Universe 'like a bottle of champagne'
Scientists have cracked the ultimate mystery and discovered the true nature of the universe … in a champagne bottle.
According to one leading astrophysicist the cosmos resembles an unimaginably vast bottle of bubbly.
At the moment of creation the cork popped – and everything around us, the planets, stars and galaxies, is contained in one of a myriad bubbles.
The champagne theory helps explain why the universe is so incredibly fine-tuned to allow our existence, says Professor Leonard Susskind, from Stanford University in California.
Scientists have found that all the key forces of nature appear to be precisely adjusted, as if by a divine hand.
If any of them was stronger or weaker the universe that we know, and the human race, could not exist.
Some insist this fine tuning is proof of God. But another idea is that there are many, many universes, one of which by the laws of probability is bound to have just the right conditions for stars, planets and human life.
Professor Susskind told the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual meeting in Washington DC: “The universe is very, very much bigger than we can see with telescopes. It may be ten to the ten to the ten to the ten times bigger, we don’t know for sure.
“The universe is also diverse. It will have patches of every conceivable kind that are consistent with the equations of the theory, whatever the theory is.”
“String theory” – one of the leading theories to describe the nature of reality which views fundamental particles as tiny vibrating strings – resulted in a number of design possibilities for the universe as large as 10 to the power of 500, said Professor Susskind.
With that many universes, it was not surprising that one of them was like the one we inhabit.
“We live where we can, we don’t live where we can’t,” said Professor Susskind.
Scientists are now wondering how to visualise this so-called “multiverse”.
Professor Susskind said the growing view was that each universe, including ours, was like a separate bubble .
“There are pockets of all different kinds in there,” he said. “They sort of percolated up, out of the rapidly expanding inflating universe, basically in the same way that champagne bubbles percolate up when you take off the top of the champagne bottle. To my mind, that’s the most likely explanation for all of this.”
He said according to the current best theory, the bubbles would continue bubbling up for ever.
It will never be possible for us to communicate with another bubble universe, say physicists.
Professor Susskind said there was no denying that dark energy existed. “Dark energy … is implicit in every theory that we write down,” he said. “We expect it to be there. The real puzzle is why it’s not there at a higher level.”
Dark energy makes up 70% of the universe, the meeting was told. Another 25% was composed of “dark matter” – another mystery whose nature is unknown but which exerts a gravitational influence on galaxies. Only 5% of the universe consists of ordinary visible matter of the kind we see all around us.
