Need Research Question Related to Multiverse (High School Level)

[marcus]

... enable you to write about the multiverse whilst keeping it grounded in something more mainstream.
I focused on how inflation has been tested so far and what hurdles it has still to jump. I think I had about 2 or 3 pages out of 40 discussing the eternal inflaiton/multiverse idea.
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That sounds like very sensible advice.

"Eternal" inflation is a specific kind of inflation scenario that envisages many disconnected blobs of slowed-down expansion scattered in an immense field that is still mostly expanding too rapidly for habitable structure to condense. According to that speculative scenario, we live in one of the slowed-down regions.

Merely assuming inflation does not force one to adopt the "eternal" idea. There are more modest limited versions of inflation. Those less grandiose elaborate visions may be closer to being testable.

So Skydive's example suggests a way out: write on inflation. What evidence in support? What problems? Does it require "fine-tuning" (improbably careful adjustment of parameters) to get sufficient inflation which then naturally stops when there has been enough?

And in his case, out of 40 pages about inflation, he had occasion to devote 2 or 3 to the vision of "eternal" inflation and the multiple blobs picture of universe which it suggests.

Can anyone suggest a specific research question about inflation, that a high school student could pursue?

The key thing with this International Baccalaureate thesis seems to be that you need a specific question. Some definite thing you can ask and rummage around and get evidence for/against this or that answer. You have to be able to dig up at least a partial answer to your question, in the literature. I think that's what Shaz was telling us.

Earlier in the thread I mentioned the idea of writing about Dark Matter. That has a Multiverse angle or side-issue to it as well---so it could serve similarly to what Skydive says about inflation.

In one inflation scenario there is just one universe, ours, but it is divided into large tracts with different DM density. In our region there is 5 or 6 times more DM than there is ordinary. In some other regions there could be more DM (relative to ordinary matter) and in other there could be less.

So in 2 or 3 pages of a 40 page essay about DM one could bring in this kinda-sorta Multivish idea. The other patches are not totally different from ours, they are mostly the same fields, particles, laws. But they might still look rather different and offer different degrees of habiitability from our patch.

 

[Chalnoth]

Can anyone suggest a specific research question about inflation, that a high school student could pursue?

1. Could provide an overview of the current evidence that constrains inflation, which is primarily from WMAP, but also from a few other experiments. The "cosmological interpretation" papers that the WMAP team releases every couple of years are about the best out there for this purpose, at least to start.
2. Provide an overview of the future evidence that might be used to constrain inflation, and how it can do that. Things like searches for non-Gaussianity or B-mode polarization might be informative here.

It's not really possible for a high-school student to do their own research directly here, of course, but it can certainly be done in a sort of review or argumentative essay format.

 

[Ken G]

I'm not sure shaz.662 is still coming around to see this, but I would certainly agree that a project more directly focused on more mainstream cosmology, with a kind of sidelight on the multiverse, would be far preferable to an entire science question based on the multiverse. Unless one wants to "teach the controversy," it hardly seems like a good idea to choose as one's science question something that we seem a long way off from being able to answer in any kind of consensus way. Dark matter is much more of a consensus, dark energy also (though maybe a bit less so), and inflation is third on that scale but still pretty solidly in the consensus. So any project in those arenas would seem more appropriate, though it's still going to have the flavor "wouldn't it be nice to come back in a century and see how this all came out" rather than "isn't it great how we were able to ask this science question, and find its answer."

 

[Haelfix]

Actually the mathematics of multiverse physics shouldn't be impossible for a high school student. There is a lot of simple Bayesian analysis and probability work that is done, which is quite intuitive. Some knowledge of Penrose diagrams would certainly be needed as well.

Whereas calculations with dark matter are considerably more involved, grueling and likely quite out of reach mathematically.

 

[Vorde]

Actually the mathematics of multiverse physics shouldn't be impossible for a high school student. There is a lot of simple Bayesian analysis and probability work that is done, which is quite intuitive. Some knowledge of Penrose diagrams would certainly be needed as well.

Whereas calculations with dark matter are considerably more involved, grueling and likely quite out of reach mathematically.

Knowing what I know about the IB, I'd assume math is of less importance in this paper than research and data gathering.

 

[marcus]

Knowing what I know about the IB, I'd assume math is of less importance in this paper than research and data gathering.

Vorde, thanks for stressing that. Earlier in the thread I suggested an alternative topic having to do with Dark Matter largely because the evidence is visual and can be discussed in ordinary language. One can present DM density maps, drawn as contour overlay on photographs of galaxy clusters. One also has the visual results of computer simuations of DM gathering to form the basic framework for ordinary matter to condense on in the early universe.

... How about an essay titled "Dark Matter"

or "Dark Matter and Structure Formation"

The essay is in two parts A and B

Part A discusses the EVIDENCE for DM, primarily the Bullet Cluster, which is highly visual evidence, and goes over the other types of evidence lightly, verbally.

Part B discusses the computer simulations that visually present how the largescale STRUCTURE or patterns of strands and clusters and voids that we SEE can have come about by gradual gravity pulling things together HELPED by Dark Matter. Indeed since there is so much more DM, 5 or 6 times more than ordinary type, it seems to have coalesced to form the basic cobwebby skeleton that ordinary matter then condensed on. That's how the computer simulations suggest it happened.

That again is something that can be presented visually and verbally (instead of needing math equations) because there are a lot of computer animations and still shots available if you dig around for them. Like from that website at the University of Chicago. I forget the guy's name but he is in the credits of George Smoot's TED talk.
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[Ken G]

Yes, I think if we have a high-school student explaining Penrose diagrams, the whole presentation is going to be at the purely "gee whiz" level, like "see what a clever high-school student I am, I can use 'conformal mapping' in a sentence, even though I have no understanding of the idea." At least most high-school students can use "dark matter" in a sentence, and have a reasonable idea what it means.

 

[Haelfix]

Knowing what I know about the IB, I'd assume math is of less importance in this paper than research and data gathering.

Yea but you need to understand the research and data, which is really not a simple matter with dark matter. I doubt that the IB will accept quality that is isomorphic to pulling out a Wikipedia page, and a copied picture of numerical results which says 'see this is dark matter'.

Observationally you need to understand Lyman alpha forests, baryon accoustic models of the CMB and details of the ISM and IGM that are rather heavy duty. Even picking out features of galactic rotation curves is a little bit tricky past the wikipedia level knowledge. On the theoretical side, you need to understand how to calculate relic abundances, have a good grasp of galaxy formation/mergers and cosmological particle freeze out calculations.

An upper level undergraduate would struggle with this, and while its possible that high school student could do it, its stacking the chips.

Meanwhile for instance (and this just off the top of my head), a paper appeared on hep-th today: http://arxiv.org/abs/1206.1081. I think with a little bit of supervision, that a high school student would be able to understand something like that. Indeed they might be able to solve a simple toy model that might be analogous to a full fledged calculation of the real thing..

It would require supervision, but I suspect it might be possible to enlist a professor to aid with this if the school has the clout.

 

[Vorde]

Quickly glancing over the math, I agree its tackleable by a high school student, especially with the professors help, but my point was more that assuming the IB exam is similar to the Thesis I do at my school (which I know it is to a considerable extent), the teachers are looking for the literary research not the mathematical skills.

All I'm saying is that it really doesn't matter about the mathematics, I could have written my thesis on QED and escaped with only a few lines of math, if any at all. I think the OP should be more concerned with how easy it would be to formulate a researchable question than with the background math that he/she will be reporting on.

 

[Ken G]

I guess the question then is, what is the researchable question in regard to eternal inflation? We've heard some people point out the importance of not squelching the enthusiasm of the student who is interested in the multiverse, and we've seen evidence that mathematical models might not be deal breakers, but the overarching issue seems to be the whole context of eternal inflation and multiverses. How much overhead has to go into setting up the topic before one really comes to a specific research question? Perhaps if such a question could be suggested, it would be clearer how this might actually make a good topic, because I'm still dubious in the absence of such an example.

 

[shaz.662]

Thank you everyone who contributed, though I should confess some of it was over my head, but it is a bit late to choose a different topic as suggested, what I now plan to do is look at atleast 5 different experiments that claim to provide results that are not 'classical physics'. I will then try and find some similarities in the results gathered by scholars and try and find a pattern (like a meta analysis). I will then see which theory of multiverse relates to my pattern, and that will be my essay. I would really appreciate if people could just also send me some experiments they think might be related.

 

[skydivephil]

First one should note that we don't have any experimental evidence for the multiverse. It may or may not exist.
Have you read Brian Green's book "The Hidden Reality"? This is an easy book for the layman and will give you some of the ideas that have been put forward to give the idea a plausible basis. This should be your starting point.

In cosmology the idea of eternal inflation is probably the most relevant case. This is discussed in Green's book.

There are three potential experimental signals I can think of, none of them have convinced the astronomical community and you will need to make that clear.

1 Dark Flow http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_flow . In the wiki article you will see a link to Ned Wrights criticism. is there really any effect happening at all? you can discuss the back and forth in more detail the wiki page has, the links are all there.

2. Bubble collisions : here is lecture on the topic and an article here:http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2010/12/22/observing-the-multiverse-guest-post/
So far no confirmatin of bubble collisions has been detected, some hope Planck will show something, we'll see.

3 Varying Alpha http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100909004112.htm
You might be able to tie this to the idea of what Green calls "the Quilted mulitverse" maybe that's a stretch I'm not sure. Again though remember the claimed effect is very small, how likely is it that its a statistical fluke?

i think your best bet is to lay out why some believe there may be a mulitverse and what prospects there are for finding some evidence. Discuss the back and forth in the literature but you do not need to conclude anything your self.