Theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder elegantly chewed up — erroneously Hawking-attributed multiverse nonsense

23 March 2018

Caveat

What follows will make sense only to readers with a little knowledge regarding Big Bang physics.

If you have such, especially with regard to cosmic microwave background radiation, you will glimpse of how supposedly science-based nonsense gets started.

Let us guard ourselves against — Ignorami gullibilus

Sure enough, just as soon as Stephen Hawking died, some gullibly grandiose folk decided to make claims about one of his recent papers that are not substantiated, even within the paper itself.

Theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder pointed these Ignorami gullibili out:

Yesterday, the media buzzed with the revelation [see here, here and here] that Stephen Hawking had completed a paper two weeks before his death. This paper supposedly contains some breathtaking insight.

The headlines refer to a paper titled “A Smooth Exit from Eternal Inflation” in collaboration with Thomas Hertog.

According to The Independent the paper contains “a theory explaining how we might detect parallel universes and a prediction for the end of the world.”

Furthermore, we learn, “Hawking also theorised in his final work that scientists could find alternate universes using probes on space ships, allowing humans to form an even better understanding of our own universe, what else is out there and our place in the cosmos.”

[T]he paper [however] doesn’t say anything about detecting parallel universes . . .

The only thing that the paper does say is that inflation [expansion] took place. And inflation predicts that gravitational waves produced in the early universe should leave an imprint in the cosmic microwave background (CMB).

So how do we detect parallel universes [according to the Ignorami]?

By detecting the CMB polarization. I do not kid you.

Theoretical physicist have proposed some thousand ideas for what might have happened in the early universe. There are big bangs and big bounces and brane collisions and string cosmologies and loop cosmologies and all kinds of weird fields that might or might not have done this or that.

All of this is pure speculation, none of it is supported by evidence. The Hartle-Hawking proposal is one of these speculations.

[T]here isn’t even a specific prediction for the amount of CMB polarization in the Hawking paper.

In fact, the paper doesn’t so much as even contain the word “polarization” or “tensor modes.”

The claim that the detection of CMB polarization would mean the multiverse exists makes as much sense as claiming that if I find a coin on the street then Bill Gates must have walked by. And a swarm of invisible angels floated around him playing harp and singing “Ode To Joy.”

Hawking has not found a new way to measure the existence of other universes.

Where ignorance is prized — BS is easy to start and difficult to rein in

Nuances regarding cosmic background radiation are well known to those who follow the sifting of evidence as to how "All This" got started.

Assuming that detecting polarization in the microwave background proves that multiverses exist makes no analytical or scientific evidentiary sense. Hence, Hossenfelder's invocation of harp-playing angels.

Her sarcasm mirrors my own impatience with New Age bullshit that so frequently gets generated out of a mix of quantum mechanics and cosmology.

The moral? — Scrutinize silly claims with evidence-seeking vigor

Mathematics — and especially mathematical speculation — can, in my view, generate just as much nonsense as conventional spoken language does.

Dr. Hossenfelder is, thankfully, about to publish a book to that effect.

Recall, also, that this is one of mathematician Cathy O’Neil's favorite subjects. See her blog (mathbabe), here.

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Theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder elegantly chewed up — erroneously Hawking-attributed multiverse nonsense