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One of the earliest realizations in the history of quantum mechanics is that matter has a wave-like property. Other physicists soon confirmed ...electrons scattered off a thin foil before landing on a target. The way the electrons scattered was more characteristic of a wave than a particle. What, exactly, is a wave of matter? Schrödinger...developed his famous equation to describe the behavior of those waves... But Schrödinger's idea flew in the face of more experimental tests. For example, even though an electron acted like a wave midflight, when it reached a target, it landed as a single, compact particle, so...

“In some pockets of space, far beyond the limits of our observations,” wrote cosmologist Dan Hooper at the University of Chicago in an email to The Daily Galaxy, referring to the theory of eternal inflation and the inflationary multiverse: “the laws of physics could be very different from those we find in our local universe. Different forms of matter could exist, which experience different kinds of forces. In this sense, what we call ‘the laws of physics’, instead of being a universal fact of nature, could be an environmental fact, which varies from place to place, or from time to...

Is the universe we see – stars, moons, planets, clusters of galaxies – a small, accidental tip of an infinite cosmic iceberg? During the epoch of inflation, thought to have been triggered by the phase transition that marked the end of the grand unification at approximately 10^−36 seconds after the Big Bang, the accelerating expansion of space was far more dramatic than in today’s universe. Inflation lasted for only 10^-32 seconds, but the universe expanded at an absolutely staggering rate, increasing in size by a factor of 10^26. During this period, no objects – even two elementary particles – remained...

As pointed out by Dr. Thomas Horn and “Into the Multiverse” host Josh Peck in the internationally-acclaimed books On The Path Of The Immortals (FREE IN OFFER HERE) and Abaddon Ascending, when the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) first started up on September 10, 2008, director for research and scientific computing at CERN, Sergio Bertolucci, provoked a whirlwind of speculation with his enigmatic remark that the LHC might open a door to another dimension. During a regular briefing at CERN headquarters, he told reporters, “Out of this door might come something, or we might send something through it.”[i] The notion of...

NASA scientists working on an experiment in Antarctica have detected evidence of a parallel universe — where the rules of physics are the opposite of our own, according to a report. The concept of a parallel universe has been around since the early 1960s, mostly in the minds of fans of sci-fi TV shows and comics, but now a cosmic ray detection experiment has found particles that could be from a parallel realm that also was born in the Big Bang, the Daily Star reported. The experts used a giant balloon to carry NASA’s Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna, or ANITA,...

On Fantasy in Modern Science Kirk Durston April 25, 2019 It was just another noon hour in 11th grade as I foraged in the high school library looking for a book to read. I usually sifted through at least five books per week and this being my third year in that school, the pickings were starting to get a little slim when I pulled an old hardcover book off the shelf. The title was The Stars Are Ours, by Andre Norton. By the time I finished, I was frothing at the mouth for more science fiction and proceeded to devour every...

The problem with string theory, according to some physicists, is that it makes too many universes. It predicts not one but some 10500 versions of spacetime, each with their own laws of physics. But with so many universes on the table, how can the theory explain why ours has the features it does? Now some theorists suggest most—if not all—of those universes are actually forbidden, at least if we want them to have stable dark energy, the supposed force accelerating the expansion of the cosmos. To some, eliminating so many possible universes is not a drawback but a major step...

Newton's law of gravity — remember that? The force between two massive bodies decreases with the inverse square of the distance and so on? To use it, you need a constant, "Newton's constant," also called the "gravitational constant," usually denoted G. You can determine G to reasonable accuracy with a few simple measurements. Once you have fixed the gravitational constant, you can apply Newton's law to all kinds of different situations: falling apples, orbiting planets, launching rockets, etc. All with only one constant! This ability to explain many superficially different processes is what makes natural laws so powerful. Newton's contemporaries...

Known as the “CMB Cold Spot”, scientists have puzzled over this anomaly for years... ... Multiverse Theory, which was first proposed by philosopher and psychologist William James, states that there may be multiple or an even infinite number of Universes that exist parallel to our own. Between these Universes exists the entirety of existence and all cosmological phenomena – i.e. space, time, matter, energy, and all of the physical laws that bind them. [T]he theory arose in part from the study of cosmological forces, like black holes and problems arising from the Big Bang Theory. In addition, variations on multiverse...

A Fight for the Soul of Science String theory, the multiverse and other ideas of modern physics are potentially untestable. At a historic meeting in Munich, scientists and philosophers asked: should we trust them anyway? Laetitia Vancon for Quanta MagazinePhysicists George Ellis (center) and Joe Silk (right) at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich on Dec. 7. By: Natalie WolchoverDecember 16, 2015 Comments (17) Share this: facebooktwitterredditmail PDF Print Physicists typically think they “need philosophers and historians of science like birds need ornithologists,” the Nobel laureate David Gross told a roomful of philosophers, historians and physicists last week in Munich, Germany,...

THE curtain at the edge of the universe may be rippling, hinting that there's more backstage. Data from the European Space Agency's Planck telescope could be giving us our first glimpse of another universe, with different physics, bumping up against our own. That's the tentative conclusion of an analysis by Ranga-Ram Chary, a researcher at Planck's US data centre in California. Armed with Planck's painstaking map of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) - light lingering from the hot, soupy state of the early universe – Chary revealed an eerie glow that could be due to matter from a neighbouring universe...

The existence of parallel universes may seem like something cooked up by science fiction writers, with little relevance to modern theoretical physics. But the idea that we live in a 'multiverse' made up of an infinite number of parallel universes has long been considered a scientific possibility - although it is still a matter of vigorous debate among physicists. The race is now on to find a way to test the theory, including searching the sky for signs of collisions with other universes. It is important to keep in mind that the multiverse view is not actually a theory, it...

The existence of parallel universes may seem like something cooked up by science fiction writers, with little relevance to modern theoretical physics. But the idea that we live in a “multiverse” made up of an infinite number of parallel universes has long been considered a scientific possibility – although it is still a matter of vigorous debate among physicists. The race is now on to find a way to test the theory, including searching the sky for signs of collisions with other universes. It is important to keep in mind that the multiverse view is not actually a theory,...

Imagine if you were told that the world is simple and exactly as it seems, but that there is an infinite number of worlds just like ours. They share the same space and time, and interact with each other. These worlds behave as Newton first envisioned, except that the slightest interactions of the infinite number create nuances and deviations from the Newtonian mechanics. What could be deterministic is swayed by many worlds to become the unpredictable. Schrödinger, in explaining his wave function and the interaction of two particles (EPR paradox) coined the term “entanglement”. In effect, the MIW theory is...

If modern physics is to be believed, we shouldn’t be here. The meager dose of energy infusing empty space, which at higher levels would rip the cosmos apart, is a trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion times tinier than theory predicts. And the minuscule mass of the Higgs boson, whose relative smallness allows big structures such as galaxies and humans to form, falls roughly 100 quadrillion times short of expectations. Dialing up either of these constants even a little would render the universe unlivable. To account for our incredible luck, leading cosmologists like Alan Guth and...

Scientists are working to bring the multiverse hypothesis, which to some sounds like a fanciful tale, firmly into the realm of testable science. Never mind the Big Bang; in the beginning was the vacuum. The vacuum simmered with energy (variously called dark energy, vacuum energy, the inflation field, or the Higgs field). Like water in a pot, this high energy began to evaporate -- bubbles formed.

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. – Dr. Carl Sagan Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, is a sequel to the PBS program Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, hosted by Dr. Carl Sagan in 1980. Unlike the PBS version, this has big names behind it: Seth MacFarlane, creator of successful comedy programs like “The Family Guy”, Brannon Braga, producer and writer for “Star Trek”, and astronomer Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, who is far more famous as a science personality than Sagan was when he hosted the original Cosmos. They are all backed...

Last week, in Nice, France, I was privileged to participate along with 30 scholars, mostly scientists and mathematicians, in a conference on the question of whether the universe was designed, or at least fine-tuned, to make life, especially intelligent life. Participants — from Yale, Princeton, Harvard, Berkeley, and Columbia, among other American and European universities — included believers in God, agonistics, and atheists. It was clear that the scientific consensus was that, at the very least, the universe is exquisitely fine-tuned to allow for the possibility of life. It appears that we live in a “Goldilocks universe,” in which both...

The spectacular discovery of the Higgs boson in July 2012 confirmed a nearly 50-year-old theory of how elementary particles acquire mass, which enables them to form big structures such as galaxies and humans. “The fact that it was seen more or less where we expected to find it is a triumph for experiment, it’s a triumph for theory, and it’s an indication that physics works,” Arkani-Hamed told the crowd. However, in order for the Higgs boson to make sense with the mass (or equivalent energy) it was determined to have, the LHC needed to find a swarm of other particles,...

Hiding from God in the Multiverse by Jake Hebert, Ph.D. * ICR research sometimes involves detecting flawed logic in common evolutionary arguments. One such argument claims that something called the “multiverse” removes the need for a Creator. Is this claim valid? In an attempt to solve serious problems in the original Big Bang model, secular cosmologists invoked something called “inflation”—an enormous hypothetical “growth spurt” in the early universe. Originally, these theorists believed that inflation would have completely ended shortly after the Big Bang. However, they later concluded that different regions of space stopped inflating at different times. This would result...