Why many physicists believe in the multiverse

🪐 Good morning to you and all the parallel universe versions of you.
Today: The dark side of sports betting, beating writer’s block, and articulating your value at work. Written by Harris Sockel

It’s a captivating theory: Somewhere in a galaxy far, far away, an identical version of you is reading an identical version of this Daily Edition on a device that looks very similar to yours.

On Medium, astrophysicist and former NASA columnist Ethan Siegel explains why many scientists believe some version of the multiverse is real. The explanation stems from the theory of cosmic inflation — essentially, the idea that our universe began as a tiny speck of infinitely dense energy that expanded in ~10–33 seconds. It’s still expanding, by some estimates at a rate of 41.9 miles/second!

Physicists who believe in the multiverse visualize the cosmos as an infinite fractal (basically, a huge piece of romanesco broccoli). Inflation ends more quickly in some regions than others — and when it ends we get, in Siegel’s words, “a hot Big Bang and a large Universe, where a small part of it might be similar to our own observable Universe.” The rest keeps expanding and creating opportunities for new universes, possibly forever.

But no matter how much we may want to live in Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, multiverse theory is still just a theory. Siegel explains that the multiverse is “not a new, testable scientific prediction, but rather a theoretical consequence that’s unavoidable, based on the laws of physics as they’re understood today.”

Some physicists disagree. Stephen Hawking, for example, was not a fan (he believed the universe is, in fact, finite). As is so often the case with astrophysics, we have more questions than answers. In the words of Neil DeGrasse Tyson, “The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.”

What else we’re reading

• Americans bet $119.84 billion on sports in 2023, up over 25% from the previous year. Betting apps like FanDuel have over 12M active users, and many of them are young men in their early-to-mid 20s who are predisposed toward risky, addictive behavior. On Medium, one of those betters, Ryan Fan, compares the rise of sports betting to the crypto boom of the 2010s: “Sports gambling, right now, is the Wild West for infinite possibilities of wins, but also infinite possibilities of losses, much like cryptocurrency before the crash.” He also details the toll it took on his mental health, and why gambling addictions are far more difficult to identify (and treat) than drug addictions.
• If senior management doesn’t understand why your role matters, writes UX designer Rita Kind-Envy, start framing your work in terms of business value. And begin by valuing yourself: “You need to realize that your job is of utmost importance. Meet with people with this attitude in mind. You’ll see their opinions about your work change.”

✍️ Your daily dose of practical wisdom: about writing

Any piece of writing is a collection of “interrelated decisions,” says novelist and essayist Alexander Chee, where every decision helps you make another. If you’re stuck, go back and look at the decisions you’ve made or failed to make. Which one of them is standing in your way?

Edited and produced by Scott Lamb & Carly Rose Gillis

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