The Top Down Approach to Cosmology

3min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

We can talk about the classical world that we see, but let's not extend this classical picture too far away. That seems to me to be the lesson. We regard the universe as we observe it around us as a kind of starting point for which of the many possible histories of the universe contribute to what we see and what we observe. And that is important because it provides you selecting those histories or selecting those subset of branches in the wave function then allows you to make predictions for future observations.

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.

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

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.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.