Does somebody knows what the implications of the WMAP results are on Hawkings "no boundary proposal"? With his cosmology model he could predict the maximum differences in the back ground radiation. The WMAP results can verify or falsify his theory.
His quote was...(i think) "So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self- contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?" It does not really apply to the new findings of the MAP probe... The latest theories of M-theory actually predict that space /time is a foamy bubble (with a boundary condition), and there may actually be a `sea` of these Baby universes (all isolated from each other). The no boundary proposal, (the universe has no beginning or end ) is something that exists in mathematics only. In reality, which , we as humans are confined to (not imaginary time,) there will always be a singularity, that is, a beginning of time. Hawking actually says. "When one goes back to the real time in which we live, however, there will still appear to be singularities . . . ," "In real time, the universe has a beginning and an end at singularities that form a boundary to space-time and at which the laws of science breaks down" "Only if we live in imaginary time would we encounter no singularities." Science deals with facts, not motives. That the universe did start with a BB is too strong a theory to upturn, there are too many pieces that fit into the puzzle. the MAP findings imply that there is a boundary condition to our universe , that it started 13.7 billion years ago and that it will expand forever...
I don't think Hawking will have a problem working these findings into his theory. He has already worked in the inflationary models. The main contention will be if these findings point to the start of the BB as being a singularity which was the beginning of space and time or whether it is a point which formed in (imaginary) time.
blobrana The special thing about Hawkings no boundary proposal is that it is not a motive alone. It is a theory which makes predictions that we can measure. Hawkings: The no Boundary Proposal: The path integral for quantum gravity should be taken over all compact Euclidean metrics. One can paraphrase this as The Boundary Condition Of The Universe Is That It Has No Boundary. In the rest of this lecture I shall show that this no boundary proposal seems to account for the universe we live in. That is an isotropic and homogeneous expanding universe with small perturbations. We can observe the spectrum and statistics of these perturbations in the uctuations in the microwave background. The results so far agree with the predictions of the no boundary proposal. It will be a real test of the proposal and the whole Euclidean quantumgravity program when the observations of the microwave background are extended to smaller angular scales. We have now a better picture of the microwave background radiation. My question is: Do they confirm Hawkings' theory or not?
The fluctuations in the background radiation will be the same if they had either initial start... if the universe were open then the `density bumps` would be further apart. The microwave background has been extended (resolution) to smaller angular scales, AND the MAP findings show that the universe is open ( the universe has no boundary), but it cannot show whether there is a boundary condition at the beginning. It`s like saying is the north pole, the top of the world, or is it a point on the earth. Hawking is half right perhaps (at most)
