Researchers Find Evidence of Other Universes Lurking in the Cosmic Background

Just when the search for exoplanets looked like the undisputed fashionable field of study for 2010, the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is stepping to the forefront of astronomy and cosmology. Last month, it was Oxford’s Roger Penrose claiming that he’d found evidence of a cyclical universe in patterns of concentric circles in the CMB, suggesting our universe is just one of many that have come before it (and will come after it). Now, another group of researchers are claiming the CMB contains evidence of other universes that exist concurrently (and outside of) our own.

The new evidence, put forth by a group of researchers at University College London, is based upon the model of “eternal inflation,” which is predicated on the idea that our universe is part of a larger and ever-expanding multiverse. Our universe is contained in a kind of cosmic bubble that exists alongside other universes contained in their own bubbles, and in these universes the rules of physics could be far different than in our own.

www.popsci.com...


More evidence that reality is infinite.

Any thoughts?

Amazing.
Every time we learn something new, a thousand different questions pop up.
I love it.

It wouldn't surprise me to learn that there are in fact many or infinite universes. Maybe one day humans will be able to visit these other ones.

I think we should be sending some more super high tech probes out after the Voyagers, rigged up with all kinds of telescopes and detectors and stuff.

reply to post by Kashai
I can't even begin to get a handle on this stuff!

We live in exciting times.

Seems like Hindu cosmology was right though. They've been talking about innumerable multiverses and universes existing within and without of this particular universe, as well as the cyclical natures of these universes.

Mankind may have known what these scientists are just now finding out, and thousands of years before them.

Back in December 2010 when this was news, I believe it kicked off this ten page thread.
(Hard to be sure, but worth a read anyway)

Astronomers Find First Evidence Of Other Universes
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Edit - is anyone else having trouble with the link to popsci? Doesnt work for me.
If so, the work by Feeney et al., is also discussed in this other thread that has a link to another article describing it...
www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by alfa1


My apologies if you are having a problem with the link, here is the full article....

Just when the search for exoplanets looked like the undisputed fashionable field of study for 2010, the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is stepping to the forefront of astronomy and cosmology. Last month, it was Oxford’s Roger Penrose claiming that he’d found evidence of a cyclical universe in patterns of concentric circles in the CMB, suggesting our universe is just one of many that have come before it (and will come after it). Now, another group of researchers are claiming the CMB contains evidence of other universes that exist concurrently (and outside of) our own.

The new evidence, put forth by a group of researchers at University College London, is based upon the model of “eternal inflation,” which is predicated on the idea that our universe is part of a larger and ever-expanding multiverse. Our universe is contained in a kind of cosmic bubble that exists alongside other universes contained in their own bubbles, and in these universes the rules of physics could be far different than in our own.



Science, Clay Dillow, astronomy, big bang, consmic microwave background, cosmology, multiverses, SpaceIf the eternal inflation theory is correct, it follows that our universe and other universes have likely collided in the past as they violently bounced around the larger multiverse, and those collisions should be evident in the CMB (the cosmic microwave background is a leftover from the Big Bang, and thus is of interest to astronomers and cosmologists for the long historical record it contains – if researchers know what to look for).

The University College team went looking for “cosmic bruises” in the CMB that indicate places where other universes collided with our own at some point, and it claims to have found them in data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), which has been measuring temperature differences in the CMB over the past decade. If indeed the spots are found to be “cosmic bruises,” it would lend a lot of credence to the idea that there are other universes out there that at some point collided with our own.

But that’s a big “if.” If the earlier CMB findings by Penrose are any indicator, proving or disproving these sorts of claims rooted in WMAP data is extremely difficult. Fortunately, as Tech Review points out, the ongoing Planck mission should soon provide a much better picture of the CMB to astronomers, allowing them to hopefully prove or disprove some of these cosmological theories. Until then, the time is ripe to attribute statistical anomalies in the vast CMB data set to complex cosmological theories.

For the cosmically curious, check out the University College, et al. paper here (PDF). And feel free to assert your own theory of universal origins in the comments below.

[Technology Review

www.popsci.com...

If Our Universe truly is the result of the colision of two other Universes or "bubbles", this means the energy created during the Big Bang was a transfer from the two others, creating incredible heat loss everytime such creation occurs. If all the Energy inside our own Bubble comes from these two other Bubbles, this clearly is a rise in Entropy in the MultiVerse or the main Universe where all the bubbles are created by collision of other bubbles. With time, this means the multiverse is subject to Entropy just like our own Universe is doomed to lose all of its energy able to do work via heat loss. If there is rise in Entropy in the Multiverse, this means that there is time in the multiverse and that there was a begining at wich Entropy started from. Now, I suppose we could say that the entire multiverse is only a Bubble of its own in an even bigger Bubble, but a begining must have occured at some point. We just pushed it back.

Spectacular; thank you for bringing this to ATS. I read this off site a week or so ago, in my on going study of the multiverse topic; there has way more support for this theory, than the currently accepted singular universe theory. Physics and everything else related have been pointing in that direction for a long time; it's nice to see that concept grow, whether that gets us a definitive theory of everything answer; or raises even more questions will wait to be seen. If we end up just being bacteria in petri dishes stacked on top of each other...I suppose we have to hope our shelf life lasts long enough; to know if the petri owner is aware that we are aware

I knew it!! I had zero supporting evidence, but I KNEW IT! WTG Science!
2nd

What a great thread op!!! If the Big Bang theory is in fact true, and our universe is expanding. You have to think about the space our Universe is expanding in, and if there are others Universes in it.

S&F

Ive been reading Steven Hawkings The Grand Design lately. slowly but surely getting through it.
in it he says 'scientists' now believe there are as many as 10 to the power of 500 (dont know how to get that to show right here) universes! 10 with 500 0's after it, each (possibly) having its own set of laws of physics.
to put that in perspective...

he says, if we were mapping the laws of each of those universes at a rate of (memory is fuzzy here) 1 per sec OR 1 per min (something along those lines) from the moment of our big bang, we would only be at 10 to the power of 30 currently - 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Possible evidence of other universes. Amazing. Theoretical physics is the way forward. It's real sci-fi stuff but that's what we're up to now. Multiple universes and possibly dimensions.

M-theory.

Dr Michio Kaku: M-Theory is defined in eleven dimensional space time with ten dimensions of space and one dimension of time. So M-Theory only has one time. We believe that a multiverse of universes exist like bubbles floating in Nothing. Each bubble forms as a quantum fluctuation in Nothing. We feel that as this bubble forms its matter is dominated by strings and membranes which create musical notes which we see as particles of the universe.

forums.philosophyforums.com...

reply to post by watchitburn


A multi-verse. Nice. What if it could be like the movie "THE ONE" with Jet Li. We could meet ourselves in these other universes and sap the strength by killing ourselves... Or switch lives kind of like Fringe.

reply to post by Kashai


I've been waiting 2 more years since this concept first came to light publicly for some form of confirmation regarding a multiverse containing billions of Bubble-verses.

The reason my hopes were high for this is that I have Seen such a thing in my meditation practices. Now I know that sounds stupid to most sciencey types, but I have written about this a few times on ATS in my almost 10 years of membership here.... proof that I am not just jumping on the bandwagon now.

I also saw that when two Bubble-verses touch, they release massive amounts of energy in a Big Bang-like scenario, which I called the birthing of a new Bubbleverse in my previous posts.

Last night I watched one of the Universe documentaries hosted by S. Hawking in which he theorised that the Universe came into being without Cause, just as Protons appear and disappear, and some times to reappear elsewhere.

I had to write to him offering the above scenario to see if he thinks it is possible that Our 'Universe' could come into existence in this fashion. Now I await his response, if there is to be one.

Thank You OP for sharing this information here today.

Finally a decent post that not talking about bloody guns! or some idiot trying to piece the most abstract clues to make some sort of "Sign"

reply to post by allbab


Your post made me think of this so I figured I should post the link in case you haven't read it.

The Last Question by Isaac Asimov

It's a very good short story and was Asimov's personal favorite.

Recent measurements (c. 2001) by a number of ground-based and balloon-based experiments, including MAT/TOCO, Boomerang, Maxima, and DASI, have shown that the brightest spots are about 1 degree across. Thus the universe was known to be flat to within about 15% accuracy prior to the WMAP results. WMAP has confirmed this result with very high accuracy and precision. We now know that the universe is flat with only a 0.5% margin of error. This suggests that the Universe is infinite in extent; however, since the Universe has a finite age, we can only observe a finite volume of the Universe. All we can truly conclude is that the Universe is much larger than the volume we can directly observe.

Further reading

You know we used to call the Milky Way,The Universe" ......

OOH!! I've been waiting for these results. Thanks for posting.

Absolutely LOVE M-theory!! UC London's evidence alone doesn't support parallel universes, but a second study, by the Planck satellite is collecting radiation data that can be used with the heat signatures from London's findings to tell us what's up.

Everyone keep your fingers crossed!!

Originally posted by JLO1986
reply to post by watchitburn

 

A multi-verse. Nice. What if it could be like the movie "THE ONE" with Jet Li. We could meet ourselves in these other universes and sap the strength by killing ourselves... Or switch lives kind of like Fringe.

i met the other mes and we did battle heroically i washappy to escape with my life. well this life anyways. the good news is some of the other mes are way dorkier then i.

reply to post by YoungSoul

Don't get too excited quite yet.

However, the results from our simulations do not agree with those presented by Gurzadyan and Penrose. On the contrary we obtain a substantially larger variance in our simulations, to the extent that the observed WMAP sky maps are fully consistent with the LCDM model as measured by these statistics.

arxiv.org...

However, we find that this variation is entirely expected in a sky which contains the usual CMB anisotropies. In other words, properly simulated Gaussian CMB data contain just the sorts of variations claimed. Gurzadyan & Penrose have not found evidence for pre-Big Bang phenomena, but have simply re-discovered that the CMB contains structure.

arxiv.org...

We reassess the statistical significance of those circles by comparing with Monte Carlo simulations of the CMB sky with realistic modeling of the anisotropic noise in WMAP data. We find that the circles are not anomalous and that all three groups are consistent at 3sigma level with a Gaussian CMB sky as predicted by inflationary cosmology model.

arxiv.org...