We have no idea when or how scientists will create an alternate universe, but we have all kinds of opinions on what they should do with it once it is created. We propose giving it to the Jews of Israel. That way the Jews can occupy the same space as they do now, but in an alternate universe where they don’t have to face the hostiles daily.
Surprisingly, the nothingness outside our universe is not a static boring place. Quantum activity creates random space-time bubbles that may expand to become universes, just like ours. Visualize it as flatulence in the bathtub. Small bubbles tend to collapse before they grow up to become universes, as the pressure inside the bubble is always less than the pressure outside.
Scientists have been working to create universes in the lab. Eduardo Guendelman and his colleague Jacov Portnoy, both from Ben Gurion University, figured out how to factor in fields of energy known as “gauge fields” to the bubble’s surface, holding it at a constant radius. “With that in place, all you need to do is sit there, watch the small bubble and wait for the large bubble to appear,” says Guendelman. Only one problem remained, you could sit there forever waiting. Unlike God, we do not have eternity.
Nobuyuki Sakai and his colleagues at Yamagata University in Japan have discovered how to use a particle accelerator to create a magnetic monopole, impregnate it with energy, and give birth to a baby universe (see diagram on the left). The concept is surprisingly simple, though the math is probably complex.
The details of where one goes to find monopoles and shades of vacuum are fascinating, but far more interesting are the scientists’ musings about playing God.
Also, the baby universe has its own space-time and, as this inflates, the pressure from the true vacuum outside its walls continues to constrain it. As these forces compete, the growing baby universe is forced to bubble out from our space-time until its only connection to us is through a narrow space-time tunnel called a wormhole (see Graphic).
In the end, space-time becomes so distorted that even this umbilical cord is severed. The baby universe’s space-time is left entirely divorced from our own. If you were sitting inside the monopole, you would see space expanding, rushing out in every direction – just as it did after the big bang in our universe. The view from our universe, outside the monopole looking in, would be rather less spectacular.
Sakai’s calculations show that, once disconnected, the baby universe will be locked inside a microscopic black hole which will not appear to grow in size. This mini black hole will emit Hawking radiation and quickly evaporate from our universe. It will continue to grow its own space-time, but will leave behind little trace of its presence in our universe. “We would make this tiny little thing and before we know it, it has flown away – escaped from our grasp,” Linde laments.
Vanishing trick
In fact, it will disappear so fast it may even be difficult to tell if we’ve managed to create it at all, Sakai says. Plans are under way to detect mini black holes in the next generation of particle accelerators, such as the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, in Switzerland, so Sakai is hopeful that in the future we will be able to detect the fleeting birth cries of a baby universe (New Scientist, 23 April 2005, p 38).
Everyone agrees it’s an enticing idea, though Fischler is not counting his baby universes before they’re hatched. “The real question is whether it is doable,” he says. There’s still a problem of raw materials, he points out. As yet, not even one monopole has been detected in nature.
Ironically, one of inflation theory’s greatest successes was to explain why we have had such difficulty finding these elusive monopoles, despite theoretical predictions that they should exist all around us. Inflation argues that our visible universe grew from a quantum fluctuation so small it contained only one monopole. That particle is out there somewhere, but the odds are against our bumping into it.
So if we aren’t likely to run into a natural monopole any time soon, just how will we get our hands on one? Maybe we could make one in the lab, Fischler concedes. Colliding an electron with a positron in a particle accelerator could, in principle, create a monopole-antimonopole pair. And, according to Sakai, we could then trigger inflation by crashing other particles onto our new monopole, adding more and more mass to it.
Generating a monopole-antimonopole pair in the lab is, however, incredibly problematic. Monopoles have huge masses compared to electrons and positrons. To make up this mass difference we would have to smash the initial particles together with far greater energies than are available in today’s accelerators. Even assuming that at some future time we would have the technology to reach these energies, the chances of success are still slim. “You would be colliding two ping-pong balls and hoping that two perfectly formed bowling bowls fall out,” says Fischler. “I would say that in practical terms this is even worse than hopeless.”
OK, so it’s not exactly a school science project, but the budding universe creators are excited, nonetheless. “I think our model is one of the most realistic for creating a universe in the lab because it uses materials that may well already be out there,” Sakai says. Guendelman agrees. “Ours was just a theoretical idea, but they get a similar effect using something that is predicted to exist by well-known theories,” he says. In addition, Sakai’s mechanism solves the waiting problem, Guendelman says.
The question is, would it be worth all the effort? Linde thinks so. “I sat down and really thought about why we should even care about creating a universe in the laboratory,” Linde says. “We put energy into the baby universe to create it, but we can’t get any energy out of it – we can’t mine its resources.” Once it’s formed, he adds, its space and time – though growing – is entirely divorced from our own. “We can’t jump into this tiny thing and visit it,” says Linde. “We don’t seem to be able to communicate with it at all.”
In the end, Linde realised he had overlooked the obvious motivation: good old-fashioned megalomania. “Just imagine if it’s true and there’s even a small chance it really could work,” he says. “In this perspective, each of us can become a god.”
