Daring to speculate in the absence of well-confirmed theory, Carroll jumps from clue to clue, from black hole physics to string theory to the holographic principle, until he arrives at his destination: an eternal “mother space-time” from which a multiverse of baby universes are continually bubbling up and pinching off. The mother space-time is a high entropy vacuum that gives birth to universes like our own, some of which we can expect to begin with low entropy. Problem solved, says Carroll, because that is natural.

Carroll seems slightly embarrassed by the many leaps of faith he asks of his reader in proposing this solution, and the prose of Part IV sometimes reads like the pitch of an honest used-car salesman: “This car is a dream! True, the tyres are bald, brakes unsound and transmission sticky, but you’ll love it!”

Carroll and other peddlers of multiverses make us an offer: we will explain the unexplained if you add vast unconfirmable matters of fact into your ontology. In this case that includes a host of disconnected baby universes, an eternal mother universe entirely unlike ours, and half a dozen unknown mechanisms to get all this working. Assuming this explains the low entropy past – and with so much unknown it is hard to be sure another conspiracy isn’t lurking within – is this a good deal?

In most cases I don’t think so. Why is Manchester United perennially a good soccer team? Surely most solutions of the laws of physics don’t have them winning so much. How unnatural (and unfair) those initial conditions are! Nonetheless, a frothy sea of baby universes tempts no one. We shrug and say, that’s just the way it is. Sometimes it is best not to scratch explanatory itches.