Skip to main content

The Multiverse - Brian Clegg ****

‘When One Universe Isn’t Enough’, it says on the undeniably eye-catching cover of this book. But why should anyone feel short-changed by the universe we happen to live in? The most obvious answer is if they’re fans or creators of science fiction, who may be distinctly unimpressed by the un-SF-like reality we’re lumbered with. As Brian Clegg points out early in the book, even now  – almost 70 years after the invention of the space rocket – only a tiny fraction of astronauts have ever travelled more than 300 miles from the Earth’s surface. If we’re looking for all those ‘strange new worlds’ that Star Trek promised us, we’re not going to find them that way. What we need is a portal to a parallel universe – or, preferably, a whole collection of them.

Since this is a non-fiction book, I hope I’m not spoiling any surprises by saying that we never actually get to this point, or anywhere near it. Like so many other science-fictional ideas that are claimed to have parallels in modern physics, it turns out the reality is highly abstract and totally lacking in the practical applications of its sci-fi counterpart. Even so, the book is a fascinating and enjoyable read, as Clegg takes us through a whole series of theoretical arguments in favour of a multiverse. Or perhaps that should be ‘multiverses’, plural, since the arguments are largely self-contained – dreamed up by experts in their own particular field – and not always compatible with each other. The one thing that most of them have in common is that they are basically ‘meta-theories’ – i.e. high-level, overarching theories that sit above a much more practical, but often unsatisfyingly arbitrary-looking, theory and give it greater cohesion and sense of completeness. Whether that’s something physicists should be spending any time doing, or whether it should really be left to the philosophers, is a debatable point (and one that Clegg discusses in his final chapter) – but it’s still interesting to sit on the sidelines and watch them at it.

Essentially, each chapter – after a few introductory ideas are out of the way – deals with a different theoretical argument for the multiverse. The first three of these aren’t really physics at all, but pure mathematics, dealing with concepts like dimensions, probability and infinity. Then we move on to real physics, in a sequence of chapters that, to me at least, seemed to get increasingly sophisticated and abstract – almost to the point of merging back into pure mathematics at the end. We start on relatively familiar ground with the Big Bang and quantum theory, before moving forward in time to string theory, black holes and – perhaps surprisingly, in this context – quantum computing and information theory. As a rough estimate, I’d say around half of each chapter is background on the field in question rather than being about the multiverse as such, but that’s not a bad thing. I’m an unabashed supporter of ‘bait-and-switch’ tactics in popular science writing – appearing to talk about some exciting sci-fi-like topic while actually explaining really quite serious and difficult physics. It’s the best way to communicate material like this, and Clegg is a master at it.

If there’s anything negative to say about this book – or about its subject matter, rather – then Brian Clegg says it himself in his final chapter, when he dismisses a lot of the arguments he’s been discussing as ‘pointless debate’. The thing that distinguishes a scientific theory from mere speculation is that there should be something in it that has an observable consequence in the real world – for example, it predicts how a machine or electronic circuit will work, or how an experimental measurement will turn out. Arguably, not one of these multiverse theories falls in this category – which puts us right back where we started, in the realm of science fiction.

Paperback:   
Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
These articles will always be free - but if you'd like to support my online work, consider buying a virtual coffee or taking out a membership:
Review by Andrew May - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here
Please note, this title is written by the editor of the Popular Science website. 
Our review is still an honest opinion – and we could hardly omit the book 
– but do want to make the connection clear.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Laws of Thought - Tom Griffiths *****

In giving us a history of attempts to explain our thinking abilities, Tom Griffiths demonstrates an excellent ability to pitch information just right for the informed general reader.  We begin with Aristotelian logic and the way Boole and others transformed it into a kind of arithmetic before a first introduction of computing and theories of language. Griffiths covers a surprising amount of ground - we don't just get, for instance, the obvious figures of Turing, von Neumann and Shannon, but the interaction between the computing pioneers and those concerned with trying to understand the way we think - for example in the work of Jerome Bruner, of whom I confess I'd never heard.  This would prove to be the case with a whole host of people who have made interesting contributions to the understanding of human thought processes. Sometimes their theories were contradictory - this isn't an easy field to successfully observe - but always they were interesting. But for me, at least, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The AI Paradox - Virginia Dignum ****

This is a really important book in the way that Virginia Dignum highlights various ways we can misunderstand AI and its abilities using a series of paradoxes. However, I need to say up front that I'm giving it four stars for the ideas: unfortunately the writing is not great. It reads more like a government report than anything vaguely readable - it really should have co-authored with a professional writer to make it accessible. Even so, I'm recommending it: like some government reports it's significant enough to make it necessary to wade through the bureaucrat speak. Why paradoxes? Dignum identifies two ways we can think about paradoxes (oddly I wrote about paradoxes recently , but with three definitions): a logical paradox such as 'this statement is false', or a paradoxical truth such as 'less is more' - the second of which seems a better to fit to the use here.  We are then presented with eight paradoxes, each of which gives some insights into aspects of t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Einstein's Fridge - Paul Sen ****

In Einstein's Fridge (interesting factoid: this is at least the third popular science book to be named after Einstein's not particularly exciting refrigerator), Paul Sen has taken on a scary challenge. As Jim Al-Khalili made clear in his excellent The World According to Physics , our physical understanding of reality rests on three pillars: relativity, quantum theory and thermodynamics. But there is no doubt that the third of these, the topic of Sen's book, is a hard sell. While it's true that these are the three pillars of physics, from the point of view of making interesting popular science, the first two might be considered pillars of gold and platinum, while the third is a pillar of salt. Relativity and quantum theory are very much of the twentieth century. They are exciting and sometimes downright weird and wonderful. Thermodynamics, by contrast, has a very Victorian feel and, well, is uninspiring. Luckily, though, thermodynamics is important enough, lying behind ...
Post a Comment
Read more