In Search of the Multiverse: Parallel Worlds, Hidden Dimensions, and the Ultimate Quest for the Frontiers of Reality

Customer Reviews

Let’s first dispose, perhaps, of 2 small complaints, which apply to most of John Gribbin’s books: John’s irrepressible habit to include largely irrelevant biographical data in his texts – as in, in this book, Quote his draft thesis, typed up by his gilrlfriend Nancy Gore, whom he married the following year unquote or “he was born in Washington DC, on 11 November 1930”. Frankly – who needs to know such details? Another slightly grating habit is the belaboring of extremely elementary points – such as the author’s constant reminders of what “10 the power N” means – anyone who would have difficulty grasping this, even if they extraordinarily enough did not know it yet, but nevertheless read popular science books – would surely have got it the first time!

Now for the gist of the book. The book is an overview and analysis of the current state of play in our search for understanding our Universe, either as a unique Universe or as one within a Multiverse of Universes – where our Universe is one of many (a more technical, and in some ways narrower, overview of learned opinions on the subject ranging from strong acceptance to strong rejection of the concept(s) of the Multiverse is to be found in the book ‘Universe or Multiverse, edited by Bernard Carr)

John Gribbin’s book shines in many ways, but leaves some questions hanging and IMHO does not go far enough in certain areas. Commendably, he cites Edward Tryon’s work – a work that had been rejected out of hand by many eminent Physicists, because Tryon was way ahead of his time when he first described in the late sixties our Universe as the possible result of a rogue quantum fluctuation in a pre-existing environment. The reason for the rejection was that the inflationary scenario (as put forward by Alan Guth) was not yet understood – yet, when I discussed Tryon’s model with a couple of world-renowned Physicists as recently as 2005, several years after Alan Guth became famous, they still rejected Tryon’s ideas out of hand.

A couple of points that are mentioned almost in passing by John Gribbin would require book-length treatment, and some meta-results seem assumed rather than proven. For instance, he commendably indicates, almost in passing, that time is quantized (an idea astonishingly still controversial in some quarters) and without further ado sets the value of the time quantum at the Planck value. There is absolutely no evidence that the time quantum indeed has that value – the Planck time solely sets an upper boundary to a range of possible time quantum values – there is anyway likely one time quantum value per Universe within the Metaverse. However, if we plug the mass of the universe, roughly 10 to the power 58 grams, into Heisenberg’s equation describing a quantum fluctuation that can give rise to a Big Bang by risking to violate the duration limit of allowed existence of that fluctuation- the resulting value of the boundary time quantum is by many orders of magnitude smaller than the value of Planck time. This needs to be explored – Planck’s value may also be different in different Universes. In any event, it may depend in part of our definition of a time quantum. If by this is meant the smallest observable value, then Planck time does the job, but if we define it as a minimum incompressible value with real-world, ‘material’ consequences – such as a fluctuation giving rise to a whole Universe under a Tryon scenario – then this needs to be further explored.

Finally- Max Tegmark is a well-known proponent of mathematics as being the ultimate reality – and although John Gribbing cites Max Tegmark’s work several times, and in addition rightly says in the course of the text that ‘the truth lies in the equations’, he does not explore enough the explanatory and predictive power that pure mathematics lends our attempts to explain the Universe.

As for the conclusion – no spoiler here – I am a whit worried that the conclusion does not address entirely properly an issue it raises, that of backwards recurrence. Overall, a five-star effort, possibly better read in conjunction with Bernard Carr’s compilatory volume, but an excellent book in its own right.

23 of 27 people found the following review helpful
Reaching rather far . . . ., December 8, 2010 By  Patrick J. Callahan (La Crosse, WI USA) – See all my reviews
 Verified Purchase(What’s this?)

As with many of the popular cosmology books of recent years, the author begins by giving background. He recapitulates breakthroughs and major discoveries in the last few decades that bear on cosmology, to include the discovery and exploration of the cosmic microwave background.

His concept of the multiverse is not especially new, but is thoroughly and extensively analyzed. Of course, the multitude of universes discussed has a lot to do with quantum theory and the Schroedinger’s Cat paradox. With every binary decision — did the cat live or die?– the universe splits into two futures. One writer, Bernard Haisch, estimates that the minimal number of universes produced by this continual bifurnication would amount to 10 power 100 universes at a minimum. The total number of atoms in the universe is estimated as 10 power 54. Thus, this is a lot of universes, and is a lot for the average layman to swallow.

Another process that creates myriad universes has to do with M theory, or brane theory — an offshoot of superstring theory. We again get almost bewildering numbers. Moreover, John Gribbin begins using the word “infinite.” There may be infinite universes. The universe may extend spatially to infinity. To be sure, no one knows the spatial extent of the present universe, since our observations are limited by the speed of light amplified by the expansion of space since the Big Bang — an radius of about 20 billion light years from the observer. I would imagine the answer to the universe’s extension would be — “we don’t know, but it is really really big.” I myself would hesitate to jump to use the word “infinite.” I am a bit troubled by Mr. Gribbin’s utter confidence that his speculations are defensible. He is certainly self-assured — irritatingly so at times.

Superstring theory and M theory have their detractors, including the eminent Dr. Lee Smolin and others. One perennial problem with variants of string and brane theory is that they do not seem suceptible to demonstration or proof. It’s just possible that the researches using the Large Hadron Collider may offer indications as to whether string theory reflects reality, as opposed to being just an amazing mathematical construct. For example, if supersymmetry could be demonstrated. I suppose time will tell.

One problem with the multiverse concept, as I see it, is that each “budded off” universe is unreachable from any other. Even if we do have infinite co-existent universes, we cannot observe or identify any but our own. Again, this seems to make a demonstration of the multiverse concept impossible.

As an interested reader who enjoyed the book, I would see it as a very intriguing series of speculations. It certainly expands the possibilities of our cosmos and stretches the imagination. Infinite space and infinite time somehow do not seem terribly scientific to me — isn’t a major problem with the so-called “Theory of Everything” the emergence of infinities, which thereby make the math a kind of muddle? Perhaps other reviewers with more of a background in physics can make more of this than I.

So, the multiverse. The multiverse is essentially multiple universes. Gribbin goes through a bunch of the theories of how exactly the multiverse is structured, but the fact that our universe is not the only one is a certainty, thanks to quantum computers. Gribbin tackles each multiverse theory and explains how each one came about, and how much validity the theory really has when held up to what we now know about science, the universe, and quantum physics. I am not even going to attempt to describe them all here, but I will say that there were a couple theories of the multiverse that I disagree with, and that string theory is really appealing, and I can’t wait to see if scientific tests can prove any of it.

The idea of the multiverse is fascinating – there are essentially an infinite number of different universes, some vastly different from our own and some only a little different. So, I think that if you’re looking for an “intro” book into this subject, this is a good start. But for simplicity’s sake, I’m going to list my likes and dislikes about the book:

LIKES

~ Gribbin never assumes that you just know about thermodynamics, or quantum physics, or astronomy beyond our solar system, etc. He’s really good about giving background information to explain the theory he’s discussing.

~ The subject matter is so interesting and takes so much imagine that it was actually fun to read. Some science books, no matter how initially interesting, are a bore to read. Not the case here.

~ He comes up with a lot of analogies and metaphors to help you wrap your head around some of the really difficult concepts. He’s very good at helping you to visualize what he’s talking about.

~ He makes a lot of references to other scientists, books about these topics, and even sci-fi novels that talk about these topics. He also includes a “Further Reading” list in the back, which includes non-fiction as well as fiction.

~ There’s a glossary in the back, which I found really helpful.

~ Gribbin really seems to address a LOT of multiverse theories – even the outlandish theories that our universe is “fake”, like in the Matrix, or that our universe is the creation of some super-intelligent other species. I thought it was fun that he took the time to address even these theories, and talked about the science that disproves them or not.

DISLIKES

~ There were a couple terms that I thought should have been included in the glossary, such as “massless spin-2 boson” or his definition of the word “meta-universe”. It took me forever to figure out what he meant by that, because it was different than a multiverse.

~ I wish that there was an appendix or something that actually listed each theory discussed in the book, with a brief description of each one. It would be a nice reference tool.

This is one of those subjects in which I knew nothing about to start with, so it’s not as if I could claim that any of Gribbin’s information is inaccurate or wrong, but from what I can tell he does a really good job of presenting the theories clearly. He also usually points out flaws or issues with a particular theory and explains why, usually leading as a segway into the next theory. And he admits when he has on opinion about a subject, which I appreciate. In a way, by admitting his opinions or preferences for some of this information, it makes him seem less biased, not more.

Anyways, I’m rambling. This was a REALLY good book. It was only about 200 pages, and I read it pretty quickly. I did do a whole lot of underlining and note-taking, and even went on youtube to watch informational clips if I wasn’t really understanding a concept. In fact, two people I know already want to borrow it to read, but I may just buy a 2nd copy to lend out because there are pencil marks and post-its all over my copy. The whole realm of quantum physics and multiverse theories is still intensely interesting for me, and I’ve already purchased a couple more books in those areas to read. And I’m absolutely going to purchase some more of John Gribbin’s books.