Originally posted by adam warlock
Let me break it down:
1 - The article cited is utter crap with a bunch of baloney on it. The first baloney is "is, for the first time, being tested by physicists.". No it isn't and it certainly won't be tested any time in the future. The said methodology, better what I can gather is the methodology, certainly isn't convincing on so many levels. But t ...[text shortened]... and co really is unbearable. Take this for instance: http://arxiv.org/abs/1105.3796
Here is where I agree with you. There is a lot of speculation all over the place with these guys. These guys have a theory that multiverses are within a bubble. There is no reason that multiverses can't be individual in each bubble with lots of bubbles. How can we tell? We can't. At this point proving or disproving it is impossible and for all we know it may stay that way.
So why do they have a theory that multiverses are in a bubble or something along that way of thinking? My guess is to support the many worlds theory made known by Hugh Everett III to explain the uncertainty in QM. Other physicists have struggled to explain the uncertainty principle in vain and that has resulted in a second look at Hugh Everett's theory with the seriousness that was lacking after he proposed it early on. PBS's Nova even examined Hugh Everett and his theory giving him some degree of credibility that he was denied for so long.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/manyworlds/
There was no mention of string theory in the article that I noticed, but like ST it may be doomed to be an untestable theory for some time if not forever. Whether or not this theory was devised by string theorists is not important since the multiverse theories are not dependent on ST. Many proponents of ST do entertain the existence of multiple dimensions and that may be why they take this sort of thing more serious than others, if there is truth to your claim that mutiverse theory is spawned directly from string theory.
From my perspective, it is silly to suggest that the laws of physics are the same everywhere unless you believe in creationism by an omnipotent being such as god, or unless our single universe has been expanding and collapsing millions of times until the laws of physics turned out like they are now in this workable and convenient way. That too is possible, but even the big bang is just a theory. That too can be denied if you don't want to bite, but there seems to be evidence that the universe is expanding which gives some credibility to the big bang theory.
Since the expanding of the universe seems to be accelerating, a big collapse is questionable and only makes the multiverse theory more appealing. Then again, maybe only a portion of the universe is expanding. We could find that out some day. That is the thing about theories. Nobody has to accept them if they don't want to. All great theories start out with speculation and skepticism. That is the nature of physics.