Hi:

I believe, for what I feel are good conceptual reasons, that the answer is the former….the quasi-static, dual model, and astronomical evidence is pointing in the same direction.

UPDATE: Max Tegmark of the University of Pennsylvania has writtten an excellent article on parallel universes in the May 2003 Scientific American. In the opening paragraphs of his article, he strongly asserts that the evidence from the field implies that parallel universe(s) exist. However, in the article, he postulates infinite, open, flat space, and so derives a multiverse...a set of types of similar universes.

In the article he also mentions a caveat. The WMAP power spectrum results, from careful measurements of the CMB indicate a universe of fixed finite volume. Such a universe is a single GR based, dual, unfolding and developing universe, of the quasi-static type discussed on this site. The universe last year was confirmed to be marginally closed by the results of Maxima and Boomerang, and has an omega of 1.022 (as confirmed by WMAP). Such a configuration is not open- but closed, with oval space characterized by almost parallel sides- observed flat space- and sudden singular closure at the antipodes.

This and other evidence indicating a finite universe bolsters the GR concept...an everywhere single entity dual universe- with a planck realm.END UPDATE

Recent experiments on the propagation speed of gravity confirm that the way the universe is observed lies within the parameters of SRT and GR, limiting our conceptual options in considering the Planck Realm. Of course the massive Planck Realm is real, as much a matter of scientific definition as the existence of black holes and the measured parameters of event horizons. What needs to be clarified is the nature of that which lies "inside"!

There may be a few readers who remember the record player. The most popular record for precise recording was one that rotated periodically at 33 and 1/3 rotations per minute. Each time the record rotated, the needle arrived at not quite the same spot.

This is analogous to the single process, but periodic time flow in our universe. Although from a 4D frame, the universe is observed to be cyclic, and time flow in an opposite 3 space may be observed as reversed, in fact nothing at macroscopic scales in the universe ever happens exactly the same way twice. At microscopic scales, the universe is observed to be more and more deterministic; quantum effects dominate.

The rules of the universe in the submicroscopic parallel the simple principles of binomial expansion, though even in the macroscopic 4D cosmos, we also see probability in action. In binomial expansion, the sum of all terms equals unity (1); certainty; AND the numbers of each possible event as described by any term, in a fixed size and finite but vast universe are (almost- quasi-static, remember?) constant. The rest is geometry!

The singular realm, when observed from our frame, contains 66% of the universal mass and has a perceived event horizon at 360 degrees in every direction, but does not contain information because cosmic singularity by mathematical definition is outside the parameters of our 4D reality. If there no longer are such things as length, width, height and time, the amorphous is what we are left with…from our frame anyway. Extrapolation is interesting- so long as we remember these facts.

Now let’s move from the analogy of a flat record to one of the inside of an infinitely long rotating cylinder. If we represent our single process time dimension as a continuous groove on the inside of our cylinder, and engrave the birth, death, resurrection and re-existence of each 3 space on a single periodic rotation of our tube, we find that our universe is periodically re-experienced, but with very minor changes, resulting from the fact that each cosmic period brings the universe to a slightly different place. The short distance between the adjoining groves represents proper/cosmic time. The 360 degree rotation represents dilated cosmological time as observed by us from the opposite 3 space. Time is real; time as we observe it, however is but a projection, a rather strange projection of cosmic reality.

Now for the important point; in the real universe there is a phylogenic process going on. We feel the same, but each time we experience life, there is a slight change away from the way things were before. Cosmic consciousness imposes order on this change- life collectively acts as a servomechanism to drive the universe away from chaos and toward increasing order.

Still infinitesimal change is change. We live, not in a multiverse, but in a single, dual universe which develops and unfolds multi-dimensionally over eternity. A billion cycles from now, if we could look backwards, as we do look backwards when we study evolution and archeology, we could trace our origins and even direct our future path. In doing so, we would find we collectively met the accepted definition we had for God- a billion cycles ago. Yet anything chaotic would have long since been eliminated from the universe we experienced in antiquity.

If the universe truly is closed, and even the Planck Realm is really a part of the General Relativity whole, what we observe as mass in the Planck Realm is really our own collective cosmic mass observed in a peculiar way….a mirror of ourselves. We find no closed systems in our world, but who knows? Life itself may, in the last analysis, be the reason why the GR universe continues intact and evolving- forever.