English

Freak observers and the measure of the multiverse

High Energy Physics - Theory 2010-10-27 v2

Abstract

I suggest that the factor pjp_j in the pocket-based measure of the multiverse, Pj=pjfjP_j=p_j f_j, should be interpreted as accounting for equilibrium de Sitter vacuum fluctuations, while the selection factor fjf_j accounts for the number of observers that were formed due to non-equilibrium processes resulting from such fluctuations. I show that this formulation does not suffer from the problem of freak observers (also known as Boltzmann brains).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.hep-th/0611271,
  title  = {Freak observers and the measure of the multiverse},
  author = {Alexander Vilenkin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-th/0611271},
  year   = {2010}
}

Comments

6 pages, no figures; references added