{"id":3839,"date":"2011-07-19T13:50:01","date_gmt":"2011-07-19T17:50:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=3839"},"modified":"2011-07-20T17:10:19","modified_gmt":"2011-07-20T21:10:19","slug":"questions-about-the-multiverse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=3839","title":{"rendered":"Questions About the Multiverse"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The August issue of Scientific American has the multiverse on the cover, with a skeptical feature article on the topic by George F. R. Ellis, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article.cfm?id=does-the-multiverse-really-exist\">Does the Multiverse Really Exist?<\/a>, which argues that heavily promoted multiverse research isn&#8217;t really testable and can&#8217;t explain much of anything.   Vilenkin and Tegmark respond with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article.cfm?id=multiverse-the-case-for-parallel-universe\">The Case for Parallel Universes<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I just took a look at some of the earliest postings on this blog about the multiverse from as far back as seven years ago (e.g. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=73\">here<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=359\">here<\/a>).   Things haven&#8217;t changed at all.  One might be tempted to criticize Scientific American for keeping this alive, but they just reflect the fact that this pseudo-science continues to have significant influence at the highest levels of the physics establishment.   The Perimeter Institute recently ran a conference on <a href=\"http:\/\/pirsa.org\/C11008\">Challenges for Early Universe Cosmology<\/a>, which was dominated by multiverse mania.  Unlike the case at SciAm, multiverse skepticism didn&#8217;t get prominent play at Perimeter.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Update:<\/strong>  For those of you who just can&#8217;t get enough multiverse, the Sci-Fi film <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foxsearchlight.com\/anotherearth\/\">Another Earth<\/a> opens Friday.  Click on &#8220;Parallel Worlds&#8221; for an explanation of &#8220;the theoretical physics behind the film.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The August issue of Scientific American has the multiverse on the cover, with a skeptical feature article on the topic by George F. R. Ellis, Does the Multiverse Really Exist?, which argues that heavily promoted multiverse research isn&#8217;t really testable &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=3839\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/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":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","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\/3839","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=3839"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3839\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3849,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3839\/revisions\/3849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}