A final theory explaining
how mankind might detect parallel universes was completed by Stephen Hawking
shortly before he died, it has emerged. Colleagues have revealed the renowned
theoretical physicist’s final academic work was to set out the groundbreaking
mathematics needed for a spacecraft to find traces of multiple big bangs.
Currently being reviewed by
a leading scientific journal, the paper, named A Smooth Exit from Eternal
Inflation, may turn out to be Hawking’s most important scientific legacy. Fellow
researchers have said that if the evidence which the new theory promises had
been discovered before Hawking died last week, it may have secured the Nobel
Prize which had eluded him for so long.
The new paper seeks to
resolve an issue thrown up by Hawking’s 1983 “no-boundary” theory which
described how the universe burst into existence with the big bang. According to
that account, the universe instantaneously expanded from a tiny point into a
prototype of what we live in today, a process known as inflation.
But the theory also
predicted an infinite number of big bangs, each creating their own universe, a
“multiverse”, which presented a mathematical paradox because it is seemingly
impossible to measure.
Carlos Frenk, professor of
cosmology at Durham University, told The Sunday Times: The intriguing idea in
Hawking’s paper is that [the multiverse] left its imprint on the background
radiation permeating our universe and we could measure it with a detector on a
spaceship.
“These ideas offer the
breathtaking prospect of finding evidence for the existence of other universe.”
Professor Thomas Hertog, from KU Leuven University in Belgium, worked with
Hawking on the new theory and said he met the Cambridge scientist two weeks ago
to discuss its final approval.
“This was Stephen: to boldly
go where Star Trek fears to tread,” he said. “He has often been nominated for
the Nobel and should have won it. Now he never can.” Despite the hopeful
promise of Hawking’s final work, it also comes with the depressing prediction.
That prediction is, that
ultimately, the universe will fade into blackness as stars simply run out of
energy. He died last Wednesday in Cambridge at the age of 76, having suffered
from a rare form of motor neurone disease since 1964.
He eventually became
confined to a wheelchair and dependent on a computerised voice system for
communication. His most famous popular, A Brief History of Time, was published
in 1988 and sold more than 10 million copies within 20 years.
Via Telegraph
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