professor stephen hawking might have died before the james webb space telescope finally launched
still due to the vast space legacy of the late physicist many hours of the new space telescope
will be dedicated to proving some of his theories one of such theories is the very last one hawking
worked on before his death in which he argued about a multiverse theory that implies an exact
copy of you existed in a parallel universe what is the multiverse theory and will the james webb
space telescope finally prove stephen hawking's multiverse theory stephen hawking died in 2018
missing the launch of the james webb space telescope by more than three and a half years
that was thanks to multiple delays that pushed the launch date from between 2007 and 2011.
it also gulped up 10 billion dollars about 10 times the initial budget however following a
successful launch and deployment of its components this powerful space telescope will undergo several
months of calibrating and testing before settling down to work thanks to the large 6.5 meter giant
mirror that had to be folded during launch the telescope will be able to peer into the
atmosphere of planets outside our solar system and peak through massive clouds of dust to watch the
birth of new stars and planetary systems jwst will be able to gather and reflect light from the early
universe the universe is thought to be around 13.8 billion years old and jwst will be able to
observe light from the earliest stars and galaxies close to the big bang the jwst is an infrared
telescope meaning it uses infrared radiation to detect objects in space is able to observe
celestial bodies such as stars nebulae and planets that are too cool or too faint to be observed in
visible light that is what is visible to the human eye according to nasa infrared radiation can also
pass through gas and dust which appear opaque to the human eye this is different from the world
famous hubble telescope which sees visible light ultraviolet radiation and near-infrared radiation
in order for the instruments aboard to work they need to be kept at extremely cold temperatures
minus 370 degrees fahrenheit or lower the large sun shield protects the telescope from the heat of
the sun and keeps the instrument cold according to a report conducted by an independent review
board in 2018 there were 344 single-point failures or steps that needed to work for
the mission to succeed however the telescope was tucked inside the nose of an aryan 5 rocket and
launched safely from the european space agency's spaceport in french guyana in december last year
it separated from the rocket after the launch and began unfolding according to nasa about 30 minutes
after the launch the first deployment took place as the solar panels unfolded so the telescope
could get power from the sun because of jwst's capabilities many astronomers are vying for time
with the telescope the space telescope science institute which oversees science operations on
hubble and jwst had sent out a call to astronomers for proposals on how they'd like to use james
webb with 6 000 hours of observation time up for grabs the lucky ones have now received approvals
for their projects and we look forward to the wealth of knowledge they will enrich us with
there is plenty of time for the jwst to unlock the deep secrets of the universe with about 20 years
of operation guaranteed by the amount of fuel aboard the space telescope with the jwst safely
delivered to its location about 1 million miles away from the earth it is time to confirm one of
hawking's most intriguing theories the multiverse concept the theory is special because it was the
last one published by the professor in fact that final research from the sharp mind was submitted
for publication just 10 days before his death in the paper titled a smooth exit from eternal
inflation which he co-authored with thomas hertog a physicist at the catholic university of leuven
in belgium hawking laid out a theory on the origin of the universe that might settle a few lingering
questions however despite being his last work the paper was actually a final look at one of his
earliest theories in fact if the jwst eventually helps prove the existence of the multiverse
it will make the scientists behind it likely candidates for a nobel prize however since nobel
prizes cannot be awarded posthumously hawking would be ineligible to receive it what is the
multiverse theory and what did the late physicists have to say about it the multiverse theory
suggests that our universe with all its hundreds of billions of galaxies and almost countless stars
spanning tens of billions of light years may not be the only one instead there may be an entirely
different universe distantly separated from ours and another and another in fact this mind-bending
theory suggests there may be an infinity of universes or with their own laws of physics
their own collections of stars and galaxies and maybe even their own intelligent civilizations
so basically our universe could just be one member of a much grander much larger multitude
of universes a multiverse however it gets as some folks will say creepier because the implication of
the multiverse is the existence of doppelgangers or copies according to the logic if there really
are an infinity of universes but a finite number of ways to arrange particles in any individual
universe then the same patterns are destined to be repeated eventually that would mean that at some
incredible distance there would be an exact copy of you watching the exact replica of this video
and because there would be an infinite number of universes there would be an infinite number of
these exact scenarios all happening at the same time the concept of the multiverse arises in a
few areas of physics and philosophy but the most prominent example comes from the inflation theory
inflation theory describes a hypothetical event that occurred when our universe was very young
less than a second old in that brief amount of time the universe underwent a period of rapid
expansion inflating to become many orders of magnitude larger than its previous sites
the inflation of our universe is thought to have ended about 14 billion years ago however inflation
does not end everywhere at the same time it is possible that as inflation ends in some regions
it continues in others thus while inflation ended in our universe there may have been other much
more distant regions where inflation continued and continues even today individual universes can
pinch off of larger inflating expanding universes creating an infinite sea of eternal inflation
filled with numerous separate universes in this eternal inflation scenario each universe would
emerge with its own laws of physics its own collection of particles its own arrangement
of forces and its own values of fundamental constants this might explain why our universe
has the properties it does particularly the properties that are hard to explain with basic
physics such as dark matter or the cosmological constant according to some scientists the biggest
piece of evidence for the multiverse is that life exists particularly intelligent life capable of
making cosmological observations they look at it this way certain aspects of our universe seem
special and vital for supporting life such as the longevity of stars the abundance of carbon
the availability of light for photosynthesis and the stability of complex nuclei but all these
features are typically not the case if you get handed a random universe the multiverse offers
one explanation for why all these features are favorable in our universe which is that other
universes exist as well still we observe this one because it's capable of supporting complex life
however according to hertog hawking was not satisfied with this state of understanding
of the multiverse so he asked her dog to join him to try to tame the universe the pair then worked
to develop a method to transform the idea of a multiverse into a coherent testable scientific
framework hawking's final paper suggests a framework for understanding the universe
that would render the multiverse finite countable and subject to meaningful engagement via the tools
of science interestingly hawking helped develop the theory that led to the idea of infinite
parallel universes that is the eternal inflation theory but he admitted he had never been a fan
of the multiverse in an interview he is quoted as saying the usual theory of eternal inflation
predicts that globally our universe is like an infinite fractal with a mosaic of different
pocket universes separated by an inflating ocean the local laws of physics and chemistry
can differ from one pocket universe to another which together would form a multiverse but i've
never been a fan of the multiverse if the scale of different universes in the multiverse is large
or infinite the theory can't be tested hawking and hertog relied on string theory a branch of physics
that tries to reconcile quantum physics with gravity and einstein's theory of relativity
they came up with a new idea of eternal inflation that relies on a boundary at the beginning of time
the idea suggests that when we trace the evolution of our universe backward in time at some point
we arrive at the threshold of eternal inflation where our familiar notion of time ceases to have
any meaning starting from that boundary the new theory predicts a finite structure of universes
emerging from the big bang if this theory has proved true it would suggest that other universes
like our own could have emerged at that point and there could even be primordial gravitational waves
that match the inflation of the universe but this new model is still far from proven and physicists
will need more data and a better understanding of string theory before that's possible the paper
also implies that it might be possible to test this theory however the existing instruments
then were not sensitive enough to find evidence of this theory but that does not stop scientists from
trying physicists could look for evidence of other universes using tools designed to measure
ripples in space-time also known as primordial gravitational waves that would have been generated
by the universe's initial expansion from the big bang other scientists have tried to find
more physical hard evidence for the multiverse's existence for example if a neighboring universe
happened to be close to hours long ago it may have collided with our universe creating a noticeable
imprint that imprint could be in the form of distortions in the cosmic microwave background
that is the light left over from when the universe was a million times smaller than it is today let's
hear what you think of hawking's theory of the multiverse in the comments section below