If you had the ability to create a new universe, would you do it?

June 15, 2017 2:45 AM

The author of A Big Bang in a Little Room: The Quest to Create New Universes explains (partially) how it may be possible to create new universes in the lab (without destroying the lab and the universe you're in). Hint: it involves passing through a tiny black hole. But some physicists really don't want to talk about it since they'd be seen as 'playing God', and at least one scientific journal really didn't want to be seen as encouraging this 'dirty joke' about 'physicist hackers'.
posted by oneswellfoop (56 comments total)

I'm not counting out the idea that this is what happened to create OUR universe. It's possible that the entire multiverse is the result of scientists in the one universe that was somehow logically brought into existence creating little big bang events piercing into new universes and then things evolved and scientists in those universes did that again, and etc etc etc.

I'm also resigned to being a brain in a bone jar driving a meat robot through a world that I don't directly perceive.

I contain multitudes.
posted by hippybear at 3:04 AM on June 15, 2017 [20 favorites]

What the hell is wrong with "playing God"? We've been doing it for 20k years at least.
posted by thelonius at 3:32 AM on June 15, 2017 [4 favorites]

If some sentient being from one of these little universes could somehow manage to kill that universe's creator it would give me so much hope and joy.
posted by Space Coyote at 4:08 AM on June 15, 2017 [9 favorites]

You mean, like reach back up through the big bang event and kill the scientist who was experimenting and made this universe?

ACME has a product for you that will do just that. /coyoteadvice
posted by hippybear at 4:27 AM on June 15, 2017 [3 favorites]

It happened on Futurama. It did not go well.
posted by mermayd at 4:45 AM on June 15, 2017 [2 favorites]

Micro black holes seem to be the next 'quantum', in that they're becoming the basis of all the cool new science-fiction apocalyptic scenarios. Previously they've been semi-plausibly posited as the future tech behind worm-hole communications and ultra efficient power generation, but the playing god aspect of creating new universes almost writes itself. Surely the inhabitants of the artificial universe will have to invade their parent universe to prevent their scientist-god from ending the experiment and thus their very existence? :D

These microscopic black holes were also (supposedly) reason behind the 'LHC ends the world' meme, though you'll get exasperated looks from any particle physicists if you try and bring it up with them. The reasoning why it was never going to happen is really complicated, but can be reasonably simplified as, despite our best attempts with the LHC, nature is still way ahead of us in making energetic things smack into other things, and yet we're not noticeably being turned into matter spaghetti by black holes.
posted by Eleven at 4:54 AM on June 15, 2017 [4 favorites]

God needs to be taken down a peg, that's all I'm sayin'.
posted by Space Coyote at 4:54 AM on June 15, 2017 [7 favorites]

I'm also resigned to being a brain in a bone jar driving a meat robot through a world that I don't directly perceive.

Have you ever considered what it means to "directly perceive" something? How could any form of perception be more "direct" than the one we have? We live in a world and we can perceive it. What more could you ask for? This requires that there be some medium that enables perception. The longing for unmediated perception is a longing for wooden iron; there must be some apparatus physiologically and neurologically, for there to be perceptions at all. The old-fashioned notion that there are even any contents of consciousness, such as thoughts, which are immediate or direct (to who? the homonoculus?)in a way that so-called sense data are not, seems to me to be very dubious.
posted by thelonius at 4:59 AM on June 15, 2017 [11 favorites]

I'm not counting out the idea that this is what happened to create OUR universe.

I'm not counting out the idea that some experimenter some day will manage to build a baby universe, and that that baby universe is our universe.

Don't bogart that joint, my friend.
posted by flabdablet at 5:13 AM on June 15, 2017 [4 favorites]

This only leads to problems.
posted by Pendragon at 5:14 AM on June 15, 2017 [6 favorites]

It always seemed to me that if you had two universes where time was not necessarily aligned, they could create each other in a causal loop, hence solving the problem of where they began.

I found the last paragraph interesting. Is there not much discussion between physicists about the philosophical implications of these things? Surely it's worthwhile party talk.
posted by solarion at 5:22 AM on June 15, 2017 [2 favorites]

Have you ever considered what it means to "directly perceive" something?

Yes.

Near as I can make out, what that means is that one simply chooses not to draw a distinction between oneself and that which one is perceiving. The resulting concept is that of a single system engaged in an act of direct if partial self-perception.

Naturally, this doesn't result in any change to the system that would be perceptible to any observer who chooses not to choose not to draw the same distinction.
posted by flabdablet at 5:22 AM on June 15, 2017 [4 favorites]

if you had two universes where time was not necessarily aligned, they could create each other in a causal loop

Why bother with the second one?

Cut out the middleman. That's how I made my money.
posted by flabdablet at 5:23 AM on June 15, 2017 [8 favorites]

Alternatively, every black hole is merely the Big Bang singularity viewed from another angle.
posted by flabdablet at 5:26 AM on June 15, 2017 [4 favorites]

Cut out the middleman. That's how I made my money.

I bet your CV reads "energetic self starter".
posted by pulposus at 5:27 AM on June 15, 2017 [15 favorites]

I just want to create universes that are small and stable enough to eat, because eating universes is my right as an American.
posted by dephlogisticated at 5:40 AM on June 15, 2017 [13 favorites]

Would you destroy this world to save a better one?

Would you destroy a better world to save this one?
posted by tobascodagama at 5:54 AM on June 15, 2017 [1 favorite]

Would you destroy a better world to save this one?

Of course I would! This one is where I live. It has Wifi.
posted by thelonius at 5:55 AM on June 15, 2017 [9 favorites]

Are we sure this isn't a marketing stunt for Rick and Morty?
posted by dortmunder at 5:58 AM on June 15, 2017 [13 favorites]

We have recently taken the significant step from a reality where everything can be explained by an episode of Futurama to one where everything can be explained by an episode of Rick & Morty.
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:03 AM on June 15, 2017 [16 favorites]

MetaFilter:

- a brain in a bone jar driving a meat robot through a world that I don't directly perceive

- destroying a better world to save this one

- everything can be explained by an episode of Rick & Morty
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:12 AM on June 15, 2017 [6 favorites]

Does this new universe follow the same rules? What rules can you change? How much can you change them? What is the impact on a cosmic scale?
posted by Nanukthedog at 6:20 AM on June 15, 2017

Is "Taco Tuesday" still "Taco Tuesday"?
posted by ZeusHumms at 6:38 AM on June 15, 2017 [9 favorites]

I don't see how the amount of energy/matter in the lab-created universe could even remotely approach that of the one we're experiencing. Just invoking "black hole" like a magical incantation isn't an answer.
posted by mondo dentro at 6:45 AM on June 15, 2017

All living beings inevitably suffer.
It is immoral to cause a being to suffer.
∴ It is immoral to create life.
posted by Faint of Butt at 6:52 AM on June 15, 2017 [6 favorites]

Is "Taco Tuesday" still "Taco Tuesday"?

Yes, but "tacos" are very different. Like, non-Euclidean different.
posted by Rock Steady at 7:16 AM on June 15, 2017 [6 favorites]

Once everyone creates a universe, no one creates a universe.
posted by blue_beetle at 7:19 AM on June 15, 2017

Meh. I honestly wasnt that impressed by the article, which seemed to me to be ignoring the technical issues in favor of wild speculation. For a start, it requires monopoles, which are a purely theoretical particle we've seen no evidence for. This is a bit like saying "Hey, if we used tachyons, we could have time travel, why aren't physicists talking about that?"

Not that I think this is going to stop anything. I expect a swarm of clickkbaity articles breathlessly gushing about how "Physicists are learning how to make universes!" in the same vein as the "Here's NASA's plans for FTL spaceships!" articles.
posted by happyroach at 8:18 AM on June 15, 2017 [2 favorites]

As the universe seeks to achieve balance, Pokemon players argue about arcane rules and lore while scientists set the foundations for arbitrary nonsense.
posted by idiopath at 8:44 AM on June 15, 2017

"Why do you think your people made me?"
"We made you because we could."
"Can you imagine how disappointing it would be for you to hear the same thing from your creator?"
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 8:49 AM on June 15, 2017 [2 favorites]

If the people from the micro-universe came to ours to destroy us, their attack fleet would just get swallowed by a dog anyway.
posted by freecellwizard at 8:50 AM on June 15, 2017 [4 favorites]

I don't see how the amount of energy/matter in the lab-created universe could even remotely approach that of the one we're experiencing. Just invoking "black hole" like a magical incantation isn't an answer.

The amount of matter/energy in the universe (probably) nets out to be something very close to zero, if not exactly zero.
posted by wierdo at 8:54 AM on June 15, 2017 [3 favorites]

If it's not exactly zero, that's a pretty big bookkeeping fail.
posted by flabdablet at 8:57 AM on June 15, 2017 [3 favorites]

Can you imagine how disappointing it would be for you to hear the same thing from your creator?

It sounds like the best possible answer, actually.
posted by maxwelton at 9:31 AM on June 15, 2017 [4 favorites]

Thanks, weirdo. Here's a pop sci article on the topic of zero net energy.
posted by mondo dentro at 9:41 AM on June 15, 2017

So that's how we got a universe where Trump is Predisent. Not everything is political but sometimes it seems that way.
posted by Mental Wimp at 10:19 AM on June 15, 2017

Yes, but "tacos" are very different. Like, non-Euclidean different.

They taste the same, but they are non-differentiable manifolds.
posted by Mental Wimp at 10:31 AM on June 15, 2017 [2 favorites]

I don't see how the amount of energy/matter in the lab-created universe could even remotely approach that of the one we're experiencing. Just invoking "black hole" like a magical incantation isn't an answer.

As I understand it, universes are already being created all the time. It's just what happens. Anything we trigger would be like seeding a cloud for rain--we don't have to provide the water, it's already there.
posted by danny the boy at 10:41 AM on June 15, 2017 [1 favorite]

You mean there is all this potential flying, or lying around? The universe is a kitchen full of raw ingredients, and we can use a regular sized oven or a toaster oven, depending on how big of a universe we want to create? Then it is also a crap shoot? Or do we assume because of what we surmise about what we have here, the ingredients are universal and universes will be similar in physical/energetic content, and then overall form? Well, and then we will ultimately find Waldo, in every case?
posted by Oyéah at 11:10 AM on June 15, 2017

What the hell is wrong with "playing God"? We've been doing it for 20k years at least.

The Goddess takes a dim view of playing God.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 11:21 AM on June 15, 2017 [1 favorite]

Just invoking "black hole" like a magical incantation isn't an answer.

Blasphemer.
posted by bongo_x at 12:22 PM on June 15, 2017

I started reading A Big Bang In A Little Room last night and I doubt I will finish it - a little too much God speculation for my liking.
posted by hoodrich at 12:24 PM on June 15, 2017

a little too much God speculation

I would also prefer that my black holes remain well away from God's speculum.
posted by flabdablet at 12:40 PM on June 15, 2017 [2 favorites]

All living beings inevitably suffer.
It is immoral to cause a being to suffer.
∴ It is immoral to create life.

Corollary: It is immoral to allow life to continue to exist. Global thermonuclear war, or at least accelerating global warming, would be praiseworthy. This suggests a solution to the Fermi Paradox: we can detect no alien civilizations because sufficiently advanced cultures become aware of their ethical obligations.

In this way, utilitarianism leads to the conclusion that you have a duty to become an omnicidal super-villain. Reason #217 why I am not a utilitarian.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 12:50 PM on June 15, 2017 [4 favorites]

I have been reading the most outrageous conspiracy theory on the web. Well this is the one that caused me to investigate further. It concerns the goings on at Antarctica, and there is are a bunch of films of all sorts that go on about Nazi interest, Russian interest, the leader of the Eastern Orthodox Church making a visit, and visits by a lot of people, including John Glenn. The statement is the ark angels that displeased God are imprisoned there until his return. The there is this admonition to read the Book of Enoch. So, I read the book of Enoch, and it looks like the diety they discuss was an entity with eyes like fire, and a mouth full of swords. This sounds like a cyborg, and an off world mining operation, come to town. It talked about mountains of Gold, Silver, Copper, and Lead, that were necessary for this deity to get by, and after making the inhabitants of the world, he didn't like most of them, so he brought up the water from the rock, (ringwoodite,) and drowned them, saying he wouldn't do it again. But the hitch is he has this big square ship with twelve doors, that takes in 12,000 virgin males each from the twelve familial lines of Israel. The ship was described as some sort of bride of Jesus, who was this cyborg's son. So, the cyborg needs what? CNS fluid that is guaranteed clean?

The sins of these "angels" was to teach humans about metallurgy, and a host of other industries, oh yes and to have sex with the human women, and breed giants. So maybe the heavenly host was small, comparatively, or molecular component of a large machine.

I read all of this and I speculated and found it interesting, but like the night I first watched Peter Pan, I clothes pinned a towel around my neck and tried my best to fly off the furniture all evening, but no matter how much I wished it, gravity would not give up on me.

If there are those that come and plunder, then there are likely also those who find it illegal. Destroying the evidence is something that a planetary disruption does. Maybe they even came from the future, to gain advantage. The real sin of Lucifer and the rest was to bring us to consciousness of the great crime, earlier, maybe early enough to prevent it from happening again.

I just wonder why they had to do in the dinosaurs? Maybe it was oil futures? Eh? Black hole, black hole, black hole...we are it. What I don't get is the falling down on the face and worshiping thing that is repeated over and over again, in this book. It sounds like Castenada's dream work, or electromagnetic overload, and then booting up to stay awake.

The Sufi's say, "As above, so below." We just don't have the technology to be that mean, yet. I don't read the bible it is horror literature. There was some commentary above the start of each chapter of this book, and it was so incongruous to what was contained in the verses. Like cheer leading for an ongoing atrocity.
posted by Oyéah at 1:04 PM on June 15, 2017

I would make TWO new universes and make them fight each other.
posted by The otter lady at 2:10 PM on June 15, 2017 [7 favorites]

All living beings inevitably suffer.
It is immoral to cause a being to suffer.
∴ It is immoral to create life.

QED: Apple pie is better than motherhood.
posted by Sparx at 4:08 PM on June 15, 2017 [1 favorite]

I would make TWO new universes and make them fight each other.

Battleverses!
posted by Rock Steady at 4:28 PM on June 15, 2017 [1 favorite]

The statement is the ark angels that displeased God are imprisoned there until his return.

In Antarctica. Right.

You do realizie that you're describing the anime Neon Genesis Evengellion? Those conspiracy nutters were probably watching it while on cold meds.
posted by happyroach at 4:36 PM on June 15, 2017 [2 favorites]

if you had two universes where time was not necessarily aligned, they could create each other in a causal loop

It doesn't work that way. Time is not a thing separate & disconnected from space. Our universe has its own spacetime, so would the other. The only point of contact between them is literally that, a black hole where the curve of spacetime becomes infinite.

Does this new universe follow the same rules? What rules can you change? How much can you change them? What is the impact on a cosmic scale?

Same answer. We have no way of telling anything meaningful about the state of another universe, there's no possible mechanism for it. I'll shut up & let Stephen Hawking explain it, he does a much better job than I could.
posted by scalefree at 6:00 PM on June 15, 2017 [2 favorites]

Look, if we're creating universes, I vote for crone island. I've got a waffle iron, point me at the dark matter.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 6:03 PM on June 15, 2017 [2 favorites]

For a start, it requires monopoles, which are a purely theoretical particle we've seen no evidence for.

Well, we sort of have. A few years back a couple physicists figured out how to create a synthetic magnetic monopole using a Bose Einstein condensate. It's kind of a cheat & not quite the same as detecting a natural one but it does show they're not actually impossible.
posted by scalefree at 6:12 PM on June 15, 2017 [2 favorites]

Does this new universe follow the same rules? What rules can you change? How much can you change them? What is the impact on a cosmic scale?

Same answer. We have no way of telling anything meaningful about the state of another universe, there's no possible mechanism for it. I'll shut up & let Stephen Hawking explain it, he does a much better job than I could.

That's just a prohibition of getting any meaningful information about the other universe through the wormhole, right? Couldn't you travel through the wormhole and go investigate the new universe with the understanding that you'll never be able to transmit that information to your colleagues in your old universe?
posted by runcibleshaw at 12:28 PM on June 16, 2017

if that was possible, you could deliver information from a previous traveler whohad made the opposite trip, which means either all the stuff about information not being transferred are bunk, or you can't even go one way
posted by idiopath at 2:58 PM on June 16, 2017 [1 favorite]

Noting that Time is the only one of the four dimensions available to us that only goes one way, what if the universe we create had its time dimension working in the opposite direction? That means that it could reach the point of universe creation at the time that our universe was created and if it were coordinated perfectly (or even inadvertently), that universe could create our universe and we'd be in a perfect loop... which would raise the question of what happens to each universe after it has created the other? Mind not blown... but definitely partially sucked.
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:30 PM on June 16, 2017

And that's where Benjamin Button came from.
posted by Literaryhero at 5:05 PM on June 16, 2017 [1 favorite]