Related papers: Multiverses and Cosmology: Philosophical Issues
Understanding the behavior of the universe at large depends critically on insights about the smallest units of matter and their fundamental interactions. Inflationary cosmology is a highly successful framework for exploring these…
In this speculative analysis, interdimensionality is introduced as the (co)existence of universes embedded into larger ones. These interdimensional universes may be isolated or intertwined, suggesting a variety of interdimensional intrinsic…
Did the universe have a beginning or does it exist forever, i.e. is it eternal at least in relation to the past? This fundamental question was a main topic in ancient philosophy of nature and the Middle Ages. Philosophically it was more or…
Recent developments in cosmology indicate that every history having a nonzero probability is realized in infinitely many distinct regions of spacetime. Thus, it appears that the universe contains infinitely many civilizations exactly like…
Multidimensionality of our Universe is one of the most intriguing assumption in modern physics. It follows naturally from theories unifying different fundamental interactions with gravity, e.g. M/string theory. The idea has received a great…
Popular multiverse models such as the one based on the string theory landscape require an underlying set of unexplained laws containing many specific features and highly restrictive prerequisites. I explore the consequences of relaxing some…
In cosmology, we would like to explain our observations and predict future observations from theories of the entire universe. Such cosmological theories make ontological assumptions of what entities exist and what their properties and…
A well-known topic within the philosophy of physics is the problem of fine-tuning: the fact that the universal constants seem to take non-arbitrary values in order for live to thrive in our Universe. In this paper we will talk about this…
The multi-measures model applied to cosmology has been recently shown to reproduce qualitatively the expected stages of the Universe evolution, along with some unexpected features. In this article, we continue its exploration with a…
We consider the properties of an ensemble of universes as function of size, where size is defined in terms of the asymptotic value of the Hubble constant (or, equivalently, the value of the cosmological constant). We assume that standard…
Modern observations based on general relativity indicate that the spatial geometry of the expanding, large-scale Universe is very nearly Euclidean. This basic empirical fact is at the core of the so-called "flatness problem", which is…
Cosmic inflation is envisioned as the ``most likely'' start for the observed universe. To give substance to this claim, a framework is needed in which inflation can compete with other scenarios and the relative likelihood of all scenarios…
We note that in general there exist two basic aspects in any branch of physics, including cosmology - one dealing with the attributes of basic constituents and forces of nature, the other dealing with how structures arise from them and how…
Inflationary cosmology attempts to provide a natural explanation for the flatness and homogeneity of the observable universe. In the context of reversible (unitary) evolution, this goal is difficult to satisfy, as Liouville's theorem…
Physics is facing contingency. Not only in facts but also in laws (the frontier becoming extremely narrow). Cosmic natural selection is a tantalizing idea to explain the apparently highly improbable structure of our Universe. In this brief…
The hypothesis that the Universe underwent a period of exponential expansion at very early times has become the most popular theory of the early Universe. Not only does it solve some of the problems of standard big bang cosmology, but it…
An unresolved question in inflationary cosmology is the assignment of probabilities to different types of events that can occur in the eternally inflating multiverse. We explore the possibility that the resolution of this "measure problem"…
A major challenge of interdisciplinary description of complex system behaviour is whether real systems of higher complexity levels can be understood with at least the same degree of objective, "scientific" rigour and universality as…
We present several philosophical ideas emerging from the studies of complex systems. We make a brief introduction to the basic concepts of complex systems, for then defining "abstraction levels". These are useful for representing…
``One could imagine that as a result of enormously extended astronomical experience, the entire universe consists of countless identical copies of our Milky Way, that the infinite space can be partitioned into cubes each containing an…