Monday, August 06, 2007

Universe or Multiverse?

In our universe, Cambridge University Press have recently published this weighty tome on the subject of multiverse physics. At £45, it's rather expensive for what is basically a collection of conference papers, most of which are re-hashed versions of material already published by the respective authors. Moreover, most of the articles, or the papers from which they are derived, can be freely downloaded from the internet. Hence, as a service to the impecunious, I here provide links to all these papers with the list of contents from the book.

Part I. Overviews:
1. Introduction and overview, Bernard Carr
2. Living in the multiverse, Steven Weinberg
3. Enlightenment, knowledge, ignorance, temptation, Frank Wilczek

Part II. Cosmology and Astrophysics:
4. Cosmology and the multiverse, Martin J. Rees
5. The anthropic principle revisited, Bernard Carr
6. Cosmology from the top down, S. W. Hawking
7. The multiverse hierarchy, Max Tegmark
8. The inflationary universe, Andrei Linde
9. A model of anthropic reasoning addressing the dark to ordinary matter coincidence, Frank Wilczek
10. Anthropic predictions: the case of the cosmological constant, Alexander Vilenkin
11. The definition and classification of universes, James D. Bjorken
12. M/string theory and anthropic reasoning, Renata Kallosh
13. The anthropic principle, dark energy and the LHC, Savas Dimopoulos and Scott Thomas

Part III. Particle Physics and Quantum Theory:
14. Quarks, electrons and atoms in closely related universes, Craig J. Hogan
15. The fine-tuning problems of particle physics and anthropic mechanisms, John F. Donoghue
16. The anthropic landscape of string theory, Leonard Susskind
17. Cosmology and the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, V. F. Mukhanov
18. Anthropic reasoning and quantum cosmology, James. B. Hartle
19. Micro-anthropic principle for quantum theory, Brandon Carter

Part IV. More General Philosophical Issues:
20. Scientific alternatives to the anthropic principle, Lee Smolin
21. Making predictions in a multiverse: conundrums, dangers, coincidences, Anthony Aguirre
22. Multiverses: description, uniqueness and testing, George Ellis
23. Predictions and tests of multiverse theories, Don N. Page
24. Observation selection theory and cosmological fine-tuning, Nick Bostrom
25. Are anthropic arguments, involving multiverses and beyond, legitimate? William R. Stoeger
26. The multiverse hypothesis: a theistic perspective, Robin Collins
27. Living in a simulated universe, John D. Barrow
28. Universes galore: where will it all end? Paul Davies.

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