From: Glenn Morton (glennmorton@entouch.net)
Date: Mon Sep 08 2003 - 21:13:36 EDT
Hi Brian,
>-----Original Message-----
>From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu]On
>Behalf Of Brian Harper
>Sent: Monday, September 08, 2003 1:50 PM
>Look at it this way, if you are going to select then
>there must be something to select from. If all the
>universes have the same laws etc then there is
>nothing to select from.
>
>Everett does not satisfy these conditions.
One needs a correction here. Some versions of the many-world's hypothesis
actually do have selection:
"Natural selection of 'favored' universes seems the stuff of science
fiction. However the American cosmologist Lee Smolin conjectures that the
multiverse could display the effects of heredity and selection. When a black
hole collapses, he speculates that another universe sprouts from its
interior, creating a new expanse of space and time disjoint from our won.
Small universes, in which there was too little space or time to form many
black holes, would not leave many progeny. Nor, he argues, would even a
large universe if its physics prohibited stars from ever terminating as
black holes."
"Smolin then adds a new twist-the physical laws governing the daughter
universe many differ from those in its parent, but only slightly. Since the
number of progeny a universe has depends on the laws prevailing within it,
there is a selection pressure. Many generations, or many iterations, would
lead to a 'takeover' by the universes that generate the most numerous
progeny. These would be the ones governed by laws that allowed the largest
number of black holes to form." Martin Rees, Before the Beginning, (Reading,
Mass: Helix Books, 1997), p. 249-250
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