Zenith Grant Awardee
Dr. Andrei Linde
Stanford University
Project Title
Multiverse, Inflation, Life and Probabilities
Project Summary
During the last 25 years a new scientific paradigm gradually emerged. It is based on a combination of successes of inflationary cosmology and string theory, but it also involves many other areas of knowledge. According to this paradigm, we live in a huge multiverse consisting of many exponentially large parts with different laws of physics operating in each of them. Instead of attempting to find a unique explanation of all laws of Nature and all parameters of our world, which was the traditional goal of science, we are trying to find all possible values of these parameters and establish a correlation between them and the fact of our own existence. Many scientists strongly dislike this approach, whereas others are enthusiastic and compare it to the revolution in physics in the beginning of the 20th century. Being one of the authors of the new paradigm, I clearly see many of its unsolved problems, some of which appear when we are trying to go beyond the traditional boundaries of science. I am going to investigate various relations between inflationary multiverse, string theory landscape, and our life. My main goal is to learn how to make scientific predictions in this complicated framework.
Technical Abstract
QSpace Latest
PressRelease: Precision experiment puts pressure on quantum collapse theories
Quantum mechanics, the theory governing the microscopic world, is famously counterintuitive. A particle can exist in a superposition of multiple states, such as different positions, until a measurement is performed. At that point, the wavefunction describing that particle appears to ‘collapse’ to a single outcome. This puzzle lies at the heart of the measurement problem, famously illustrated by Schrödinger’s cat, suspended between life and death until observed. The XENONnT detector, which was designed to be sensitive to rare physics events, has tightened constraints on one family of possible solutions to the measurement problem, known as ‘collapse theories.’ The work, which was partially funded by FQxI, was reported in Physical Review Letters in March 2026. Image credit: XENON Collaboration.