On Thu, 8 Feb 2001, bivalve wrote:
> I will be helping lead a discussion on creation-related issues that
> brings up a couple of physics questions.
>
> One is on the general level of consensus regarding cosmological
> ideas. Do multiple universe models have much following, or just in the
> more popular press?
In my experience, the quantum-mechanical-measurement version of "many
universes" has a very tiny follow amongst physicists. (But some of those
followers do make a lot of noise.)
The inflationary-cosmology version of "many universes," while still
speculative, is taken more seriously by many more physicists. There are
several pieces of data, for which there is strong experimental support
(the universe is "flat", far-distant parts of the visible universe seem to
have been in thermal equilibrium in the past, and a few other pieces of
data), which are predicted/retrodicted by inflationary cosmology and are
NOT predicted by "standard" Big-Bang cosmology. It may be that future
developments in particle physics will explain this data without the need
for "inflation," but right now, inflation seems like the best suggestion
out there for explaining this data. If something like inflationary theory
is true, it suggests the existence of many different universes, universes
similar to our own, operating under the same general "Theory of
Everything", but possibly with different particle masses and different
nuclear/electromagnetic force strengths.
>
> My other question regards the accuracy of simplified descriptions of
tunneling. In Not a Chance, R. C. Sproul objects to a simple description
> of tunneling as an electron popping out of existence in one spot and
> appearing in another. If I remember correctly, wave functions do not
provide much of an absolute limit on the location of a particle (although
> the probability is quite low for distant places), so that in a way
> tunneling might be viewed as a low-probability region becoming a
> high-probability region rather than an actual example of
> non-continuity. I did not think much of his argument, but am wondering
how much the argument reflects an overly simple version of quantum ideas
> rather than a real issue.
Your description is much closer to QM's mathematical formalism than
Sproul's.
Loren Haarsma
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Feb 09 2001 - 11:05:30 EST