2006/05/31 by Raphael Bousso · 7 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Anthropic principle #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Computer science #Cosmology #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Earth Systems and Cosmic Evolution #Entropy (arrow of time) #Epistemology #Eternal inflation #Holography #Inflation (cosmology) #Measure (data warehouse) #Philosophy #Physics #Quantum mechanics #Simple (philosophy) #Statistical physics #Theoretical physics #astro-ph #gr-qc #hep-ph #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.97.191302
published as Phys.Rev.Lett.97:191302,2006 · 5 pages, 3 figures. v4: published version, misprints corrected (mu -> eta)
openalex publication_date 2006/11/06 · arxiv created 2007/02/21 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
In the global description of eternal inflation, probabilities for vacua are notoriously ambiguous. The local point of view is preferred by holography and naturally picks out a simple probability measure. It is insensitive to large expansion factors or lifetimes and so resolves a recently noted paradox. Any cosmological measure must be complemented with the probability for observers to emerge in a given vacuum. In lieu of anthropic criteria, I propose to estimate this by the entropy that can be produced in a local patch. This allows for prior-free predictions.