Thursday, October 27, 2005

Monoverse, Polyverse, Omniverse

Steve Luttrell wandered through and left three great comments to three different posts. One is a book recommendation, which I hope to get and review sometime. Another is an astute question about "observers," which is way over my head.

His third comment asks: "Are these the only two alternative possibilities? Do you really need a multiverse to overwhelm the small probability of life within each separate monoverse?" Then he apologizes for asking questions instead of providing answers.

I don't have answers either, but I have something that makes it a little easier to ask questions: a glossary. Here it is:

  • Monoverse: a reality where time has a beginning and is linear and physical constants are the same throughout space. By definition, there is only one monoverse.
  • Polyverse: a reality where time is linear but space may be discontinuous, with different physical constants in different regions. These different regions "bubble" off into separate monoverses. The number of bubbles may be finite or countably infinite.
  • Cycloverse: a reality were time is linear but space keeps collapsing and exploding again with new physical constants in each cycle. There is a countably infinite number of such cycles.
  • Omniverse: a reality where time branches into separate timelines at every quantum possibility. David Deutsch writes about this option in The Fabric of Reality. There is an uncountable infinity of timelines in an omniverse.
It should be impossible to directly detect what kind of a universe we live in, but the so-called "anthropic principle" provides some indirect evidence that is worth considering. Martin Rees explains the odds against having the physical constants that we do in Just Six Numbers. In my opinion, we can rule out a purely materialistic monoverse on statistical grounds.

A cycloverse or polyverse should randomly produce a space-time with the right physical constants for biological life. The "weak anthropic principle" would then be sufficient to explain why the universe seems to be "fine tuned" for our existence. If it weren't just right, we wouldn't be here to notice.

If the weak anthropic principle is sufficient to explain the observable evidence, then there is no reason to look to God or the omniverse for answers. But does the weak anthropic principle do the job?

7 comments:

Unknown said...

If the weak anthropic principle is sufficient to explain the observable evidence, then there is no reason to look to God or the omniverse for answers. But does the weak anthropic principle do the job?

Not the way that you downplay the significance, no... but the way that it actually appiles, yes.

sbharti said...

I dont know what ur orignial doubt was!

1)..that current theory of universe is not sufficient to describe the world, and rather solving problem its simply creating confusion?
3)..that the anthropic principle is better because it simply starts from results and not causes?


I believe in latter.
For, results existing are finite (hence causes, converging relationship), however, results from causes are infinnite (diverging relationship).

amateur said...

I've seen the term "polyverse" being used with a different meaning.

The definition in the post is, in Max Tegels taxonomy, a Level I multiverse. Such a universe is generally predicted by cosmic inflation theories.

Some string theories allow for gravity to work across branes, but unless information exchange is possible then it still would classify as a multiverse.

A polyverse, on the other hand, allows interaction between the universes. They would allow things like time travel and meeting an alternate you in an alternate reality etc.

Another way of putting it is that a multiverse has parallel realities while a polyverse has interconnected realities. An omniverse has branching realities.

Don't know that terminology is necessarily correct or anything, but thought it would be interesting to share!

Nathan Coppedge said...

Re: "amateur": "A polyverse, on the other hand, allows interaction between the universes. They would allow things like time travel and meeting an alternate you in an alternate reality etc...".

I was publishing a book I put together very quickly recently related to polyverses, and my intuition was similar to your assessment.

A 'universe' has poetry and tautologies.
A 'polyverse' ('diverse' perhaps, pointing towards obsolescence of the entire concept of enumerating...anyway) a polyverse is united like a universe (by laws like poetry or tautologies except more advanced), only the difference is that the laws link multiple universes. Thus, the laws of the appropriate type in the case of the polyverse actually arbitrate how the world works. Thus, if the laws relate to some part and not another, or if there is creativity involved in deciding the laws (as there often may be with more complexity than mere poetry or tautology), then we get time travel, immortality, teleportation, perpetual motion machines, magical invisibility, etc. These are allowable because there is enough formalization to guarantee flexibility that could not exist under tautology. The respectable things in the 'universe' are dirty by comparison (history, arguments, war, medicine, non-spiritualized science, etc.).

Nathan Coppedge said...

A 'cycloverse' is simply a world with two or more dimensions of time, permitting lossless returns to origin. Otherwise, the term becomes meaningless, because true cycles would not actually occur.

An 'omniverse' might be best defined as a world with infinite variety, that permits entities to form educated evolutions based on knowledge of some plausibly infinite sample within the variety. It is a rejection of logical atomism in favor of ersatz categorical and meta-categorical variations. Terms would be open to radical re-definition, whether or not the universe was perceived to be infinite.

Nathan Coppedge said...

If the cycloverse does to the polyverse what the polyverse does to the universe, the result is an omniverse rule: if there is only one category for every world (by equating 'category' with 'world' exclusively), then what diverges in a polyverse is a fundamental fraction of what diverges in a cycloverse. And if three variables emerge, and each variable is some fraction the previous variable (say, in relation to phi, or a spiral, or form itself, as Whitehead and Russell said), then all that remains of the variables in the omniverse is unreal in the universe, but say, 1/2 real in the polyverse, and 1/4 real in the cycloverse, thus creating a maximum distance of two units of worlds...

So, because the variables are based on the categories, which are the worlds, in effect due to the distance rule, the omniverse would be the opposite of the polyverse, and the cycloverse would be the opposite of the universe... At least in the sense that they exchange variables... So, for example, what is a variable in the omniverse is in fact a world in the polyverse, if our definitions are in correct order...

1. What is a world in the universe is a variable in the cycloverse.
2. What is a variable in the universe is a world in the cycloverse.
3. What is a world in the polyverse is a variable in the omniverse.
4. What is a variable in the polyverse is a world in the omniverse.

And the remaining are already described here.

Nathan Coppedge said...

Of course, even if the definitions are incorrect, or in the incorrect order, we can substitute 1-, 2-, 3-, and 4- dimensional typologies for those worlds, and leave the perfection of the definition unsolved.

Unless of course you want to buy my book which will be released soon (very cheap, only about $7 US).

The title is: Grand-Unified Theories of Meaning: Ideas Gleaned from N-Dimensional Polyverses.

The discussions in the book are very similar to the type of writing I'm doing here, only more categorically formal.