‘Universe o Multiverse?’

Cosmological observations show that the Universe is very uniform on the maximally large scale accessible to our telescopes, and that the same laws of physics operate in all the areas seen. The best theoretical explanation was provided by the inflationary theory 30 years ago. Paradoxically, this theory also predicts that on a scale much larger than we can observe, the world might look different. Instead of a single spherical globe, our Universe could in fact be a Multiverse; a collection of many different exponentially large universes with different laws of physics operating in each. Although this initially seemed like science fiction, recent developments in inflationary cosmology, particle physics and string theory support this new cosmological paradigm.