Stephen Hawking's final paper bursts the multiverse bubble with a Holographic Universe theory

[Judi Lynn]

Michael Irving
May 2nd, 2018

Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking passed away earlier this year, but his legacy to science will live on. His final theory on the origin of the universe has now been published, and it offers an interesting departure from earlier ideas about the nature of the "multiverse."

Ideas about how the universe came to exist the way we see it today have been adapted and built on for decades. The new paper, authored by Hawking and Professor Thomas Hertog, adds to the literature with a new understanding of a theory known as eternal inflation.

After the Big Bang kickstarted the universe, it expanded exponentially for a brief fraction of a fraction of a second. When that inflationary period ended, the universe continued to expand at a much slower rate. But according to the eternal inflation model, quantum fluctuations mean that in some regions of the universe, that rapid inflation never stopped. That results in a gigantic "background" universe full of an infinite number of smaller pocket universes – including the one we live in.

"The usual theory of eternal inflation predicts that globally our universe is like an infinite fractal, with a mosaic of different pocket universes, separated by an inflating ocean," Hawking has previously said. "The local laws of physics and chemistry can differ from one pocket universe to another, which together would form a multiverse. But I have never been a fan of the multiverse. If the scale of different universes in the multiverse is large or infinite the theory can't be tested."

More:
https://newatlas.com/stephen-hawking-final-paper-eternal-inflation/54473/

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

1. Ridiculous... Hawking is SO overrated!!

[Buzz cook]

2. Isn't the bubleverse

a variation on the multiverse?

[still_one]

3. It seems somewhat arbritary, and at best a very partial theory which would be difficult to prove,

Isn't the universe composed of around 4% matter and 24% dark matter?

This doesn't satisfactorily explain was their something before the "big bang", but they don't concern themselves with that by saying that could never be determined, or what is the universe expanding into?

There has to be something deeper than just random particles expanding and bouncing off each other

human perception and perhaps the weirdness that exists within the quantum world where things don't become "real" until they are observed