{"id":12997,"date":"2022-07-29T15:01:04","date_gmt":"2022-07-29T19:01:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=12997"},"modified":"2022-07-29T15:22:38","modified_gmt":"2022-07-29T19:22:38","slug":"before-the-big-bang-the-origin-of-the-universe-from-the-multiverse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=12997","title":{"rendered":"Before the Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe from the Multiverse"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s a new book out this month, Before the Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe from the Multiverse<\/a>, about which we’re told:<\/p>\n

One of the world’s most celebrated cosmologists presents her breakthrough explanation of our origins in the multiverse.<\/p>\n

In recent years, Laura Mersini-Houghton’s ground-breaking theory, spectacularly vindicated with observational evidence, has turned the multiverse from philosophical speculation to one of the most compelling and credible explanations of our universe’s origins.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I spent a few minutes today looking through the book in the bookstore, trying to figure out where to find the details of the “spectacularly vindicated with observational evidence.” I didn’t see any references in the book, just a claim that in 2018 the author collaborated with Eleonora Di Valentino on showing vindication by observation. Presumably this is a reference to these<\/a> three<\/a> papers<\/a>, but who knows. I don’t see anything like that in a quick look at the papers. <\/p>\n

For many years I’ve spent a significant amount of time reading books and papers purporting to offer scientific evidence for a multiverse, trying to carefully understand the author’s arguments and write about them here (one example involved earlier claims by this author, see here<\/a>). Few physicists though seem to care that bogus claims and pseudo-science about the multiverse have overrun their field and become its public face. I’ve come to the conclusion that best to not waste more time on this.<\/p>\n

Update<\/strong>: Will Kinney reminds me that he wrote a paper about this, see here<\/a>, as well as here<\/a> and here<\/a> for more about the story of that paper. Also see another old posting, here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s a new book out this month, Before the Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe from the Multiverse, about which we’re told: One of the world’s most celebrated cosmologists presents her breakthrough explanation of our origins in the multiverse. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-multiverse-mania"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12997"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12997\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13002,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12997\/revisions\/13002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}