An elegant multiverse? Professor Brian Greene considers the possibilities

You might think it's hard to have a conversation with theoretical physicist Brian Greene. His research specialty is superstring theory, the hypothesis that everything in the universe is made up of miniscule, vibrating strands of energy. Luckily for an interviewer, Greene has a knack for explaining difficult concepts to non-scientists.

His first book, the best-selling The Elegant Universe, which explains the quest to unify all the laws of nature, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and led to an award-winning PBS series. He is a co-founder of the World Science Festival, an annual event in June whose aim is to make "the esoteric understandable and the familiar fascinating," which pretty much sums up Greene's modus operandi.

"Science is a living, breathing, exciting, evolving subject," he says. "A large part of my motivation in reaching out to a general audience is to show people that science is not this finished subject where all of the results are in these thick textbooks that you lug around when you're taking a science course."

Greene, 48, grew up on the Upper West Side and spent many a rainy day at the Hayden Planetarium, when it was a dark and musty place and not the shiny glass cube it is today. "That definitely played a part in my excitement for these ideas." But it was the pure beauty of mathematics that really grabbed him.

"As a kid I was playing with numbers all the time," he says. "And when I learned that those numbers could be more than a game, those numbers could actually describe stuff that was out there in the real world, that's when I was hooked for good."

His latest book, The Hidden Reality, explores another mystery: whether there are other universes beyond ours.

Q. Your new book talks about the concept of a multiverse. Can you explain what that means?

When we hear the word "universe," we think that means everything: every star, every galaxy, everything that exists. But in physics, we've come upon the possibility that what we've long thought to be everything may actually only be a small part of something that is much, much bigger. The word "multiverse" refers to that bigger expanse, the new totality of reality, and our universe would be just a piece of that larger whole.

Q. So what kinds of other worlds might there be?

Scientists have many proposals. In some, the other universes have the same laws of physics and the same particles making up matter. So except perhaps for some environmental differences, pretty much what we see here is what happens there. In some multiverse proposals, the other universes could be radically different from what we know, the particles could be different, the laws of physics could appear different. And in others—ones that frankly don't compel me—even the kinds of mathematics that govern the physics in those realms might be different from the math that we are familiar with.

Q. Do you think that one of the multiverse theories will be proven in your lifetime?

You never know when that big breakthrough is going to happen. I could come to work tomorrow, go to the website that posts all of the physics papers that people completed in the previous day, and there could be the paper that shows how to test string theory, or how to test some of these multiverse proposals. Could it be tomorrow? Could it be 10 years from now, or a hundred years? That's part of what the excitement is.

Read more: http://news.columbia.edu/briangreene


Related news:
News Flash: NASA to Launch New Technology Today to Search for Parallel Universes
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2011/03/-update-nasa-to-launch-new-today...

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• multiverse
• quantum
• mechanics
• string
• theory

[TheKcsmithy]

brilliant video

[rodswebdesign]

great video thanks

[willbirful]

i enjoyed this vid

[handbagsatdusk]

May I ask, 'where does the universe end?' and what is beyond its 'endness'

May I also ask, If I have a grain of salt, there is obviously half a grain of that same salt grain, so if I keep halving the grain, how long can I halve it for?

Thanks in advance

[gadionson1]

heheh ..

[painxtreme]

@RobertSeattle Haha, If only Einstein had starred in Casablanca. Had he trusted his math, think of that...that would be almost as good as the "Theory of Everything". The constant is a nice tool, but if only he had not put it into the theory, he would have also nailed the Expanding Universe. Well, actually, he did nail it, he just wouldn't accept it. Still the greatest. Until we have someone close to that, "Everything" may continue to elude us.

Raise your hand if you're annoyed by constants :)

[painxtreme]

One of my best friends is the Chair of Astrophysics at a local University, and his assertion is No matter how intelligent Green or Kaku may be (and I agree on the ego point I read), they have had Thirty (30) years to do something other than continue to mold the Science to fit the Hypothesis...it hasn't reached the criteria for Theory in the Scientific Method. There will be a lot of String Hypothesis Physicists looking for work before long Im afraid. It's a truly pretty idea, though.

[PhysiologicAli]

Now that is science!:)

[qixxxz]

Greens parents should line up all his collage teachers and slap them and demand their money back. Kaku and Tyson's also. If their brains where as big as their ego's, we could fly to Andromeda on a drop of sea water by now.

[FallofDarkness55]

Brian Greene is a genius!!!!!!!!!! along with his colleagues, michio kaku, leonard susskind, ed witten, and lisa randall to name a few.