British physicists say the theory that our universe is contained inside a bubble, just one of multiple bubble universes in a "multiverse," can now be tested. Scientists at University College London, Imperial College London and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics say the search is on for disk-like patterns in the cosmic microwave background radiation left over from the Big Bang that could provide evidence of collisions between other universes and our own.
Efforts to identify an efficient way to search for signs of such collisions have been hampered by the possibility the disc-like patterns in the radiation could be located anywhere in the sky and could be difficult to separate out from random patterns in the noisy background radiation data.
"It's a very hard statistical and computational problem to search for all possible radii of the collision imprints at any possible place in the sky," researcher Hiranya Peiris said Wednesday in a UCL release.
A new computer algorithm will allow the researchers to analyze huge amounts of background radiation data from a NASA probe, the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe.
"The work represents an opportunity to test a theory that is truly mind-blowing: that we exist within a vast multiverse, where other universes are constantly popping into existence," Stephen Feeney, who created the powerful algorithm, said.
