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originally posted by: projectvxn
a reply to: BrianFlanders
Its a good thing your feelings don't matter.
Hawking was a brilliant man whose whole life was devoted to understanding the most extreme phenomena in the universe.
I, for one, will be happy to peruse his latest and last paper.
originally posted by: silo13
a reply to: gortex
"A Smooth Exit from Eternal Inflation?"
So he died to prove his paper right?
(/sarcasm)
The usual theory of inflation breaks down in eternal inflation. We derive a dual description of eternal inflation in terms of a deformed Euclidean CFT located at the threshold of eternal inflation. The partition function gives the amplitude of different geometries of the threshold surface in the no-boundary state. Its local and global behavior in dual toy models shows that the amplitude is low for surfaces which are not nearly conformal to the round three-sphere and essentially zero for surfaces with negative curvature. Based on this we conjecture that the exit from eternal inflation does not produce an infinite fractal-like multiverse, but is finite and reasonably smooth.
link.springer.com...
The new Hawking-Hertog assessment indicates that there can only be universes that have the same laws of physics as our own. That conjecture means that our Universe is typical and so observations we make from our viewpoint will be meaningful in developing our ideas of how other universes emerged.
Mind-bending as these ideas are, they will be of real help to physicists as they develop a more complete theory of how the Universe came into being, according to Prof Hertog.
"The laws of physics that we test in our labs did not exist forever. They crystallised after the Big Bang when the universe expanded and cooled. The kind of laws that emerge depends very much on the physical conditions at the Big Bang. By studying these we aim to get a deeper understanding of where our physical theories come from, how they arise, and whether they are unique."
One tantalising implication of the findings, according to Prof Hertog, is that it might help researchers detect the presence of other universes by studying the microwave radiation left over from the Big Bang - though he says that he does not think it will be possible to hop from one universe to another.
www.bbc.co.uk...