Many Worlds in One: The Search for Other Universes - Hardcover

Vilenkin, Alex

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0809095238 ISBN 13: 9780809095230

Publisher: Hill and Wang, 2006

Synopsis

Recent discoveries in cosmology have led to a bizarre new worldview that (to paraphrase Niels Bohr) may be crazy enough to be true. Just consider the litany of mind-boggling new ideas being bandied about lately: the acceleration of cosmic expansion, dark energy (on top of dark matter, yet!), primordial “ripples” in space-time, the quantum creation of the universe from nothing, eternal cosmic inflation, multiple universes . . .Sound crazy enough for you?

 

Fortunately, the new theoretical advances also lead to testable predictions, and we may soon witness the confirmation of some of these predictions by fresh astronomical findings. Alex Vilenkin’s own scientific work has been closely tied to the emergence of the new worldview, from the original ideas to the most recent developments. In Many Worlds in One, he gives an exciting, surprisingly entertaining firsthand account of the birth of the new cosmology, and its fascinating—and at times disturbing—implications.

About this title

About the Author

Alex Vilenkin is a professor of physics at Tufts University, where he also serves as director of the Tufts Institute of Cosmology. The author of more than 150 research papers in cosmology, he has introduced a number of novel ideas to the field.

Reviews

Cosmologists ask many difficult questions and often come up with strange answers. In this engagingly written but difficult book, Vilenkin, a Tufts University physicist, does exactly this, discussing the creation of the universe, its likely demise and the growing belief among cosmologists that there are an infinite number of universes. Vilenkin does an impressive job of presenting the background information necessary for lay readers to understand the ideas behind the big bang and related phenomena. Having set the stage, the author then delves into cutting-edge ideas, many of his own devising. He argues persuasively that, thanks to repulsive gravity, the universe is likely to expand forever. He goes on to posit that our universe is but one of an infinite series, many of them populated by our "clones." Vilenkin is well aware of the implications of this assertion: "countless identical civilizations [to ours] are scattered in the infinite expanse of the cosmos. With humankind reduced to absolute cosmic insignificance, our descent from the center of the world is now complete." Drawing on the work of Stephen Hawking and recent advances in string theory, Vilenkin gives us a great deal to ponder. B&w illus. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Cosmology has moved from establishing that there was a finite start to the cosmos to theorizing about the initial conditions that kicked off the whole shebang. Vilenkin is a leading theorist whose scenarios about the enigma of the big bang emerge in this estimably clear, personable treatment. Vilenkin explains the idea of inflation, a phenomenal increase in the volume of space in the first infinitesimals of time, propounded by physicist Alan Guth (The Inflationary Universe, 1997). Inflation solved some theoretical problems but left others dangling, such as inducing inflation to stop; if it didn't, life could not have begun. Explaining that his solutions to the "graceful exit problem," as it is whimsically called, involve the concept of "eternal inflation," Vilenkin guides readers through its bizarre and head-spinning propositions. One is that our observed universe is embedded in a suprauniverse that infinitely spawns an infinite number of other universes. This and other gigantic ideas concisely presented will provoke the interest of readers intrigued by the origin of the big bang. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Excerpted from Many Worlds in One: The Search for Other Universes by Alex Vilenkin. Copyright © 2006 by Alex Vilenkin. Published in July 2006 by Hill and Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. All rights reserved.
 
Prologue
 
The stunning success of the book took everybody by surprise. The author, a quiet, even demure physics professor named Alex Vilenkin, has become an instant celebrity. His talk show engagements have been booked solid six months in advance. He had hired four bodyguards and has moved to an undisclosed location to avoid paparazzi. His sensational bestseller, titled Many Worlds in One, describes a new cosmological theory that says that every possible chain of events, no matter how bizarre or improbable, has actually happened somewhere in the universe—and not only once, but an infinite number of times!
 
The consequences of the new theory are mind-boggling. If your favorite football team did not win the championship, don’t despair: it did win on an infinite number of other earths. In fact, there is an infinity of earths where your team wins every single year! If your discontent goes beyond football and you are completely fed up with how things are, again Vilenkin’s book has something to offer. According to the new theory, most places in the universe are nothing like our Earth and are even ruled by different laws of physics.
 
The most controversial aspect of the book is the claim that each of us has an infinite number of identical clones living on countless earths scattered throughout the universe. Much sleep has been lost over this issue. People feel their unique identities have been stolen. So attendance at psychoanalysts’ offices has doubled, and sales of the book have soared. Using his theory, Vilenkin also predicted that on some earths his book would be a phenomenal success. But to be fair, he had to admit there were infinite others where it would be a complete flop…
 
* * *
 
We live in the aftermath of a great explosion. This awesome event, called somewhat frivolously “the big bang,” occurred some 14 billion years ago. The whole of space erupted in a hot, rapidly expanding fireball of matter and radiation. As it expanded, the fireball cooled down, its glow steadily subsided, and the universe slowly descended into darkness. A billion years passed uneventfully. But gradually, galaxies were pulled together by gravity, and the universe lit up with myriads of stars. Planets revolving about some of the stars became home to intelligent creatures. Some of the creatures became cosmologists and figured out that the universe originated in the big bang.
 
Compared with historians and detectives, the great advantage cosmologists have is that they can actually see the past. Light from remote galaxies takes billions of years to reach our telescopes on Earth, so we observe the galaxies as they were in their youth, when their light was emitted. Microwave detectors pick up the faint afterglow of the fireball, yielding an image of the universe at a still earlier epoch, prior to the formation of galaxies. We thus see the history of the universe unfolding before us.
 
This wonderful vision, however, has its bounds. Even though we can trace the history of the cosmos to less than a second after the big bang, the bang itself is still shrouded in mystery. What triggered this enigmatic event? Was it the true beginning of the universe? If not, then what came before? There is also a fundamental limit to how far we can see into space. Our horizon is defined by the maximum distance light could have traveled since the big bang. Sources more distant than the horizon cannot be observed, simply because their light has not yet had time to reach Earth. This leaves us wondering what the rest of the universe is like. Is it more of the same, or could it be that distant parts of the universe differ dramatically from our cosmic neighborhood? Does the universe extend to infinity, or does it close in on itself, like the surface of the Earth?
 
These are the most basic questions about the universe. But can we ever hope to answer them? If I claim that the universe ends abruptly beyond the horizon, or that it is filled with water and inhabited by intelligent goldfish, how can anyone prove me wrong? Cosmologists, therefore, focus mostly on the observable part of the universe, leaving it to philosophers and theologians to argue about what lies beyond.
 
But if indeed our quest must end at the horizon, wouldn’t that be a great disappointment? We may discover scores of new galaxies and map the entire visible universe, just as we mapped the surface of the Earth. But to what end? Mapping our own galaxy could serve a practical purpose, since we may want to colonize it some time in the future. But galaxies billions of light-years away are not likely prospects for colonization. At least not in the next few billion years. Of course, the appeal of cosmology is not in its practical utility. Our fascination with the cosmos is of the same nature as the feeling that inspired ancient creation myths. It is rooted in the desire to understand the origin and the destiny of the universe, its overall design, and how we humans fit into the general scheme of things.
 
Cosmologists who do rise to the challenge of the ultimate cosmic questions lose all their advantage over detectives. They can rely only on indirect, circumstantial evidence, using measurements made in the accessible part of the universe to make inferences about the times and places that cannot be observed. This limitation makes it much harder to prove one’s case “beyond a reasonable doubt.” But because of remarkable recent developments in cosmology, we now have answers to the ultimate cosmic questions that we have some reason to believe.
 
The worldview that has emerged from the new developments is nothing short of astonishing. To paraphrase Niels Bohr, it may even be crazy enough to be true. That worldview combines, in surprising ways, some seemingly contradictory features: the universe is both infinite and finite, evolving and stationary, eternal and yet with a beginning. The theory also predicts that some remote regions have planets exactly like our Earth, with continents of the same outline and terrain, inhabited by identical creatures, including our clones, some of them holding copies of this book in their hands. This book is about the new worldview, its origins, and its fascinating, bizarre, and at times disturbing implications.

Edition details

• Publisher: Hill and Wang
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0809095238
• ISBN 13: 9780809095230
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 248