Shortly before his death, Stephen Hawking and his collaborator Thomas Hertog submitted a paper which crowned two decades of work into the idea of the multiverse. The paper made use of new mathematical techniques to study what is called string theory. The new conclusion reached by the joint work of the two above-mentioned scientists was that the multiple universes produced by the Big Bang must have had the same laws of physics and of chemistry as our own, something which indicated a marked departure from a much earlier position taken by the combined work of Stephen Hawking and James Hartle, which had suggested that other universes might be different from or similar to our own, with some enjoying similar laws of physics and of chemistry, while others had different such laws. The theory of the existence of the multiverse has been anathema to a number of scientists who have complained that it disregards the essential element of credible scientific inquiry, namely that it should be falsifiable. Such scientists explain that inability to disprove the existence of the multiverse means that such an assertion is scientifically unverifiable; in that case, they argue, one can only believe in the existence of the multiverse by means of a significant leap of faith, not unlike what many would need in order to believe in a particular theology.
- Husam Dughman
- Viewpoints
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