What is the evidence for the multiverse?

[Chalnoth]

... Mirages do occur in nature. Superposition 'might be an exemption' unless I'm missing something here. Well ill set aside that MWI idea for now.

It is necessary to make additional assumptions for which there is zero evidence in order to get rid of MWI. Furthermore, quantum decoherence has been observed, and decoherence results in MWI.

 

[julcab12]

It is necessary to make additional assumptions for which there is zero evidence in order to get rid of MWI. Furthermore, quantum decoherence has been observed, and decoherence results in MWI.

Point taken. I'm just curious though. Are we just stating the obvious and make interpretation. Or are there some corrections (Perhaps a correction on my behalf).

Part of my disconnected thought somehow tells me that time is unstable in the QM-Quantum world and could lead to a visual illusion of sort, showing all possible rough glimpses of post-universes waiting to happen -at a certain phase. In short. We have 1 universe that is transforming or evolving all the time or in phases/moment rather than usual Everettian world. I'll stop here since it is against the rule to stress my personal imagination any further.

 

[Chalnoth]

Point taken. I'm just curious though. Are we just stating the obvious and make interpretation. Or are there some corrections (Perhaps a correction on my behalf).

Part of my disconnected thought somehow tells me that time is unstable in the QM-Quantum world and could lead to a visual illusion of sort, showing all possible rough glimpses of post-universes waiting to happen -at a certain phase. In short. We have 1 universe that is transforming or evolving all the time or in phases/moment rather than usual Everettian world. I'll stop here since it is against the rule to stress my personal imagination any further.

Time is a somewhat tricky concept in QM. Within QM, time is just a parameter. But we know from General Relativity that it doesn't make sense to treat time as just a parameter due to the curvature of space-time. This is at the root of the incompatibility between GR and QM, and it's not easy to resolve.

That said, it sounds like you're primarily talking about a problem that is generally considered to be dealt with through the mechanism of einselection:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einselection

 

[marcus]

The multiverse is a theory that the are countless universes.

What is the evidence for the existence of the multiverse?

On the general topic, Burton Richter (kind of an elder statesman in high energy physics) just posted a perspective piece with comment and outlook on a lot of topics
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1409.1196v1.pdf
Here's a quote:

== Richter, page 11, "some final thoughts" ==
...If you have seen the movie Particle Fever about the discovery of the Higgs boson, you have heard the theorists saying that the only choices today are between Super-symmetry and the Landscape. Don’t believe them. Super-symmetry says that every fermion has a boson partner and vice versa. That potentially introduces a huge number of new arbitrary constants which does not seem like much progress to me. However, in its simpler variants the number of new constants is small and a problem at high energy is solved. But, experiments at the LHC already seem to have ruled out the simplest variants.
The Landscape surrenders to perpetual ignorance. It says that our universe is only one of a near infinity of disconnected universes, each with its own random collection of force strengths and constants, and we can never observe or communicate with the others. We can never go further in understanding because there is no natural law that relates the different universes. The old dream of deriving everything from one constant and one equation is dead. There are two problems with the landscape idea. The first is a logic one. You cannot prove a negative, so you cannot say that there is no more to learn. The second is practical. If it is all random there is no point in funding theorists, experimenters, or accelerator builders. We don’t have to wait until we are priced out of the market, there is no reason to go on.
There is a problem here that is new, caused by the ever-increasing mathematical complexity of today’s theory...
=endquote=

 

[Chalnoth]

On the general topic, Burton Richter (kind of an elder statesman in high energy physics) just posted a perspective piece with comment and outlook on a lot of topics
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1409.1196v1.pdf
Here's a quote:

== Richter, page 11, "some final thoughts" ==
...If you have seen the movie Particle Fever about the discovery of the Higgs boson, you have heard the theorists saying that the only choices today are between Super-symmetry and the Landscape.

This is absurd. String theory landscape requires supersymmetry (supersymmetry was born out of string theory, and is required for the theory to not include tachyons). I have little confidence when he can't even get that basic of a fact correct.

 

[julcab12]

That said, it sounds like you're primarily talking about a problem that is generally considered to be dealt with through the mechanism of einselection:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einselection

Almost, but unlike einselection-pointer observer which proposes that all branches of the quantum state as equally real. Something tells me that splitting could be a visual illusory seen by observer as a consequence of unstable time jitters. It is like a smeared and diluted overlapping pictures of the events in a dynamic micro timescales. The same principle when we received light from galactic sources that once existed in a certain timescale as relics drawn in light.

The collapse is real in a phase sense and splitting is a visual mirage cause by the dynamic interaction viewed by an observer. It is just our visual limitation that appears as if it is splitting like mirages. It just happened or consequential when viewed things from a relational perspective.

 

[Chalnoth]

There's simply no reason to believe that all of the split states aren't real.

 

[Chronos]

I reflexively suggest there is no reason to believe all split states are 'real', but, that depends on how you define 'real'. I prefer to cling to testable predictions for now. Mathematics permits us to rule out the impossible, but, is a blunt instrument for discerning reality.

 

[Chalnoth]

I reflexively suggest there is no reason to believe all split states are 'real', but, that depends on how you define 'real'. I prefer to cling to testable predictions for now. Mathematics permits us to rule out the impossible, but, is a blunt instrument for discerning reality.

Yes, there is: you have to add unevidenced assumptions to make them not real.

 

[julcab12]

... Just out of curiosity. Can a relic effect(same as ancient light) be possible in Quantum world. Can time have an effect on the visual information seen by an observer? If no, then how. My mind see that picture of a universe that is transitional and as an observer we see tiny minute details of a universe once transformed in the past. Can the apparent splitting be a possible abstract visual relic and playing a trick on us or we stick to the obvious- "OK we have dynamic states. All of them happened in the same 'time' bec. that is what it appears to look like and we seem to have a good math for it."

Every time i read something on QM -M/P-verses-string papers. Part of my thoughts is asking "look closely on the time variable, isn't it weird that is very abstract- And please wipe your glass to see it clearly and look around you". Despite of my construction, I'm still very skeptical on that thought but fun though. lol.