PUBLIC LECTURE: Is There More than One Universe?

Speaker: Dr Charley Lineweaver, Research School of Astronomy & Astrophysics/Research School of Earth Science, ANU.

Our current ideas of the very early universe are based on quantum cosmology. These ideas suggest that our Universe may be embedded in a larger hierarchy of parallel universes called the Multiverse. We would like to know how or why the constants of physics (e.g. the speed of light, the strength of gravity, the ratio of the proton mass to the electron mass, the cosmological constant) have the values that they do have. For some cosmologists, these constants have special values in our universe which seem to make it “fit for life”. In the context of a multiverse, each universe might have different values for these constants, and then anthropic selection could explain the apparent fitness of our universe to host life. Without a multiverse, we just have to accept the constants as given. This lecture will describe possible tests for the existence of the Multiverse.

This lecture is part of the International Year of Astronomy Public Lecture Series.