marcus
Mar12-06, 08:11 PM
George Ellis has found an apparent mistake in Lenny Susskind's recent book "The Cosmic Landscape" about the multitude of string theory vacua and ideas of a multiverse.
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0603266
Ellis is an interesting figure, this thread has some background and comment on a recent article Ellis wrote for an Elsevier Handbook.
http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=911961#post911961
Ellis is co-author, with Stephen Hawking, of a well-known reference "The Large-Scale Structure of Spacetime"
Regarding Susskind, he posts the following note:
On horizons and the cosmic landscape
George F R Ellis
"Susskind claims in his recent book The Cosmic Landscape that evidence for the existence and nature of 'pocket universes' in a multiverse would be available via detailed study of the Cosmic Blackbody Background Radiation. I point out that apart from any other queries one might have about the chain of argument involved, this claim is invalid because it rests on a confusion between the nature of a particle horizon and an event horizon in cosmology."
Ellis gives this link to a passage of Susskind's book containing the questionable claim:
http://www.twbookmark.com/books/28/0316155799/chapter_excerpt22014.html
[my comment: this seems to be a decent way for the arxiv to work, no blogs or trackback mechanism needed---if you find an error, simply post a note on arxiv politely pointing it out]
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0603266
Ellis is an interesting figure, this thread has some background and comment on a recent article Ellis wrote for an Elsevier Handbook.
http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=911961#post911961
Ellis is co-author, with Stephen Hawking, of a well-known reference "The Large-Scale Structure of Spacetime"
Regarding Susskind, he posts the following note:
On horizons and the cosmic landscape
George F R Ellis
"Susskind claims in his recent book The Cosmic Landscape that evidence for the existence and nature of 'pocket universes' in a multiverse would be available via detailed study of the Cosmic Blackbody Background Radiation. I point out that apart from any other queries one might have about the chain of argument involved, this claim is invalid because it rests on a confusion between the nature of a particle horizon and an event horizon in cosmology."
Ellis gives this link to a passage of Susskind's book containing the questionable claim:
http://www.twbookmark.com/books/28/0316155799/chapter_excerpt22014.html
[my comment: this seems to be a decent way for the arxiv to work, no blogs or trackback mechanism needed---if you find an error, simply post a note on arxiv politely pointing it out]