Tag Archives: the multiverse

Things I Think Are True

Last year I kicked off the new year with a post about open and challenging questions in physics. Those remain open and challenging and probably will for some time. Some of them are very old (and very unresolved) questions; others were from modern scientific efforts and understandings. It’s possible we may never find answers for some.

At some point, for some reason, about a month ago I started making a list of things I thought were probably true; things I believe in. I say “probably” because, as with those open science questions, we don’t know the truth of these things; many are vigorously debated.

Some of what follows pertains to those science questions, some of it is more social observation on my part.

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How Many Big Bangs?

Bang!!

I’m reading Our Mathematical Universe (2014), by Max Tegmark, and I’ll post about the book when I finish. However he got my attention early with the topic of eternal inflation. That got me thinking about how there are some key unanswered questions regarding the Big Bang and inflation of the non-eternal sort.

Inflation certainly does need some explaining. It may be related to dark energy, as both seem to do the same sort of thing (push space apart). The putative physics of inflation is bad enough; eternal inflation is (in my view) fairy tale physics.

For one thing, eternal? Seriously? Infinite something from nothing?

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