Guth

Alan Guth on the Multiverse

MIT’s Alan Guth, who is famous for proposing an inflationary model for the universe, a refinement of the Big Bang theory, that most cosmologists now accept, humorously yet seriously, illustrated the idea in a BBC roundtable discussion with several prominent cosmologists and theoretical physicists in 2002:

I in fact have worked with several other people for some period of time on the question of whether or not it's in principle possible to create a new universe in the laboratory. Whether or not it really works we don't know for sure. It looks like it probably would work. It's actually safe to create a universe in your basement. It would not displace the universe around it even though it would grow tremendously. It would actually create its own space as it grows and in fact in a very short fraction of a second it would splice itself off completely from our Universe and evolve as an isolated closed universe growing to cosmic proportions without displacing any of the territory that we currently lay claim to. (9)

A couple of other quotes from Guth at the same roundtable give us a more complete picture:

1)      Essentially anything that can happen does happen in one of the alternatives which means that superimposed on top of the Universe that we know of is an alternative universe where Al Gore is President and Elvis Presley is still alive.

2)      It [sic] may not all have life, but some fraction of them will have life and whatever that fraction is if there's an infinite number of these universes there'll be an infinite number of universes that have living civilisations.

Victor J. Stenger

Guth has a large following. One fan is the University of Hawaii’s Victor J. Stenger. If the multiverse is right, he argues, the response to fine tuning as something that points to a supernatural creator is a “no brainer.” God’s existence is off the table. “A multi-universe scenario is not ruled out since no known principle requires that only one universe exist,” he says.

[It] can be argued that a multiverse composed of many universes with different laws and physical properties is more consistent with Occam's razor than a single universe. We would need to hypothesize a new principle to rule out all but a single universe. If multiple universes exist, then we are simply in that particular universe which necessarily contained all the logically consistent possibilities that had the properties needed to produce us.

Stenger wields a big club: Occam’s Razor. We mentioned it earlier when we mentioned William of Ockham.

Works Consulted and Considered

1. Rogers, Raymond N. Reply from Ray Rogers (to Joe Nickell). Skeptical Inquirer. 2005, February.

2. Nickell, Joe. Relics of the Christ. s.l. : University Press of Kentucky, 2007.

3. —. An Interview With Joe Nickel . [interv.] Eric Krieg. 2001.

4. To know a veil. Ball, Philip. New York : s.n., January 28, 2005, Nature: International Weekly Journal of Science: News. doi:10.1038/news050124-17.

5. Gledhill, Ruth. The Holy See and the secrets of the Turin Shroud. Times Online. [Online] April 6, 2009. [Cited: April 6, 2009.] http://timescolumns.typepad.com/gledhill/2009/04/the-holy-see-and-the-secrets-of-the-turin-shroud.html.

6. Gould, Stephen Jay. Impeaching a Self-Appointed Judge. Scientific American. July 1992, pp. 118-121.

7. Johnson, Phillip E. Darwinism: Science or Naturalistic Philosophy? (at Stanford University). Access Research Network. [Online] April 30, 1994. [Cited: July 1, 2009.] http://www.arn.org/docs/orpages/or161/161main.htm.

8. Begley, Sharon. Sceince finds God. Newsweek. July 20, 1998.

9. Guth, Alan. Parallet Universes. [interv.] BBC Dilly Barlow. Science and Nature. s.l. : BBC Two, February 14, 2002.

10. Godart, O. and M. Heller. Cosmology of Lemaître. Tuscon : Pachart, 1985.

11. Russell, Bertand. The Problems of Philosophy. s.l. : Prometheus Books (September 1988), Kindle by Amazon (2008), 1912.

12. Halicarnassus, Herodotus of. Inquiries by Herodotus. [trans.] Shlomo Felberbaum 2003. s.l. : Lost Trails, Late 5th Century B.C..

13. Herzog, William R., II. Jesus, Justice and the Reign of God: A Ministry of Liberation . s.l. : Westminster John Knox Press, 2000.

14. Crossan, John Dominic. Faiths/Christianity/Your Questions to John Dominic Crossan. Beliefnet. s.l. : Beliefnet, July 2002.

15. Wilson, Kax. A History of Textiles. Boulder : Westview Press, 1979.

16. Cole, George S. A complete dictionary of dry goods and history of silk, cotton, linen, wool and other fibrous substances. s.l. : W.B. Conkey Co, W.B. Conkey Co.

17. Barber, E. J. W. Prehistoric Textiles: The Development of Cloth in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages with Special Reference to the Aegean. s.l. : Princeton University Press, 1992.

18. Scavone, Daniel C. Acheiropoietos Jesus Images in Constantinople: the Documentary Evidence. Bronxville, NY : Shroud Story Web Site, 2006. Chapter of Book in Progress.

19. Krapf, Norbert, John DePol. Under Open Skys. New York : Fordam University Press, 1986.

20. AZahoor, Akram. Muslim History: 570 – 1950 C.E. Gaithersburg, MD : ZMD Corporation, 2000. translation by the author.

21. Beckwith, John. The Art of Constantinople: An Introduction to Byzantine Art 330-1453. London : Phaidon Publishers , 1961.

22. Wilson, Ian. Holy Faces, Secret Places: An Amazing Quest for the Face of Jesus. New York : Doubleday, 1991.

23. Treadgold, Warren T. A history of the Byzantine state and society. s.l. : Stanford University Press, 1997.

24. Sweetenham, Carol. Robert the Monk's History of the First Crusade: Historia Iherosolimitana. Paperback. Farnham, Surrey : Ashgate Publishing, 2006. Translation and Commentary.

25. Shopkow, Leah. Robert de Clari. Book Rags. [Online] [Cited: April 23, 2009.] http://www.bookrags.com/tandf/robert-de-clari-tf/.

26. Stone, Edward N (translator) Robert de Clari (author). Three Old French Chronicles of the Crusades. Seatlle : University of Washington publications in the social sciences, 1939 update to 1870 translation.

27. McNeal, Edgar Holmes. The Conquest of Constantinople. New York : Columbia University Press, 2005.

28. Janin, Raymond. La Géographie ecclésiastique de l'Empire byzantin. 1953.

29. Carson, D. A. The Gospel According to John. Grand Rapids, MI : Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1991.

30. Scavone, Daniel C. Greek Epitaphioi and Other Evidence for the Shroud In Constantinople Up To 1204. Shroud of Turin Web Site Paper from the 1999 Richmond Conference. [Online] June 1999. [Cited: April 26, 2009.] http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/scavone.pdf.

31. Brown, John E. The Gospel and Epistles of John: a concise commentary. s.l. : Liturgical Press, 1988.

32. Nickell, Joe. Relics of the Christ. s.l. : University Press of Kentucky, 2007.

33. Wilson, Ian. The Turin Shroud. London : Book Club Associates, 1978. (Wilson, I., "The Turin Shroud," Book Club Associates: London, 1978, pp.61-62).

34. Nickell, Joe. The Joe Nickell Files: The Shroud of Turin. [interv.] John C. Snider. 2000, revised 2004.

35. Harvard Law School Staff. Seeing Faces. The Situationist - Harvard Law School. [Online] Feb 23, 2008. [Cited: May 14, 2009.] http://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2008/02/23/seeing-faces/.

36. Flury-Lemberg, Mechthild. Secrets of the Dead: The Shroud of Christ. [interv.] PBS Television. 2002.

37. Studies on the radiocarbon sample from the Shroud of Turin. Rogers, Raymond N. 2005, Thermochimica Acta, Vol. 425, pp. 189-194. - Raymond N. Rogers, Thermochimica Acta Volume 425, Issues 1-2, 20 January 2005, Pages 189-194 .

38. Runciman, Steven. History of the Crusades. Harmondsworth : Penguin Books, 1965.

39. Walsh, J. E. The Shroud. New York : Random House, 1963.

40. Adler, Alan D. The Nature of the Body Images on the Shroud of Turin. Shroud of Turin Web Site. [Online] 1999. [Cited: May 3, 2009.] http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/adler.pdf.

41. Photogrammetric Responses from the Shroud of Turin. Schumacher, Peter M. Richmond : Shroud of Turin International Research Conference, 1999. Shroud of Turin International Research Conference.

42. Picknett, Lynn and Prince, Clive. The Turin Shroud: How Da Vinci Fooled History. New York : Simon and Schuster, 2007.

43. On the invisible rays emitted by phosphorescent bodies. Becquerel, Henri. Paris : French Academy of Science, March 2, 1896, Comptes Rendus 122, 501 (1896)), Vol. 122, p. 501. translated by Carmen Giunta.

44. Carr, Peter. Dating and Formation of the Shroud. s.l. : Shroud of Turin Web Site, 1999.

45. The amazing Dr Kouznetsov. Meacham, William. 313, York : Department of Archaeology at the University of York, September 1, 2007, Antiquity: A Quartly Review of the World of Archaeology, Vol. 81, pp. 779-783.

46. Major Carbon-14 Deficiency in Modern Snail Shells from Southern Nevada Springs. Riggs, Alan C. s.l. : The American Association for the Advancement of Science, April 6, 1984, Science, Vol. 224, pp. 58-61.

47. Ikram, Salima. Egyptologist, American University in Cairo. [interv.] editor of NOVA online. PBS Nova Television Series Susan K. Lewis. November 17, 2005.

48. Hodge, K. C., G. W. A. Newton. Radiocarbon Dating. [book auth.] Ann Rosalie David. The Manchester Museum mummy project: multidisciplinary research on ancient Egyptian mummified remains. s.l. : Manchester University Press, 1979, pp. 137-148.

49. A problematic source of organic contamination of linen. Gove, H. E., S. J. Mattingly, A. R. David, L. A. Garza-Valdes. s.l. : Elsevier, 1997, Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research, pp. 504-507.

50. Radiocarbon dating of the Shroud of Turin. Damon, P. E., et al. 1989, Nature, Vol. 337, pp. 611-615.

51. Rogers, Raymond N., Anna Arnoldi. Scientific Method Applied to the Shroud of Turin: A Review. Shroud of Turin Website. [Online] July 2002. http://www.shroud.com.

52. Knight, Edmund. Bleaching. [book auth.] Hugh Chisholm. The Encyclopedia Britannica Eleventh Edition. New Yorl : The Encyclopedia Britannica Company, 1911, pp. 49-55. Professor of Technological Chemistry, University of Manchester.