
How to map the multiverse - robg
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227061.200-how-to-map-the-multiverse.html?full=true
======
benreesman
Superstring theory is a failure. The moment that you resort to the 'anthropic
principle' to select one from out of more than 10^500 metastable vacua, you've
given up falsifiability and thus any claim that what you're doing is science.
It is interesting to note that superstring theory has not only failed abjectly
in every way, but has nonetheless established such a death-grip over the
apparatus of scientific funding and publication that no competing theory is
given any practical chance of success.

It seems that many if not most superstring advocates would rather give up on
the very definition of science than admit they have completely wasted their
careers, down a Calabi-Yau shaped rabbit hole with no bottom and NO BLOODY
PREDICTIONS.

That's right folks, superstring theory doesn't _predict_ anything. It can't be
falsified, because even if the superpartners don't show up at the LHC (they
won't), they'll just tweak the parameters and move the energy scale around and
away from the LHC's capabilities.

This is a crime.

~~~
jerf
While I'm not necessarily ready to write off string theory, it is rather
disturbing to see putative scientists declaring that since this as-yet
unproven theory (and I do mean rather thoroughly unproven) declares that there
may be a multiverse, well, then, there must be.

Brian Greene has always spoken rather more confidently than his evidence
really permitted (even as I enjoyed his book), but this is taking it to the
next level. String theory remains a conjecture, and this is nothing more than
conjecture built on conjecture. Passing it off as truth is quite unscientific.
(But... very New Scientific. I've lost almost all respect for the publication.
The quoted do deserve at least a bit of consideration for the possibility that
the New Science article is distorting their quotes for sensationalism or due
to lack of understanding by the author.)

------
russell
This article has some thing that I didnt know before, and I have a pretty high
interest in the area. The 10^500 possible universes in string theory can be
narrowed to those that allow eternal inflation and a baby universes can tunnel
around in the multiverse landscape until it comes to a place that allows
eternal inflation. The tunneling causes gravity waves, polarizing the photons
of the cosmic microwave background. There are other tests too.

------
TweedHeads
Here is a hypothesis:

Our universe is like a splattered egg, expanded in the first seconds after the
big bang, but won't expand forever and won't contract either.

Now walk away from the egg a hundred yards, then splat another egg.

Yes, there can be many universes as we know then, they are just way apart, in
the same dimension.

No need for strings, black holes or ten dimensions.

