The Multiverse and Inflation

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Hawking and Linde were a plucky minority who really tried to understand why it would start. The specific mechanism that drives inflation in the early universe leaves its observation on traces. So if we want to predict the details, the fine details of those flossiles, so to speak, we better understand how it starts. Stephen taught to get a proper scientific, falsifiable hypothesis out of the multiverse would require radical quantum thinking.

Is there a multiverse, and if so, how should we think of ourselves within it? In many modern cosmological models, the universe includes more than one realm, with possibly different laws of physics, and these realms may or may not include intelligent observers. There is a longstanding puzzle about how, in such a scenario, we should calculate what we, as presumably intelligent observers ourselves, should expect to see. Today's guest, Thomas Hertog, is a physicist and longstanding collaborator of Stephen Hawking. They worked together (often with James Hartle) to address these questions, and the work is still ongoing.

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Thomas Hertog received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Cambridge. He is currently a professor of theoretical physics at KU Leuven. His new book is On the Origin of Time: Stephen Hawking's Final Theory.

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