. Philosophers' heads are probably exploding as they read this.
I do understand the basic concepts reported in the article, and so it being a serious theory, I hesitate launching one of my lighter blurbs...but, do you suppose that our current universe is the result of some sharp teen-ager playing around in a higher universe with a school homework lab?
Yes there are liberal outposts of the liberal universe. A universe in which diversity is celebrated, tolerance is the only virtue, and all types of sexual expression are considered normal.
This guy needs to lay off the acid.
I wonder what the ideal liberal universe would be like. It would be full of idealistic people who celebrate diversity and be full of people who don't work for a living, so they have time to dream about the utopia they hope to create. Everyone would have equal access to universal healthcare, though few would be working to pay for it, because most can't work because they need time to dream about the utopia they want.
Every now and again, I imagine some alien civilization out there gets snuffed out by a physics experiment gone wrong.
What followed the start of the first universe?
A monstrous fireball that inflated about 100 million light years in a few hours.
Create that universe and you snuff out every living thing and every star within 100 million light years (which would be thousands of galaxies.)
smelloscope bump...
Vanity, vanity, all is vanity saith the PREACHER. Men thinking of themselves as gods, just like satan...
It does create myriad fascinating possibilities. You could create your own universe and have it your way. And if things go south, just walk away and create another one more to your liking!
The principle that there can be no possible communication between these bubbles allows each to be treated as an independent universe with different physical laws. A universe then would be a region with a particular set of physical laws.
That's what I was thinking, but it may be too late for him.
universe
n.
All matter and energy, including the earth, the galaxies, and the contents of intergalactic space, regarded as a whole.
Back in the Forties, Robert Heinlein wrote a pulp sci-fi story exploring precisely this scenario. The flaw of this universe was the "Bird" and the "Sons of the Bird". Keywords: "The Bird is cruel."
Ideally, its expansion wouldn't displace space or time or matter in our own universe, but create its own.
He is one of the best popular expositors of current cosmological thought. Even better, he actually understands the cosmologists. Even better, he is one.
Sounds like Sid Meiers is working on Civilization V.
Note the source. I'm surprised the heretofore respectable Andre Linde would have anything to do with this.
More like his way of saying "I fantasized the other day about..."
Until now, "universe" has been completely synonymous with "all that exists." The same used to be true of the term "world" (and it still is, in some usages of the term "world.") The new meaning no longer encompasses "everything that exists," and so leaves us with no single word with that meaning.
Me and a few good dogs.... sounds good
Oh, you must be talking about that Bizzarro Universe where the fetuses of unborn animals are celebrated with their own television specials, while the fetuses of human beings are regularly and systematically murdered with the full blessing of the law.
Yep, I know *that* universe! :(
Greene also describes a kind of energy, called a "repulsive force," that might be capable of turning that seed into a new universe.
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Please do NOT post any Helen Thomas pictures! I had a really bad day already!!!
Hmm..I've seen people not be able to get past the idea that the big bang was expanding into something that was already there, before, and I can't figure out how to explain what it's actually saying.
You have to completely empty your mind of the idea of "space" as this permanent, empty, unchanging thing. If a new universe expands in a big bang, it's not expanding "into" anything - it doesn't swallow up any pre-existing stars or galaxies. Spacetime ITSELF is expanding.
The Democrats already have one, where up is down, lwft is right, strong is weak, right is wrong, Hillary makes a great president, Ted Kennedy is guarding the bar, Al Gore is considered an expert on something, and Howard Dean is the spokesman for something other than Dr. Loonbizkit's Strait Jackets.
Yes, and they did it through use of a black hole; there is no light there, it's hard to escape, and it sucks up every resource you can imagine.
Remember Linde's work on this theory?
"Inflationary cosmology is different in many respects from the standard big bang cosmology. Domains of the inflationary universe with sufficiently large energy density permanently produce new inflationary domains due to stochastic processes of generation of the long-wave perturbations of the scalar field. Therefore the evolution of the universe in the inflationary scenario has no end and may have no beginning."
The Self-Reproducing Inflationary Universe; November 1994; Scientific American Magazine
But Spacetime has to expand into something (which was, in the original big bang, nothingness.) A Spacetime expansion will likely push out the Spacetime that already exists in that Space. Maybe they can overlap with each other. Maybe they will act like the branes that string theorists predict, never touching each other.
But probably not. A new big bang will likely rewrite the Spacetime that it expands into.
Just ask their fjord designer.
grand slam!
Masterful!
Our universe may have gotten started by some entity playing around in a physics lab. Maybe it sowed a bunch of universes but only a few were viable -- the rest self-aborted or just never got off the ground.
Then maybe those physics experimenters put their playthings away and left this and maybe other universes to fend for themselves -- for better or worse. Could we call those entities deadbeat dads?
That would explain a lot.
It's a fairy tale. For grown ups.
I think though my objection stems from the idea of creating a universe in the lab, which given the energy of the big bang/inflationonary event that evidently created this one could really pose a major - understated! - problem for us.
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