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?