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For a heroic attempt to explain this article to laypeople, check out physicsmatt's comments over at Metafilter: "First, for maximum sense-making, read my previ

by JackC 12y ago

For a heroic attempt to explain this article to laypeople, check out physicsmatt's comments over at Metafilter: "First, for maximum sense-making, read my previous comments here, here, here, and here. I realize that's a lot, sorry. The Universe is complicated. Then, for what follows, recall that to a particle physicist such as myself, there is no difference between lengths and energies (or indeed, any other dimensional quantity). Length is inverse energy: very energetic phenomenon probe very small lengths ...." https://www.metafilter.com/142211/Multiverse-No-More-a-New-Theory-of-Scale#5703172 https://www.metafilter.com/142211/Multiverse-No-More-a-New-T...

antimagic 12y ago
Or don't - it's incredibly badly written, in the sense that it often descends into grammatical gibberish, even without worrying about the physics the gibberish is trying to describe.
- calinet6 12y ago
  There's really not that much to understand, and the details aren't that important unless you're living them. The question boils down to this: are we one of an infinite number of universes that popped into existence that just happened to have the right variables to be stable and result in life? (The anthropic principle, a statistical conclusion, and a philosophical mind-bender...) Or are we in a single universe whose properties are mathematically aligned in such a way as to be very unlikely to result from chance, even if repeated an infinite number of times? The details of this are interesting, but extremely numerous and complex: basically, Physicists are trying everything. The latter does not require the hand-wavey wishy-washy existence of an infinite number of non-observable extremely large things, and therefore garners more enthusiasm. However, if observations conclude that the parameters of our universe are in fact paradoxically perfect, then the idea that we're an evolved observer of one chance universe out of many holds water. Hence the intense research on how this whole universe thing works. Fun.

by JackC 12y ago

antimagic 12y ago

Or don't - it's incredibly badly written, in the sense that it often descends into grammatical gibberish, even without worrying about the physics the gibberish is trying to describe.

calinet6 12y ago
There's really not that much to understand, and the details aren't that important unless you're living them. The question boils down to this: are we one of an infinite number of universes that popped into existence that just happened to have the right variables to be stable and result in life? (The anthropic principle, a statistical conclusion, and a philosophical mind-bender...) Or are we in a single universe whose properties are mathematically aligned in such a way as to be very unlikely to result from chance, even if repeated an infinite number of times? The details of this are interesting, but extremely numerous and complex: basically, Physicists are trying everything. The latter does not require the hand-wavey wishy-washy existence of an infinite number of non-observable extremely large things, and therefore garners more enthusiasm. However, if observations conclude that the parameters of our universe are in fact paradoxically perfect, then the idea that we're an evolved observer of one chance universe out of many holds water. Hence the intense research on how this whole universe thing works. Fun.