Sean Carroll: Distant time and the hint of a multiverse
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- Опубликовано: 5 май 2011
- www.ted.com At TEDxCaltech, cosmologist Sean Carroll attacks -- in an entertaining and thought-provoking tour through the nature of time and the universe -- a deceptively simple question: Why does time exist at all? The potential answers point to a surprising view of the nature of the universe, and our place in it.
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His voice has much smooth but heavy oscillation fluctuation, alternately deep diving my ear drums and spiking my pattern recognition. He is making apple pie from the apple tree in the woods that no one could hear falling.
Sean Carroll is my favourite scientific speaker.
+Andrew E Ditto
David Roberts
Recommend Martin Rees also.
+Andrew E I totally agree with you. He speaks clearly, unlike Brian Green, whose conferences suck.
Every scientist should take a course -- or three -- on public speaking.
i don't think it is something that can be taught.. Yeah, it can be to a degree but Sean Carroll is just a talented speaker. It's a God given talent :)
His talks are absolutely flawless; I'm not speaking to his facts, but to his presentation.
Years on & this remains one of my favourite lectures
He must be a great teacher - this even makes sense to me.
:)
rd f he is
Good presentation, good speaking voice, good connect with the audience.
I'm a big, big, fan of Sean Carroll; I've seen him online, read a few sensible quotes of his about the Templeton Foundation and I loved From Eternity To Here, especially the bits about Boltzmann fluctuations(which rarely gets brought up by modern cosmologists) and the back-to-back, time-symmetric universe proposal of his(which is beautiful). Well worth reading.
This was an amazing speech! I wonder why I haven't bumped to this earlier.
I love talks like this. Space, technology, this is why I watch TED talks.
His book on the second law(and a lot more), From Eternity To Here, is really, really good. It explained entropy better than any other book I've read and had many headspinningly interesting sections. The stuff about Boltzmann brains was mind-expandingly cool. Once you understand the implications it opens up a world of incredible thought experiments.
Excellent presentation!
Great talk by Sean Carroll!
Very nice presentation 😊
an insane amount of information in 15 minutes, yet has the time to utter witty jokes along the way, and yet everything is perfectly comprehensible to my brain that sometimes feels like it's just randomly fluctuated into existence...:). thank you Sean!
Great talk! Thanks for posting it.
Awesome speech! Great speaker too! More like this please!
Great speaker. Very information dense. And it takes about 5 minutes to get the audience up to speed!
A wee bit mind-bending!
There were times when this video 'came together' for me.
But then my mind reverted to its higher-entropy state.
.
Regardless, it's the most concrete (understandable) explanation of multiverses I've ever heard.
I could listen to him all day!
Great speech!
Great stuff!!!
I like the way Sean talks. Fast, crisp and funny.
I understood this! I am happy. But quips aside, this was a very interesting talk that cleared up some of my theoretical cosmological physics questions. Far be it from me to pose as a physics geek but its comforting to know that there's so much more to think about other than paychecks, girlfriends and hallway statuses.
Thank you for conceding the argument.
Wooow, that was so good.
Sean is just GREAT!
+scotty He's an excellent teacher, and he can do this off the top of his head too - doesn't need notes
Talks about the universe and physics are my favorite.
and that's why I'm subscribed to TED!
This was amazing.
5:19 for a Feynman quote!
@DrQuijano Great point!
This guy is switched on!...I love his conclusion, (his favourite idea he says... ) That the Big Bang did not come out of "nothingness".... It came out of a pre-existing state, which we cannot adequately describe right now....
+Mobius Trip yes it means I don't know. "cannot adequately describe" is a lie. We don't know. Period. I hate when they do this. They suggest that they sort of know when they don't.
That is the real and Honest Truth.... Science really knows very little for certain and is based on a TON of conjecture and guesswork.... Much is agenda-based and just plain wrong!! They give the impression that they basically "Know how the Universe works" except for a few tiny little pieces of the puzzle here and there....Bullshit!! The truth is that they refuse to admit how little they truly know and definitely hate being wrong and won't admit it.... The idea that they know so much is a lie and it is laughable when you realize to what extent it is bullshit!!!
What discipline allows man as much mastery over, and predictive ability as the natural sciences? A lot of science IS groping in the dark, but that groping has provided lots of amazing insights, read "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences" www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.html because knowing the aspect math plays in science will change your comprehension of so many breakthroughs that help humanity daily.
+David Belcher Whats sad is that if you ever bothered to actually talk to a scientist (not attack, but have a conversation with), even once in your life, you'd realize that the thing you are trying to criticize them for is the exact thing they will happily agree with you on: That they don't know everything. In fact, they don't know a lot, and this isn't something they try to hide either. Ask a scientist about anything they are an expert in, and they will give you answers. But keep asking questions and eventually you will reach the edge of their knowledge, and at that point EVERY scientist will say "I don't know". Find me a single religious book that would ever admit that.
This idea you've gotten that scientists insist they know everything is called projection, because the side that always insists they know the answer to every question is the theists. And since you probably only have conversations with other theists, you think scientists act just like you. This isn't the pot calling the kettle black, this is the pot calling the SILVERWARE black.
No need for personal attack ( if you ever bothered to actually talk to a scientist ). There is so many shows and debates in science now a day that a lot of the scientists are just looking for personal gratification. This is almost philosophy. These types of talk should be there just to open our mind to greater thinking. This is layman materials. The main problem is that quite of few people truly believe what the preacher says. Preaching is really just trying to get people to follow your lines of thinking and strongly suggesting that is the way you say it is. BTW, religions are full of "I don't know". They call it miracles or mysteries.
When you believe into something you automatically become blind to everything else. When you truly believe, nothing will change your mind. This goes for everyone's belief! What if the universe was created? What then? Does that make the universe's creator a God?
All I know is that there is a universe and that is very hard to grasp whether there is a first cause or not. As for God believers..... They are just people that fears their own death and it's how they deal with it though most of them won't admit it.
.... to a philosopher/ college professor friend at the coffee shop I go to; he said, "I read in the paper this morning that his son committed suicide." "No", I said, " I hadn't heard and I don't read the paper or watch TV." I broke into tears, for it was not only a shock, but an awakening to a reality beyond reason.
Love the hopefully intentional Douglas Adams reference at 0:00
@CalicoVall Good conversation! Thanks. Bye for now.
This is fucking fascinating.
Why 31 people disliked this video...is beyond me.
I'm so glad I live in 2013, a time when we know SO much...but recognize how much is left to know. Physics, and science in general, has gotten so profoundly advanced, that for the first time ever...we can finally start searching for answers to the most fundamental existential questions ever posed. That mystery excites me to no end. Those that fear "not knowing" confuse and annoy me. Imagine what we'll know in 50 years!
What a great warm-up for my brain!! ^_^
Loved this talk, only realised towards the end heyyyyyy this guy giving me a really intellectual talk is from role models!!!!!! :O
Douglas Adams and Sean Carroll would have gotten along famously... I couldn't help but think about the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series multiple times throughout this. ^.^
@keggerous I agree with this confusion, I had only previously heard of the high-entropy multiverse creating a low entropy spike (a fluctuation) universe. Now I hear the guy saying the multiverse must be remaining a consistently lower entropy? Due to some pie-based argument I didn't quite get?
loved it :D
@carefulcarpenter Thank you for the engrossing conversation. ^_^
From the Oxford Dictionary: Analogy, n: Correspondence between two things, or in the relationship between two things and their respective attributes; parallelism, equivalence, or an instance of this. Chiefly with between, to, with.
@CalicoVall Wisdom. Wisdom is not always logical, but great minds have always apprehended truths beyond conventional thought.
@CalicoVall The basis of science is philosophy. Added note: Sir Francis Bacon was a poet and also established the concept of the scientific method. He was an uncle in my ancestry. I was first an Engineering student; after college I became self-employed. I've had the great advantage of using more than just logic to study my world. Truths are found via many methods.
You are right. Universes have different fundamental parameters and we know that only a certain combination of these would be suitable for galaxies to form, and universe to evolve, in general. So, we are here in this universe because there's nothing else we can be.
I read somewhere that a certain parameter is so finely tuned it's impossible to have happened by chance, we are certainly living in a cosmic bubble with universes forming and dying ALL the time.
Sean Carroll is my favorite comedian
I too hope that the Cosmic Chicken Hypothesis is validated.
I do too, but it won't be a chicken sadly. What would it be a thing that lays or pops out universes like eggs? That's what we're trying to find out. I still wish it could be a chicken, but I love critters.
Possibly "God's" fart? Poof, I created a universe.
I can’t conceive of any cause of the universe that could possibly be greater than God, and since nothing greater than God can be conceived of, and since nothing that great could fail to exist (it can’t exist only in my imagination because then it wouldn’t be as great as my conception of it), then it must necessarily exist.
Therefore, God exists and is the creator of the universe. Logic.
So, see? There is no chicken or egg problem! God did it! Checkmate, atheists!
I watched Carroll's 24 chapter lecture (about half an hour each) about dark matter and dark energy some 10 years ago. Awesome material. You should watch that if you enjoyed this. It's much much more detailed touching on all subjects related to the subjects mentioned. Also, you'd see a younger and somewhat still more manly carroll there. Or maybe I just didn't notice. lol
@CoNiGMa I've always wondered if that was the origin of the big bang. It doesn't answer the question though of where DID we come from - but it is an interesting and completely plausible possibility as far as I am aware.
@CoNiGMa a very plausible theory. even in this he hints at that idea in "that space appears finite, there is a horizon beyond which we cannot see."
Remonds me of Douglas Adams saying that there doesn't need to be any industry in the universe because whatever you want is bound to grow somewhere.
+Marko Kujundzic I am a petunia, a flying... er... um... plummeting ptunia
@Sylocat that same thought (about being a short-lived blip) for the past few years has been occasionally keeping me up at night.
if i'm just a blip, and all of my memories of the past are illusions - mere random fluctuations in that blip. And the blip lasts so short a time (a planck-time) that there is no time for ANY physical/chemical interaction that could be defined as "continuity", let alone "living", let alone "thinking"...
Then "i think therefore i am" is wrong.
and also: frosted butts
@LookingGlass78 i couldn't tell if he was quoting Douglas Adams or Kurt Vonnegut
This really clicked for me. Infinity seems to be the key. With an infinite number in the equation an interesting viewpoint starts to emerge
I always assumed that the universe would end when all the mass was ‘stuck in time’ within black holes resulting in no time or mass, no universe. However, if dark energy remains then the universe is infinite, very interesting.
@newhorizons1970 I recall Arthur C. Clarke once writing that, aside from being the number of stars in our galaxy, 100 billion is also the approximate number of all humans who has ever lived on Earth. Thus there is essentially a star for each one of us.
Even more mind boggling is the idea of each galaxy holding 100G stars. Hence the number of stars in the universe is around 10^22.
And the next step is to think about what that means for the number of planets in our universe.
@Nyocurio My point was that we really don't know anything, we're making wild yet educated guesses from our tiny viewpoint. I was speculating that the universe may be developing in a similar fashion to the brain. So even though it is accelerating at the moment, I was jesting that it would eventually reach a full-grown size and come to a more static/stable state. So in answer to your question... no, I don't know what will happen to the universe, and neither does anyone.
@highwayknite the number of ways things can be arranged. I.e. a jar full of 1 type of pasta has lower entropy than a jar full of 2 types of pasta.
If far away objects were simply "moving faster" than close objects, then you'd be right (and I actually used to think the same thing). But they're not--they're also accelerating. They WERE moving faster than us in the past, but their speed has been increasing since then. Now they're moving away really really fast.
Nice.
That's a valid point, but the he counters it with 14:05 "You could be a random fluctuation from empty space - why aren't you?" So we know that even if we are formed by a random fluctuation, we are not formed by _small_ random fluctuations - we have an entire enormous observable universe. Making a whole universe out of random fluctuations is so much less probable than making just us, that as a theory of our origin, it's unbelievable.
@CalicoVall I have some wonderful experiences of synchronicity. I can't prove them to someone who has not experienced them. The scientific method places much truth outside of its scope.
@teentitans0789 it is the most accepted theory, one of the predictions of the big bang was the background radiation which was later confirmed, and that's how good theory goes, it not only explains what you want it to explain, it also predicts new things=)
Imo...the sheer fact our universe is so conducive to incredible regularity and so allowing of evolved life(we're here afterall), gives me reason to think the multi-verse theory might actually be the answer.
Reality has a curious "fractal" element to it. As above...so below. Evolution by natural selection seems to be the norm, not just in biology...but in everything. Maybe universes evolve too? Maybe they reproduce and die out or thrive based on their adaption to some multi-verse "environment."
hey girl, are you a high entropy state cuz I can see so many ways to configure you
Sir this is a Wendy's
Where does non locality come into this model? If there is more room for entropy is there not more room for negative entropy? Is non locality restricted to space alone or does time, being a direction space have non locational properties?
As I understand it, Prof. Carroll's homework question, r.e. are we really existing in this early epoch of the universe continuum, or is what we feel and observe a randomized, yet over long enough timescales necessary fluctuation of such complexity that it RESEMBLES an authentic young universe? The implications of the 2nd option are insanely terrifying-it would mean that we are living literally close to the end of time itself, as the universe cycles through all its possible configurations and arrives at the complex and improbable configuration of a universe harboring 1 habitable galaxy out of 100 billion galaxies, of that 1 galaxy, just 1 out of 100 billion stars has a planet that supports life that has walked on a sister world, the implication being an illusion of that magnitude could only occur incredibly far downstream in the unimaginable deep time. Its hard to answer but I would say that we are living in an authentic young universe, because we can still detect the 3 deg.K background radiation of the observable universe, we can observe regular astronomical phenomena in every corner of the universe including recent discoveries close to the Big Bang, and because we have such an extremely complex and ancient history of organic life on this planet stretching back 3 billion years.
His point is that, if the universe existed long enough, everything we see, even the microwave background radiation you rightly cite as evidence, would eventually randomly self-assemble simply by chance. It could be a chance fluctuation that occurred a googolplex years into the universe's lifespan, yet gives the impression that the universe is just under 14 billion years old.
But the question is, IF what we see around us were the result of a random fluctuation in an otherwise maximally entropic universe, and given that the sole requisite of any fluctuation with us(or you) in it is that we are conscious of its existence, what is the most probable fluctuation in which we should find ourselves, simply by chance?
When you consider this question it becomes clear that a whole universe is extraordinarily less likely to randomly fluctuate than a single Milky Way galaxy. In turn, the Milky Way is far less likely to randomly drift together than just our solar system.
Followed to its conclusion, this reasoning leads us to expect that, if what we see is the result of a random fluctuation, we should be something called a Boltzmann brain. I'm probably telling you what you already know, but a Boltzmann brain is simply a single randomly fluctuated human brain with every memory and perception you have at any instant also randomly manifested in the brain pattern.
We would perceive everything of which we are normally aware but this would simply be brain activity - no outside world would exist that resembled what we saw in our minds.
Furthermore we would expect the consciousness of this Boltzmann brain to last for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Anything more would be like expecting the incredibly unlikely random appearance of a single frame of, say, the Matrix, to be immediately followed by the similarly unlikely random appearance of the very next frame in the film, and then the next, and so on.
Given that the minimum requisite of a fluctuation that explains what we see around us is that we be conscious of the random fluctuation in question, anything that lasts for more than an instant is incredibly unlikely.
Therefore what we would expect if the world around us was a fluctuation is instant annihilation, instant death of consciousness. Given that this only seems to occur when I listen to George Osborne it seems reasonable to assume that the world is not the result of a random thermodynamic fluctuation. Every yoctosecond in which you continue to exist seems to falsify the idea that the universe is 'just one of those things that happens from time-to-time', ie. a chance fluctuation away from high entropy.
Apologies if this is all stuff you already know. As is probably clear from my post I find cosmology utterly riveting and I'm quite prepared to write/talk about it until the universe reaches its 'heat-death' stage.
+The Sprawl Your description of the Boltzmann brain reminds me of Douglas Adams, when the whale and the petunia are created from the infinite improbability drive and fall onto a planet...
'Curiously, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias, as it fell, was, "Oh no, not again!" Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly *why* the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the universe than we do now.'
Why is that "insanely terrifying"?
+The Sprawl "Every yoctosecond in which you continue to exist seems to falsify the idea that the universe is 'just one of those things that happens from time-to-time'"
That's fine, because you don't actually exist at all. You see, you aren't really a Boltzman brain, rather you are just a random fluctuation that has appeared in MY boltzman brain which only resulted in me reading this one message from you that will then get annihilated in the next yoctosecond. :)
"the universe is really big" - understatement of the century...
@Sylocat how i've thought of it is that that "blip" is like a single frame of random TV-Static, with no relation to the previous frame of static. Each frame comes into existence on it's own, is alone, has not been influenced by the previous frame, and can't influence the next frame.
All observations too would be false, there's not enough time for neurons to relay information.
You know how a severed head still lives for a few seconds? In, plank-time - everything could be "alive", even static.
I imagine that matter in the early universe is so condensed and the forces unimaginably high that a sligh fluctuation would lead to a collapse.
- think of a submarine with a curved window 1 mile down
- a minute imperfection or a slight irregularity in the shape of the glass
- allows the pressure to bend the glass a bit then a bit more as it changes shape
- then kaboom!
@manofaction2828 you do know that once acceleration ends, it will still expand?
@carefulcarpenter Yes, seriously. He said that. I also think it's true. Creativity lets us express ourselves.
@highwayknite what's wikipedia?
Sean Carroll is no hero.
"the universe is really big"
love the intro
@DrQuijano hmm, creative force. Creative force? I think in terms of momentum and energy. prevalently momentum
@frag971 I'm actually going into an Engineering of Technology and Design major, maybe with a space science minor :P It's unfortunate that a lot of the science fields aren't as lucrative :( I think it would attract a lot more people if there was more money spent on research and such...but in the end I'm going to do what I love :)
You can have action and reaction without mass. Just look at light, light is mass-less yet it can travel through space, it has velocity, it has action (movement) it has reaction (reflection, refraction). Physics could easily work without mass. It just would not work with our current model because our current model includes mass because we have encountered it. The question to 'why have we come to this?' can usually be answered by 'because that's what our experiments have shown'.
I know very little about this but I was thinking that if black holes condense everything why dont in a reaaally long time they take EVERYTHING (including eachother) and condense all of it until they with nothing left and colapse and it all starts over with a packed in thing like he was talking about the big bang coming from? Please respond with your thoughts!
@eIectrostatic I'd love for someone to fill in on this, very good question.
@CoNiGMa That's a good theory, especially since Stephen Hawking change dhis original black hole theory and said that the black holes hold their contents for eons but themselves eventually deteriorate and die. As the black hole disintegrates, they send their transformed contents back out into the infinite universal horizons from whence they came.
This guy sounds like Alan Alda. Extra points for *that* :D
If you want a really good talk on this subject, look up Lawrence Krauss' "A Universe from Nothing"
@Promatheos He cited the Feynman quote. If the universe were a fluctuation, then we wouldn't expect to look at two different places and see similar things.
And while you can't prove that you exist, you certainly must assume it in order to gain any kind of functional knowledge.
We've figured out a lot of stuff since I was born in 1950
@MrDisgruntledGamer1 I was thinking the same
We think mass is like that too, right? But the new discoveries showed that there is actually a reason behind the mass of matter.
@TheDemorphium YES! thats exactly what i was thinking! hahaha that guy is in forgeting sarah marshal too!
@foldoun ups to you, sir
@CalicoVall Tony Dunge-- football coach.
HE DISCOVERED THE SECRET OF IMORTALITY 9:57
we need to figure out how to make life live independent of time.
Hrm... would be interesting if, when the universe reaches maximum entropy... there no longer being, at that point, time... that the second law of thermodynamics ceases to exist, and entropy begins to move in reverse,, and the universe plays itself out in reverse time with a reversed second law of thermodynamics.
0:44 Update on the estimate of the number of galaxies in the observable universe: 2 trillion (2018 estimate)
So this is based on my crude understanding of the subject matter... Is there a reason why these configurations not repeat? Is there a reason why during that time of Empty Space that a another configuration can mimic our own and the universe as we know it can be birthed again?
As far as I'm aware, and I've done research on it, and there is no spectacular alignment of planets occurring on that date. A galactic plane alignment, perhaps. But even that is an almost null event. There's also no "Planet X" headed our way. Something that large, and as close as it would be at this point, it would be visible in the night sky to anyone looking up. If you're referring to the Myan Calender, we got the date wrong. So I"m failing to understand what you're trying to say.
"the search for the universal chicken"
I really would love to read that book!
He says that things further away is moving away from us faster than things close to us, but all that is saying is that in the distant past things were moving away from us faster than in recent history. I mean you cannot ignore that correlation. Most likely the measurements of relative speeds are incorrect.
Is SO easy to imagine Sheldon Cooper doing this TEDTalk
Or maybe on a large scale, the law of large numbers comes into effect and fluctuating a person into existence is more difficult than evolving one. What a thought...
TED needs a good talk about fractal cosmology RE: this