[Sethomas]

It really frustrates me that so many physicists take the multiverse idea seriously. It's such an odd, off-the-wall explanation for quantum probability that people eat it up just for its weirdness. Whenever string theory or any other purported Theory of Everything sees a place where alternate universes could serve a function, they throw it in like it's a viable idea even though it takes the origin of matter as a negligible variable.

I'm not even convinced either way that multiverses are existent or not, but even with CERN I doubt it'll see a disprovable hypothesis in our lifetime. Hence, talking about it seriously is pretty worthless at this stage. As theapportioner pointed out to me, the attention garnered by string theory itself is causing a lot of practical physicists to lose patience, and talking about invisible universes centuries away from any form of proof or disproof only exacerbates matters.

Mostly, I see the multiverse theory as a grave physicists are digging for themselves. The origin of matter is THE question, right beside the unification of the four forces of nature, that is fucking over everyones minds in the higher eschelons. To completely write off the subject and say that a new universe forms every time there's a 50/50 chance that you fart just to accomodate each possibility, is quite akin to slapping the real world in the face when you don't even have an arm to slap with.

"That would be an even bigger headline than the black holes. It could be that there is a whole new universe a millimetre away from our heads but at right-angles to the three dimensions that are here," Dr Cox said.

This line in particular pisses me off. Given that he seems to be a doctor of physics, I'm quite sure that he knows shit tons more on the subject than me. Still, what it seems to be is that he was given the prompt "talk about hidden dimensions and parallel universes and shit" and he threw in both in the same breath as if they have any similarity whatsoever. Talking about "the fifth dimension" like it's some place where people where pants on their heads is just 1950s pulp sci-fi talk that doesn't make a damn sliver of sense in real physics. Parallel universes are a material concept developed to rationalize the incompatibility of probabalistic physics with determinism. Extraneous dimensions are a mathematical construct to explain the vibrational patterns of energy filaments. Sure, they're both aspects of weird physics that are impossible to grasp or even verify right now, but comparing the two is like putting "Clerks" with "The Seventh Seal" because they're both black and white movies.