How did our universe begin? This is one of the most profound questions of all, and you can be forgiven for thinking it’s impossible to answer.but Laura Mercini-Horton She says she cracked it. A cosmologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she was born and raised in the communist dictatorship of Albania. In her Albania, her father was seen as ideologically opposed to the regime and was exiled. She later won a Fulbright Scholarship to study in the United States, where she built her cosmology career, working on the origin of the universe and making an extraordinary proposal.
Mersini-Houghton’s big idea is that the early universe can be understood as a quantum wavefunction. This is a mathematical description of the fog of possibility that gave rise to many diverse universes, not just our own. She also made predictions about how other universes leave their mark on us. But Mersini-Houghton claims they were confirmed by observations of radiation left over from the Big Bang, known as the cosmic microwave background.
where she says new scientist Her ideas and life, she explains in new book Before the Big Bang: The Origin of Our Universe in the Multiverse.
Rowan Hooper: Let’s start with your own story of growing up in Albania. To what extent has it shaped your thinking?
Laura Mersini-Houghton: Many contributions. Luckily my parents discovered my interest early on…
