The Hidden Reality_ Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos - Brian Greene [158]
A number of research groups have since suggested possible ways of skirting the problem. Guth and Farhi, joined by Jemal Guven, found that by creating the inflationary seed through a quantum tunneling process (similar to what we discussed in the context of the Landscape Multiverse) the white hole singularity can be avoided; but the probability for the quantum tunneling process to happen is so fantastically small that there’s essentially no chance of its happening over timescales that anyone would consider worth contemplating. A group of Japanese physicists, Nobuyuki Sakai, Ken-ichi Nakao, Hideki Ishihara, and Makoto Kobayashi, showed that a magnetic monopole—a hypothetical particle that has either the north pole or the south pole of a standard bar magnet—might catalyze inflationary expansion, also avoiding singularities; but after nearly forty years of intense searching, no one has yet found a single one of these particles.*
As of today, then, the summary is that the door to creating new universes remains open, but only barely. Given the proposals’ heavy reliance on hypothetical elements, future developments may well shut this door permanently. But if they don’t—or, perhaps, if subsequent work makes a stronger case for the possibility of universe creation—would there be motivation to proceed? Why create a universe if there’s no way to see it, or interact with it, or even know for sure that it was created? Andrei Linde, famous not just for his deep cosmological insights but also for his flair for mock drama, has noted that the allure of playing god would simply prove irresistible.
I don’t know that it would. Admittedly, it would be thrilling to have so thoroughly grasped nature’s laws that we could reenact the most pivotal of all events. I suspect, however, that by the time we can seriously consider universe creation—if that time ever comes—our scientific and technical advancements would have made available so many other spectacular undertakings, whose results we could not just imagine but truly experience, that the intangible nature of universe creation would make it much less interesting.
The appeal would surely be stronger were we to learn how to manufacture universes that we could see or even interact with. For “real” universes, in the usual sense of a universe constituted from the standard ingredients of space, time, matter and energy, we don’t yet have any strategy for doing so that’s compatible with the laws of physics as we currently understand them.
But what if we set aside real universes and consider virtual ones?
The Stuff of Thought
A couple of years ago, I had a bout of feverish flu that came with hallucinations far more vivid than any ordinary dream or nightmare. In one that has stayed with me, I’d find myself with a group of people sitting in a sparse hotel room, locked in a hallucination within the hallucination. I was absolutely certain that days and weeks went by—until I was thrust back into the primary hallucination, where I’d learn, shockingly, that hardly any time had passed at all. Each time I felt myself drifting back to the room, I resisted strenuously, since I knew from previous iterations that once there I’d be swallowed whole, unable to recognize the realm as false until I found myself back in the primary hallucination, where I’d again be distraught to learn that what I’d thought real was illusory. Periodically, when the fever subsided, I’d pull out one level further, back to ordinary life, and realize that all those translocations had been taking place within my own swirling mind.
I don’t usually learn much from having a fever.