Epigraph:

Do not the disbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were a closed-up mass, then We opened them out? And We made from water every living thing. Will they not then believe?

And We have made in the earth firm mountains lest it should quake with them; and We have made therein wide pathways, that they may be rightly guided.

And We have made the heaven a roof, well protected; yet they turn away from its Signs. (Al Quran 21:30-32)

Written and collected by Zia H Shah MD, Chief Editor of the Muslim Times

Weeks before he died, renowned physicist Stephen Hawking finished laying out the groundwork on a theory he hoped would prove the existence of other universes outside our own.

The paper, which has not yet been published or peer reviewed, lays out the mathematics needed to build a space probe capable of detecting evidence of parallel universes — also known as the multiverse. 

“Think of it as many universes. So not just many solar systems, but really an ensemble of separate worlds,” Thomas Hertog, a Belgian physicist who co-wrote the paper with Hawking, told As It Happens host Carol Off.

“Some of these universes are completely empty, and others are full of black holes, and yet others have stars and galaxies and life.”

The concept of the multiverse stems from the big bang theory — Albert Einstein’s once controversial, but now widely accepted, idea that the universe instantaneously expanded from a tiny point called a singularity.

Hawking predicted that our big bang was just one in an infinite number of big bangs that occurred simultaneously — each of them creating its own separate universe.

The idea of infinite big bangs, multiple universes or multiverse, first came about to explain the biophilic nature of our universe, to understand and explain why our universe is suitable for our life. We need to understand the apparent infinite unexpected coincidences to make our planet heritable to 9 million life forms that it has. For example, consider these articles:

A challenge for Dawkins: Where did carbon come from?

Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape The Universe by Martin Rees

The Goldilocks Enigma: Why Is the Universe Just Right for Life? by Paul Davies

Moon: Does it have a purpose?

But if other universes exist, we have no way to find them, and no way to test the theory, according to some.

That loose thread had long been a sore point for Hawking, Hertog said. 

“This was very much on the top of his mind. Hawking did not like the multiverse. But on the other hand, he realized it’s very hard to avoid. Pretty much any reasonable model of the big bang which we could come up with led us to a multiverse,” he said.

“If anything is possible — if a multiverse is too gigantic, too wild — then our theory won’t say anything about our own universe, and so it’s useless as a scientific theory.”

So, he said, Hawking came to him a few years ago and said, “Alright, let’s try to control the multiverse.”

That’s what they set out to do in what would become Hawking’s last scientific paper. 

He and Hertog laid out the mathematics needed to build a space probe that would be capable of detecting powerful gravitational waves created by multiple big bangs.

This, Hertog says, gives scientists a way to actually test the multiverse theory. 

The above description of the last paper of Hawking is almost completely borrowed verbatim from an article: Stephen Hawking’s final theory could prove the existence of the multiverse.

Stephen Hawking had co-authored a book describing his M theory or the Multiverse theory that I had reviewed years ago: Ten Raised to Five Hundred Reasons for Our Gracious God.

Now, I would simply catalogue a few articles or videos about his article and theory: Prof Hawking’s multiverse finale – BBC News.