Are we living in a designer universe?

The argument over whether the universe has a creator, and who that might be, is among the oldest in human history. But amid the raging arguments between believers and sceptics, one possibility has been almost ignored – the idea that the universe around us was created by people very much like ourselves, using devices not too dissimilar to those available to scientists today.

As with much else in modern physics, the idea involves particle acceleration, the kind of thing that goes on in the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. Before the LHC began operating, a few alarmists worried that it might create a black hole which would destroy the world. That was never on the cards: although it is just possible that the device could generate an artificial black hole, it would be too small to swallow an atom, let alone the Earth.

However, to create a new universe would require a machine only slightly more powerful than the LHC – and there is every chance that our own universe may have been manufactured in this way.

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Was our universe born inside a black hole in another universe?

The current explanation of the universe's origins relies on clumsy assumptions and can't explain most subatomic particles. A small tweak to general relativity solves these problems - and seemingly proves the universe must have come from a black hole elsewhere.

As it stands right now, the explanation for the universe's beginnings is built around a combination of Einstein's general relativity and observation of the ancient universe. Mixing these two theories together creates some problems - for instance, the universe is impossibly large according to its current rate of expansion, so astrophysicists have to invoke the idea of inflation, in which the early universe expanded at a tremendous rate within the first second after the Big Bang.

General relativity, however, can't explain inflation, so another theory is required to account for it. There's nothing technically wrong with that, but it's an inelegant solution, and physicists tend to prefer an all-encompassing explanation to a bunch of piecemeal solutions. That's not the only issue with the current explanation - it can't deal with many properties of subatomic particles, consigning them entirely to the realm of quantum mechanics.

Nikodem Poplawski of Indiana University thinks solving the latter problem can also solve the former, and that's just the start of the craziness. In a new paper, he explains that the standard version of general relativity totally ignores the intrinsic momentum of subatomic particles like protons and neutrons, but a modified version known as the Einstein-Cartan-Kibble-Sciama theory of gravity solves that problem. The theory states these particles interact repulsively, creating tiny amounts of a force called torsion.

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Stephen Hawking's Bedtime Stories

Everyone's got a copy of A Brief History of Time, but few have finished it. If we engage children in science young enough, will this change?

Stephen Hawking:

The book aroused a great deal of interest, although many people found it difficult to understand. But I believe everyone can, and should, have a broad picture of how the universe operates, and our place in it. This is what I have tried to convey in all my popular books.

It is extremely important to me to write for children. Children ask how things do what they do, and why. Too often they are told that these are stupid questions to ask, but this is said by grown-ups who don't know the answers and don't want to look silly by admitting they don't know. It is important that young people keep their sense of wonder and keep asking why. I'm a child myself, in the sense that I'm still looking. Children are fascinated by black holes and ask me questions. I find they soon get the idea if it is explained in simple language. And yes, it is nice to think a few of them might grow up and read A Brief History from cover to cover.

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