We are living in a strange universe. It is strange because it is unique, unique in a way as its longevity, stability, and diversity. Ou...
We are living in a strange universe. It is strange because it is unique, unique in a way as its longevity, stability, and diversity.
Our universe is a young one, just born a few billion years ago. It is expected to live, stay in the how-we-know-it state for many many many thousands of billions of years. The universe is changing gradually as ultimately converting hydrogen into heavier elements and releasing energy, but this conversion is slow. As we think, our expanding universe eventually becomes the place of lonely galaxies with dead stars, black holes, and wandering cold planets, but this end is far far away.
Until our universe reaches this end - according to our best knowledge - it remains relatively calm. Of course, there are blasting supernovae, colliding galaxies, and other local cataclysmic events, but globally, our universe remains the same, slowly changing stable place most of its remaining lifetime. Not so when it was born, but it was a short period of time, and it concluded to a globally calm, long-lasting, stable state. This is a reason why we are here now, after a few billion years of continuous, fatally not disrupted evolution.
And the other reason why we can be here is the diversity of our universe. From just a few building blocks, our universe has a hugely diverse structure of matter and energy. If we look around, we can see complexity everywhere. Complexity is not a self-evident property. The universe could be different. It could be a place where only one type of matter is floating around without building complex structures. It is a possibility, but our universe is not such a place.
We do not know other universes, so we do not know how other universes would behave if they would exist. But we know, our universe would be very different if the physical parameters would be just a little different. We called this the anthropic principle, in the meaning, that our physical parameters create an environment, our universe, which makes it possible to form life and intelligence in it.
The anthropic principle or anthropic universe is maybe an exaggeration. We do not know if our universe with other physical parameters would be suitable for other kinds of life, but surely, that kind of life would be very different from ours, as that universe would be very different from the one that we know too.
So, we are living in a special universe. It is a long-lasting, stable, and diverse, allows many different structures to exist. We are living in this universe because it allows us to be here. Why are we here? Because we can be here, and what is possible, most likely will happen sometime. We could not ask this question if the circumstances would be different. This way, our question of existence has no meaning.
Or maybe it has. Why our universe has these physical parameters? Could these parameters be different? If not, why not? If it could, why and how our universe settled into our physical parameters and created our specific universe?
The only available scientific (existence without meaning) answer for these questions is the existence of the multiverse, the existence of other universes, with other physical parameters. According to the idea of the multiverse, our universe is not a special one in a sense as our universe is one of the many possible others. We can ask why questions because we are living in a such-a-kind of a possible, a habitable universe.
The multiverse idea maybe a scientific approach, but we may never be able to prove that it exists. It is hard to prove that there is something outside of our everything. We may never physically prove the multiverse unless the individual universes have effects on each other, for example, they collide in the multiverse space. However, the multiverse is a possible and logical answer to the existence of our special universe.
Let's suppose, the right answer to our specialty is that the multiverse exists. Only with this supposition, we can have a lot of conclusion about our universe. The multiverse supposedly existed before our universe born. Otherwise, the multiverse would not have meaning. It may not have other universes, but according to the concept of the multiverse, it is not started with our universe, and not just our universe is capable of existing in the multiverse. If this supposition is true, we can also safely state, our universe must be one of the parallelly or/and sequentially existing other universes. It may also be safe to say that the multiverse existed long before our universe came to its existence.
Why should the cyclic universe be a true statement? Otherwise, the multiverse would be filled with not-cyclic, unchanging, dead universes. The whole multiverse could become, and would already become dead, never-changing place. It should already have happened that, unless the whole multiverse just started "recently," which would place us, our universe, into a special position. It would not break any physical laws, but our experience convinces us that better to search for a non-special solution for a problem than a specific one. Or unless the multiverse is an infinite kind of space that would allow infinite individual universes to exist. However, we must be careful with the infinite also when we are thinking about existing, physical things. In math, infinite is a correct answer, but in physics, better to avoid it.
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