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  

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