宇宙の起源

"The Universe may have come in countless different versions."[may have 過去分詞]

Hawkingと同僚のHertogは、"the Universe had no unique beginning"と主張する論文を発表する、というニュースです。概要は以下です。基本的の言葉を確認しておりました。

Published online: 21 June 2006; | doi:10.1038/news060619-6
Hawking rewrites history... backwards
To understand the Universe we must start from the here and now.
Philip Ball

How did the Universe begin? Many scientists would regard this as one of the most profound questions of all. But to Stephen Hawking, who has perhaps come closer than anyone to answering it, the question doesn't in fact even exist.

Hawking, based at the University of Cambridge, UK, and his colleague Thomas Hertog of the European Laboratory for Particle Physics at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, are about to publish a paper claiming that the Universe had no unique beginning. Instead, they argue, it began in just about every way imaginable (and maybe some that aren't).

Out of this profusion of beginnings, the vast majority withered away without leaving any real imprint on the Universe we know today. Only a tiny fraction of them blended to make the current cosmos, Hawking and Hertog claim.

That, they insist, is the only possible conclusion if we are to take quantum physics seriously. "Quantum mechanics forbids a single history," says Hertog.

The researchers' theory comes in response to a problem raised by 'string theory', one of the best hopes for a theory of everything. String theory permits innumerable different kinds of universe, most of them very different from the one we inhabit. Some physicists suspect that an unknown factor will turn up that rules out most of these universes.

But Hawking and Hertog say that the countless 'alternative worlds' of string theory may actually have existed. We should picture the Universe in the first instants of the Big Bang as a superposition of all these possibilities, they say; like a projection of billions of movies played on top of one another.

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《語句》
be about to　～しようとしている
a paper claiming that　that以下のことを主張する論文（claimingは分詞の後置修飾）
imaginable　想像できる、考えられる限りの
based at the University of Cambridge,
～を本拠地にしている　→　研究拠点がある、～の研究者である　異。
Particle Physics (素)粒子物理学
CERN  欧州原子核共同研究所, セルン 《1952 年設立》
profusion　[a ～ of ...] おびただしい数[量]の…
withere away　しぼむ、きえてゆく
imprint　痕跡
fraction　断片
current　今の、現在の
if we are to take　'be to do'if節中で「意図」
quantum physics　量子物理学
quantum mechanics　量子力学
string theory　「ひも理論」
factor　要因
turn up　判明する, わかる:
rule out　除外する, 不可能にする, 妨げる; 禁止する
alternative　既存のものに代わる(べき)[より好ましい], 代替…
projection　投射