From Charles Goodwin
You quote David Albert as saying “What we really want to know is why this branching [of the universe into many worlds] happens in the first place” (22 September, p 6). Max Tegmark supplied the answer by giving the most convincing reason I have seen to accept the many-worlds interpretation of quantum theory: “The mathematical universe hypothesis implies that such a simple theory must predict a multiverse… because this theory… lacks enough bits (of information) to completely specify our universe” (15 September, p 38).
In other words, if the ultimate laws of physics can be written on a T-shirt, where does the extra information that describes our particular universe come from? Tegmark’s answer is that this information specifies the location of our universe in the multiverse. But some 10100 random events have occurred since the big bang, so either the universe is incredibly random or there is more to it than meets the eye.
Wellington, New Zealand
