I was speaking today with an associate who used to work for NASA before getting into the environmental field. He was explaining a theory of his that is also being investigated by some current researching astrophysicists. Based on models of the big bang creation of the universe, they have been able to recreate the modern situations. The amount of matter missing has been a point of interest for some time. This theory is based on the concept of soap bubbles, which have a pysical barrier between each other. If such a barrier were to exist between each universe of the multiverse, even if it were the thickness of a single atom, would represent a significant amount of matter. The other interesting aspect is the models show the effect of a single universe on the multiverse is something like a variable of one out of 10 times 10 to the 500th, which is five times a googloplex (a HUGE number). To put it into perspective the impact of one atom on our entire universe is equal to the impact of our universe on the multiverse. The human importance is significantly below immeasurable in this case.
What he said was that for the past century, scientists have conducted a variety of experiments to verify the implications of the Theory of Relativity as well as advance fields such as cosmology and particle physics. However, there is some question as to the ability of Einstein's Theory of Relativity to describe as many physical phenomena as has been claimed - with some scientists arguing against it entirely. Regardless, as with any other scientific theory, it is not the absolute, entire and final description of the universe. Because it is a scientific theory, it contains certain assumptions and approximations of nature and ultimately, fails to describe several phenomena altogether (i.e. electromagnetism). Unfortunately, Einstein's Theory of Relativity, much like Darwin's Theory of Evolution, has become popularized as a "scientific truth" because it offers a simplified explanation to the complexity observed in the natural universe. In fact, Einstein himself spent the rest of his life attempting to develop a Unified Theory of Physics which would combine electromagnetism with relativity. He was unsuccessful and to date, this task has not been accomplished.
Well of course the real answer is that we do not know. We assume. In particular, we assume that our sample is representative, i.e., that the laws of nature we have discovered here, in our sector of the universe, hold everywhere. As an operating assumption, this makes perfectly good sense. We should accept this as a working hypothesis, at least until we have reason to believe otherwise. After all, our goal is to discover the most general laws governing the universe and that is the only way to do it. But the fact that it is reasonable for us to act on this assumption does not mean that this assumption is true, or even likely to be true. The possibility of ever discovering such laws may be extremely remote.
Maybe it is because we think too highly of ourselves which causes us to get ourselves into trouble ......
