First -- the Copenhagen interpretation is only the most popular (the one most people have heard enough about to make their thinking dangerous)
interpretation of quantum physics. It is not the
only interpretation of quantum physics.
Second -- the big bang didn't
bang at all, it simply doubled in mass, exponentially, per Einstein, according to a very popular equation. It no
more "came from nothing," than any other concept, idea, or particular bit of matter in our universe.
Finally -- Inflation (the theory) has attained primacy due to how elegantly it answers three very interesting problems:
1) The Horizon Problem
2) The Flatness Problem
3) The Magnetic-monopole Problem
If you don't understand why those are problems, you will never understand ANYTHING about physics or cosmology.
If someone could conceptualize another theory of "how it banged" that was better at answering the multiple problems of observed spacetime, they would
do it. So far, --no dice.
Beyond that: it is apparent that inflation did not occur
only during a period of fractional "time" 13.9 billion - 13.7 billion years ago. Our
universe certainly did (from our point of view) but--
Rapid inflation occurred for
us, and is observable from our perspective, at the center of a sphere (made of opaque background microwave
radiation) extending 13.9-13.7 billion years in all directions, with earth as its center (naturally, as "we" are the observers of the phenomena) and
appears to have ended. However, as the remaining cloud of relatively uniform gas cooled, it began to coalesce around very tiny fluxes of
quantum perturbation (naturally -- as their initial structures were almost infinitely small) creating tiny structures of interference which were acted
upon by gravity, collapsing that gas into stars, planets, galaxies and other large intergalactic structures which we can observe and are-- in fact --
often more than a billion light years in diameter. This structure, or framework, were-- during inflation --incredibly minute, but have grown through
initial inflation to be (almost) impossibly large. The explanation that works to describe their creation is quantum fluctuation that occurred when our
universe was still in the very earliest intervals of inflation, and were still subject to quantum rules and laws. The fact that we can observe them
now, and that they give structure to our universe on a large scale is precisely due to their (growing) interaction with gravity, at ever larger
scales, once the initial inflation ended, and the universe as we know it had begun to cool. The (observable) universe is still doubling in size, once
every 8 billion years. Inflation never ended, it simply
slowed down.
Locally, we inhabit an area of spacetime where inflation seems to have stopped altogether (the Milky Way Galaxy). The slower inflation is still
occurring, however, in the spacetime between the galaxies, and has been observed in the redshift mapping of our observable universe (i.e. the large
scale structures seem to be growing "apart from one another," at roughly the rate of double their observable "size" every 8 billion years.
Meanwhile, there is no scientific rule or law which prevents "new" bangs from occurring, outside our bubble of what is observable to us in our own
"universe." Hence, many cosmologists believe that not only have other "bangs" occurred but they ARE occurring, creating universes which vary in size
and overall structure, depending on "when" they banged, and tiny quantum perturbations, later influenced by gravity, over spacetime as they cooled.
Finally, there is no known mechanism or law, which would preclude new bangs from occurring locally, say-- "inside" the event horizon of a nearby black
hole --which, frankly, could inflate to infinite size from the perspective of any observer "inside" the new universe, while remaining finite, from the
perspective of any observer "inside" our own universe (it's just a black hole, Jim!).
There are no known mechanisms that preclude new inflation, anywhere, nor are there any which preclude the creation of parallel universes. Further,
there are likely at least four kinds of parallel universes, conveniently named types 1, 2, 3 and 4. These are not just woo woo science fiction: their
inevitability is a
feature of inflation, and they are just as likely to "exist" as we do, so long as inflation remains our model.
None of this even begins to address the notion that all of this is simply a hologram, or reality simulation, but it does NOT preclude it either.
Therefore, as a feature of a theory (inflation), a simulated multiverse remains viable at this time. The question is really: is such a feature
falsifiable? I would argue that it either *is* or will soon be.
edit on 26-5-2016 by 0zzymand0s because: (no reason given)