In his own words
You now don’t have to listen to my attempt to parse Sean Carroll’s talk, but can go and read his take on the research at Cosmic Variance.
In commenting here, Sean said
I was mostly trying to make the point that, although multiverse ideas are very new and underdeveloped, it is certainly imaginable that someday when we understand them better we will be able to make concrete predictions. The new CMB paper is interesting mostly as an investigation into conventional inflation, but there might be some connection to the pre-inflationary universe, which is certainly intriguing. But it’s all quite speculative at this point.
I’d hoped I’d made clear in my piece for the BBC how speculative this was. What made me want to write the story in the first place, though, was exactly what Sean said above - to an outsider to the field the idea that it is even imaginable that we might be able to make concrete predictions from ideas about multiverses which have haunted the pages of New Scientist and its ilk for decades is stunning. That’s what I wanted to get across.
on June 9th, 2008 at 11:14 am
[...] Update: The author of the piece, Chris Lintott, has a blog, and a posting about the article, where he writes: What made me want to write the story in the first place, though, was exactly what Sean said above - to an outsider to the field the idea that it is even imaginable that we might be able to make concrete predictions from ideas about multiverses which have haunted the pages of New Scientist and its ilk for decades is stunning. That’s what I wanted to get across. [...]