Zenith Grant Awardee
Dr. Richard J. Easther
Yale University
Co-Investigators
Eugene Lim, <i>Yale University</i><br>Liam McAllister, <i>Princeton University </i>
Project Title
Possible Pasts in the Multiverse
Project Summary
The suggestion that our observable universe may be a single "pocket" in an infinite "multiverse" is one of the most profoundly exciting – and unsettling – possibilities offered by modern cosmology. However, attempts to calculate the probability of finding oneself inside a given type of pocket universe often yield ambiguous answers, which depend critically on the choice of coordinate system in the multiverse. This proposal tackles this problem by examining only quantities that can be computed without reference to any explicit coordinate system, and without making direct comparisons between hypothetical observers who could only communicate by using signals that travel faster than light. Secondly, much of theoretical support for the multiverse comes from the string landscape. This is a massively complicated, multidimensional surface with a vast number of valleys and paths – each of which represents a possible past for our (or any other) universe. The second goal of this proposal is to compute the properties of the landscape that follow directly from its dimensionality, as opposed to following from explicitly stringy considerations.
Technical Abstract
QSpace Latest
PressRelease: Shining a light on the roots of plant “intelligence”
All living organisms emit a low level of light radiation, but the origin and function of these ‘biophotons’ are not yet fully understood. An international team of physicists, funded by the Foundational Questions Institute, FQxI, has proposed a new approach for investigating this phenomenon based on statistical analyses of this emission. Their aim is to test whether biophotons can play a role in the transport of information within and between living organisms, and whether monitoring biophotons could contribute to the development of medical techniques for the early diagnosis of various diseases. Their analyses of the measurements of the faint glow emitted by lentil seeds support models for the emergence of a kind of plant ‘intelligence,’ in which the biophotonic emission carries information and may thus be used by plants as a means to communicate. The team reported this and reviewed the history of biophotons in an article in the journal Applied Sciences in June 2024.