In What Sense Is the Early Universe Fine-Tuned?

It is commonplace in discussions of modern cosmology to assert that the early universe began in a special state. Conventionally, cosmologists characterize this fine-tuning in terms of the horizon and flatness problems. I argue that the fine-tuning is real, but these problems aren't the best way to think about it: causal disconnection of separated regions isn't the real problem, and flatness isn't a problem at all. Fine-tuning is better understood in terms of a measure on the space of trajectories: given reasonable conditions in the late universe, the fraction of cosmological histories that were smooth at early times is incredibly tiny. This discussion helps clarify what is required by a complete theory of cosmological initial conditions.Comment: 28 pages. Prepared for a volume of essays commemorating David Albert's Time and Chance, B. Loewer, E. Winsberg and B. Weslake, ed

Why Boltzmann Brains Are Bad

Some modern cosmological models predict the appearance of Boltzmann Brains: observers who randomly fluctuate out of a thermal bath rather than naturally evolving from a low-entropy Big Bang. A theory in which most observers are of the Boltzmann Brain type is generally thought to be unacceptable, although opinions differ. I argue that such theories are indeed unacceptable: the real problem is with fluctuations into observers who are locally identical to ordinary observers, and their existence cannot be swept under the rug by a choice of probability distributions over observers. The issue is not that the existence of such observers is ruled out by data, but that the theories that predict them are cognitively unstable: they cannot simultaneously be true and justifiably believed

Beyond Falsifiability: Normal Science in a Multiverse

Cosmological models that invoke a multiverse - a collection of unobservable regions of space where conditions are very different from the region around us - are controversial, on the grounds that unobservable phenomena shouldn't play a crucial role in legitimate scientific theories. I argue that the way we evaluate multiverse models is precisely the same as the way we evaluate any other models, on the basis of abduction, Bayesian inference, and empirical success. There is no scientifically respectable way to do cosmology without taking into account different possibilities for what the universe might be like outside our horizon. Multiverse theories are utterly conventionally scientific, even if evaluating them can be difficult in practice

Why is the Universe Accelerating?

The universe appears to be accelerating, but the reason why is a complete mystery. The simplest explanation, a small vacuum energy (cosmological constant), raises three difficult issues: why the vacuum energy is so small, why it is not quite zero, and why it is comparable to the matter density today. I discuss these mysteries, some of their possible resolutions, and some issues confronting future observations.Comment: 22 pages; Contribution to Measuring and Modeling the Universe, Carnegie Observatories Astrophysics Series Vol. 2, ed. W. L. Freedman; references improve

Why Is There Something, Rather Than Nothing?

It seems natural to ask why the universe exists at all. Modern physics suggests that the universe can exist all by itself as a self-contained system, without anything external to create or sustain it. But there might not be an absolute answer to why it exists. I argue that any attempt to account for the existence of something rather than nothing must ultimately bottom out in a set of brute facts; the universe simply is, without ultimate cause or explanation