Fractal universes
Physics advance oh so slow! Just ask Andrei Linde, who was interviewed by Rudy Rucker for Wired magazine an eternity ago, and now, again, for slate.
Come on, what was news in 1995 is kind of interresting still, but surely you could add more to what Rucker got?
Wired:You've suggested that it might be possible to create a universe in the laboratory by violently compressing matter, that 1 milligram of matter may initiate a self-reproducing universe. How would this work?
Linde:It would be hard. You have to do more than just compress the matter. But with high temperatures and quantum effects, there is a chance of creating a universe. Our estimates indicate that you would need a very good laboratory indeed. And it is not dangerous to try. This new universe would not hurt our universe; it would only expand within itself - like bulging a bubble out from the side of our space.
Linde:It would be hard. You have to do more than just compress the matter. But with high temperatures and quantum effects, there is a chance of creating a universe. Our estimates indicate that you would need a very good laboratory indeed. And it is not dangerous to try. This new universe would not hurt our universe; it would only expand within itself - like bulging a bubble out from the side of our space.
Amazing. Now we have our own universes in the inflated heads of Slate writers.