An Alternative String Landscape Cosmology: Eliminating Bizarreness

TL;DR

This paper proposes an alternative string landscape cosmology that avoids infinite cloning and other problematic implications of eternal inflation, by relaxing certain assumptions and offering testable predictions.

Contribution

It introduces a new cosmological model that circumvents infinite cloning and challenges standard assumptions like universal homogeneity and no preferred frame.

Findings

Avoids infinite cloning of civilizations

Provides testable predictions distinguishing it from eternal inflation

Suggests the universe's future may include becoming a light trapping region

Abstract

In what has become a standard eternal inflation picture of the string landscape there are many problematic consequences and a difficulty defining probabilities for the occurrence of each type of universe. One feature in particular that might be philosophically disconcerting is the infinite cloning of each individual and each civilization in infinite numbers of separated regions of the multiverse. Even if this is not ruled out due to causal separation one should ask whether the infinite cloning is a universal prediction of string landscape models or whether there are scenarios in which it is avoided. If a viable alternative cosmology can be constructed one might search for predictions that might allow one to discriminate experimentally between the models. We present one such scenario although, in doing so, we are forced to give up several popular presuppositions including the absence of a preferred frame and the homogeneity of matter in the universe. The model also has several ancillary advantages. We also consider the future lifetime of the current universe before becoming a light trapping region.