Book explores discoveries in cosmology and how our universe could have come from nothing

Well, if "nothing doesn't mean "nothing" anymore", then of course something could arise from that kind of "nothing". I wonder if some people are too smart for their own good. We gauge nothingness upon our ability to measure or detect "something", but can it be said that we know beyond a shadow of doubt that if we, at our present state of scientific advancement, cannot detect something, then "nothing" is there?

hmmm. is the author attempting to prove the non-existence of G-d? let's try that argument on the following: 1. babies exist. 2. we know that physical desire is all that is required to produce babies. that doesn't prove that there aren't babies who are produced desire love.

WHY question implies causality. If you can accept that something can be formed from nothing, then virtually everything is possible. With such violation of causality you're not required to bother with some causality at all. Even God is plausible explanation after then. The proponents of such explanations (Hawking) are converging to the religion (which they indeed deny furiously) in the same way, like Hitler converged to Stalin (although he hated communism, his practical politics was quite similar).

In dense aether theory the observable reality always arises with causal mechanism in similar emergent way, like the condensation of droplets from saturated vapor. The proponents of formal math cannot describe/predict such multiparticle phenomena well, so they're pretending, the formation of something from nothing is possible, although the casual explanation of this process is still quite simple. The absence of determinism doesn't imply the absence of causality (i.e. answers of WHY questions)

From the same reason Feynman refused to answer the WHY question at the case "Why magnets work?" just because this answer would require to consider aether model or some other indeterministic description of reality.

http://www.youtub...Pe-DwULM

The formally thinking physicists cannot admit, some phenomena can be real, although they cannot be described mathematically by their very definition, because it would violate their carefully build religion and threatened their social status of modern priests, who have an informational monopoly for answering such questions.

But the question "Why magnets work?" can be reformulated into "How magnets work?" easily and no philosophical evasion will save the Feynman from necessity of answering such a question.

One reason of the obstinate ignorance if not refusal of cold fusion is just the philosophic problem of contemporary scientists with studying of the phenomena, which cannot be explained with or even violate the existing deterministic theories seemingly. It's evident, human civilization is losing huge amount of money and resources just because the modern dogma of "Mathematical Universe" (observable Universe can be described mathematically and what cannot, is therefore not real). The "Shut up and calculate!" imperative is really a modern version of religion with all its negative consequences.

http://arxiv.org/abs/0704.0646

Dense aether theory considers instead a complete symmetry between deterministic perspective (observed/described with transverse waves of light) and the indeterministic one (observed/mediated with longitudinal waves).

hmmm. is the author attempting to prove the non-existence of G-d? let's try that argument on the following: 1. babies exist. 2. we know that physical desire is all that is required to produce babies. that doesn't prove that there aren't babies who are produced desire love.

I wouldn't even go there. You can argue that love is emergent from a variety of psychological, physiological, evolutionary, and social mechanisms. It really is too hairy an issue for the 1000 characters allotted to me. That doesn't mean it isn't important, but its existence is far from proof of God's existence.

The universe can arise from nothing just like momentum arises from nothing. Once you have a positive and negative momentum, which equal nothing, energy and everything else follows naturally.

Pressure2, there's a problem, though. Even though momentum is still 0, kinetic energy is now positive and not 0. Unless the universe existed in an unstable equilibrium (hence at a maximum of potential energy), you would have to explain where that energy came from.

WHY question implies causality. If you can accept that something can be formed from nothing, then virtually everything is possible. With such violation of causality you're not required to bother with some causality at all. Even God is plausible explanation after then. The proponents of such explanations (Hawking) are converging to the religion (which they indeed deny furiously)
[...]
In dense aether theory the observable reality always arises with causal mechanism in similar emergent way, like the condensation of droplets from saturated vapor.

Callippo,

I fear you have fallen prey to much the same disease! Are you not aware of the similarity between this "Ex Nihilo" vacuum energy fluctuation and your D/AWTheory? Conceptually, they are nearly identical, apparently only differing in terms of what is taken as their "starting" point. I can certainly understand your commitment to this model, but at the same time, you should probably abandon the god/religion accusations...

The universe seems to be infinite in time and space and cyclic.

It is expanding now because of neutron emission and neutron decay.

When the neutron stars have evaporated away, it will collapse and start over.

"Is the Universe Expanding?" The Journal of Cosmology 13, 4187-4190 (2011)

http://journalofc...102.html

"Neutron Repulsion", The APEIRON Journal, in press (2011)

http://arxiv.org/...2.1499v1

With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
http://myprofile....anuelo09

"Science has changed the way we think about ourselves and our place in the cosmos, a

Yes, indeed "science" has changed the way people think, especially when it comes to the case of origins. In this instance it's more a case of non-science since evolution [from molecules to moles] does not fit the true scientific paradigm - has not been observed, cannot be repeated and certainly with its non-definition cannot be falsified.
It's pseudo-science or a meta-physical/philosophic belief system masquerading as science. One has only to look at how its adherents are trying to force its acceptance by making other religions illegal in schools to see that it's a dogmatic religion in itself. It reminds me of a dictatorship wherein one is not allowed to criticize the dictator for fear of being thrown in jail and tortured or worse, killed. The modus operandi is the same with evolution.

Hawkins: The pellet with the poison... the pellet with the poison is in the vessel with the pestle, the chalice from the palace has the true that is brew. Eh... brew that is tru- The pellet with the poison's in the vessel with the pestle, the chalice from the palace has the true that is brew. Eh, eh, brew that is true. Eh. The chestle with the pal- eh, eh, palace with the... http://dagsrule.c...tle.html

"Science has changed the way we think about ourselves and our place in the cosmos, a

Yes, indeed "science" has aaaa.......AAAAAAaaaaa...aaaaaa...aaa.......*splat*

.....well, that was unfortunate......

It's pseudo-science or a meta-physical/philosophic belief system masquerading as science. One has only to look at how its adherents are trying to force its acceptance by making other religions illegal in schools to see that it's a dogmatic religion in itself. It reminds me of a dictatorship wherein one is not allowed to criticize the dictator for fear of being thrown in jail and tortured or worse, killed. The modus operandi is the same with evolution.

"The Paranoid Style in American Politics"
http://karws.gso....yle.html

"The enemy is clearly delineated: he is a perfect model of malice, a kind of amoral superman, sinister, ubiquitous, powerful, cruel, sensual, luxury-loving. Unlike the rest of us, the enemy is not caught in the toils of the vast mechanism of history, himself a victim of his past, his desires, his limitations. He wills, indeed he manufactures, the mechanism of history..."

Kevin. God just called me and told me that he wants you to stop believing in him. He said that he finds you an embarrassment because your irrationality is proof of a defect in his grand design.

He told me that he designed men to think and act rationally based on observation of his creation and that your faith in his existence is irrational behaviour and proof of his design failure.

God called me because... Well he doesn't have your cell phone number.

Now don't try praying to him and telling him your number, because he doesn't want it. He has tried and tried to talk sense into you and you just were not listening. Now he just isn't interested in talking to you any more.

So there you go Kev... You blew it.

Now don't get it in your head that it's time to side with Lucifer. He called me right after God and told me that he doesn't want you either.

Vendicar:
Nietzsche: God is dead.
God: Nietzsche is dead.

he designed men to think and act rationally

If there's no God, i.e. one who represents the absolute truth, then all you can do is act irrationally. The reason is quite simple - if there's no absolute truth you have no way of knowing whether what you're thinking is true or not. It becomes relative to who likes and can enforce what.
The very science you so love requires that via the laws of logic something must be absolutely true. Just think about that for a moment.

Wrong again Kevin. Science only requires that theory match with observation. Everything else flows from that.

Other than his phone call to me, there are scant times in recorded history when God has talked to anyone, and those conversations are invariably orders and demands rather than truths.

So there is no basis for your claim that your God represents absolute truth.

But he did call. And he finds your faith in him to be a shameful abuse of your brain.

Kevin really loves to make up facts about opposing science to discredit it as opposed to his belief in a God as described in the Bible which as he will tell you is factuall and accurate yes sir 100%!!!!

[I can certainly understand your commitment to this model, but at the same time, you should probably abandon the god/religion accusations...

If you can understand the motivations of dense aether model, then you certainly can understand the motivations of those, who are ignoring it. The religious stance is actually highly rational stance: the opponents of Galileo just did afraid of the lost of their income and social credit. They knew quite well, what the heliocentric model means for them. Do you believe, the responsible people refuse the cold fusion because they don't believe in it? Come on...

Leonard Krauss tries to explain in this book that, from a state where ONLY the laws of physics exist (perhaps in a multiverse "ensemble" with each universe "instance" having differing physical constants) that the universe we observe could exist (and be observed by us). In this sense he argues the science can answer the ultimate question of philosophy (as Heidegger and Leibniz defined it), i.e., "why is there something (i.e., the reality we observe in the here and now) rather than nothing (i.e., the "empty" state of the multiverse ensemble)? He thinks he answers the philosophical question, but he is wrong - it does not. The question remains "why is there the empty state of the multiverse ensemble - governed by absolute reason, logic and the generic set of the laws of physics?"

In M-theory, the "Branes", that represent different universe instances, are separated by something, referred to as the "Bulk", or "Hyperspace", but this bulk IS something, NOT nothing in a metaphysical context (i.e., it has an attribute in the set of hypothetical(unobservable) physical functions, that of separating branes). It is like saying an empty box of chocolates is nothing, it is not, it is something, it is an empty box!

Some scientists fall into the error of hubris when they fail to see the embedded axioms and assumptions in their worldview. They misunderstand that their methods help to resolve the "how?" question of means (such as, "how did the universe we observe as something become observable from a quantum cosmological multiverse state?") and not the motive question of "why? (e.g., "why is there something rather than nothing?")

Metaphysics can not be resolved by physics. And metaphysics can not be asserted as meaningless, since it is itself a metaphysical assertion and is thus false or meaningless in its own terms.

The problem with this re-definition of 'Nothing' is that it doesn't address the ontological problem. It is more to do with an argument within certain scientific fields regarding what constitues nothing. This is fine on it's own terms, but not an exploration into whether something can come from nothing, and if so, how.
Thing is, 'Nothing' has no qualities. None. If something can come from it then there are no constraints on that. The 'something' that comes from 'nothing' cannot be shaped or formed or depend in any way on anything else that may previously have come from 'Nothing'.
Under these conditions there would be no laws, no structure. There would not even be chaos.
So, production from nothing doesn't fit the facts. Neither does production by design. Production from chaos fits the facts perfectly, and is contradictory to production from nothing, so there is no philosophical or scientific need for production from nothing. This is about a human need for a sense of completeness.

Actually Ensa the problem is not science or human needs for closure over intentionality IMO. It is a problem of language.
The word nothing means something, therefore it is not nothing. If we define the set of observable Atributes of a "something" as {A1, A2... An}, then "nothing" is {} (the empty set} but metaphysically {} is something (i.e., an attribute of being).
This is a Wittgenstein TLP problem, "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent", but later on Wittgenstein in PI tackles these language problems saying we can approach them as Games with analogical thinking. This was further extended by Sir Michael Dummett in his book "The Logical Basis of Metaphysics", introducing realism/anti-realism and disputing the law of the excluded middle.

Nothing does not have attributes or properties. Nothing is not an empty set. It is the absence of anything. If you ascribe attributes to a set (empty or not) then you begin to describe something and not no-thing. Nothing has no description, no properties and no attributes - by definition.

Regardless of meta-physical mind games or twisted QM, it is just simple logic that nothing comes from nothing. This book and its premise is just crazy talk for desperate people seeking some meaning for an empty life.

***Please excuse my typo in my 1st post above with regards to mispelling Professor Lawrence M. Krauss as Leonard Krauss. My bad.***

With regards to bluehigh comments above, sorry this does not work for me. You say nothing cannot be defined in terms of attributes, then say "Nothing has no description, no properties and no attributes - by definition", i.e., you provide a definition of something that can not be defined!

Hence why I say it is a Wittgenstein tautology. Language is the problem. But I think you can resolve it in terms of levels of sets of attributes, level 1 does not include existence (ontology), level 2 does. So "nothing" is the empty set at level 1 and is something at level 2. This is analogically equivalent to understanding the layers of physics/metaphysics.

With regards to "mind games", well yes there's a formal Wittgenstein PI "Game" here.

PS: There's not such thing as "simple logic", defining that would be complex and probably incomplete in princple.

You must be desperate Martin so as to need to play word games to validate your misunderstanding of 'nothing'. How unfortunate for you that in your fantasy, avoiding a logical result, you seek to confuse common sense and attempt to substantiate 'nothing'.

We live in interesting times.

While ordinary citizens struggle to find employment, housing and food,

Cosmologists tell us

a.) Everything came from nothing, and

b.) Supermassive black holes appeared too:

http://translate....aar.html

Nuclear/particle physicists assure us they have almost found the God particle:

www.quantumdiarie...-exists/

Is there a way to reduce arrogance [enhance humility; decrease pride] of politicians and scientists so they can again serve society?

See:

http://judithcurr...t-149143

http://noconsensu...nt-62303

http://judithcurr...t-149436

Oliver K. Manuel
http://www.omatumr.com/

Dear bluehigh, before resorting to ad hominem comments please reflect if the word "nothing" has meaning, or if it is meaningless. The point is if the word "nothing" has the attribute of meaning, call it M, that is a metaphysical concept. So "nothing" can be defined in physical terms as the empty set {} and metaphysical terms, at least, as {M}.

Your ideas of "simple logic", "common sense" and that "nothing" can be defined in terms of "not being able to be defined", are ... less than useful ... in an important area of the philosophy of science.

why there is something rather than nothing.

This seems rather trivial, as the existence of non-existence is a contradiction in terms.

True nothingness has no properties. If it had a prprty then we could already say that it is something ("absence of X" is not a property unless X exists somewhere)
Nothingness would therefore not have any dimensions - neither space nor time.
Even in a completely empty void one could not define space or time. They both require something as reference.

So if true nothingness existed - how long would it exist FOR? If it has no time then for all intents and purposes it would exist for no time at all (i.e. its 'existence' would be over immediately. It could not be an enduring state).

Conclusion: Something has to exist - there is no alternative.

What form that 'something' takes (whether existence is limited to the type we witness or whether it can have many other forms) is another matter entirely.

I heavily edited my previous post to try to include clarity within the limit and failed. I'll just go for it.
This 'problem', which is a definition problem, which is a language problem (not a scientific, logical, or philosophical one) arises from a human need for completeness, which arises from not getting that a TOE needs actual nothingness (which by definition cannot give arise to anything, because if it could, it would have (at least) the property of being able to produce stuff, so not be nothing) to be complete.
To some people it seems that when they try to get their head around the concept of nothing, the case of it having no qualities seems like a state of incompleteness, when in actuality, the state of it having no qualities gives completeness to the meta set that includes it, and without which would not be complete, being missing a true instance of nothingness.
It is a language problem, but language problems arise, usually, from human ones....

To conclude - Whether there is or is not 'nothingness' in an actually existent form (gibber!), there is absolutly no reason, apart from some weird human one, to try to assert that 'something' comes from it....
It is just nonsensical (logically, physically, mathematically, philosophically, ontologically....) to try to assert 'something' coming from 'nothing', apart from in a psychological context, which arises from feeling uncomfortable with the definition, or concept, of actual nothingness, with no quality of production, without which the definition of nothingness is just being misused.
If you need stuff to 'come frome somewhere' then fine, but here we have that need for stuff to come from somewhere, combined with the need to have 'nothing' not be really nothing at all, producing all sorts of, well, entertainment really I suppose.... *wanders off headscratching*.

The universe can arise from nothing just like momentum arises from nothing. Once you have a positive and negative momentum, which equal nothing, energy and everything else follows naturally.

I see a problem...

@Ensa Ultimately I am also negative about the concept of "something coming from nothing", IFF you are talking about things from the same ontological level (i.e., "something" has physical attributes and "nothing" does not.)

But, I think "nothing" is a concept that can be handled metaphysically as something meaningful (that's why we have the word/concept - it's useful). And in that respect I believe there is sense to the multilayered expression "I think something (physical) can come from nothing (metaphysical)."

E.g., I think action (physical movement of my arm) can be initiated by thought (a metaphysical idea).

Does that make sense to you? It is the mind-body problem.

@martin Yes, what you say makes sense.
Indian philosophical logic has a much richer tradition than western philosophy when it comes to these kind of problems, it is very thorough, but it is difficult for me to map some of the concepts over into western popular language. The points you raise would be more under the heading of causality than production, but they are closely related areas with many similar logical pitfalls, almost identical.
Defining our terms is very important, the term 'nothing' lends itself to many more interpretations than the term 'broccoli' (for example). I have not read this book, it may address these issues. I will have to give it a read now that I have presumed to comment on it's subject matter.
As always - I love these comment sections in physorg - so many differing views interacting is good.

Why the hell is everyone arguing using the philosophical and dictionary def's of 'nothing' as that is clearly not what is meant by the 'nothing' in the article?

@Ojorf - because it's fun, in my case at least, and it is related to the subject matter.
In what way do you think the usefulness of 'arguing' about the 'nothing' in the article is not convergent with the usefulness of 'arguing' about the idea of 'nothing' philosophically?

God and Kevin are neighbours in a mid town manhattan high rise and kevin is always bumming s**t off of god, walking in without knocking and making a general nuisance of himself with his wacked out theories and crazy schemes....Oliver can be the crazy mailman that lives on the ground floor.

In summary my problem with Krauss's book are:
a) his thesis is that something (the universe) can come from nothing (the multiverse of quantum cosmology). My objection is that this idea of nothing is NOT nothing, it is very much something (he has just pushed back the question from "why the universe?" to "why the multiverse?" and that is unanswered).
b) his book more relates to an answer to the question "how does the universe we observe manifest/collapse to an observable from the wavefunction that is the superposition of all possible multiverses?" It does NOT address the core philosophical content behind the "why is there something rather than nothing?" thats the subtitle of the book. It's a metaphysical question of motive, not of physical means (IMO that question has two possible answers: there's no intentionality/motive, it just is, so stop asking questions I cant answer; or, there is purpose/motive at a higher level emergent at the lower level, but science cant help).

The idea that something can appear from nothing is tautological by its very nature, it cannot be falsified and as such it cannot be a subject/part of any scientific theory. It's actually a religion in its purest form. Even the Christians assumed some minute causality about creation event (like the presence of Creator), while these modern priests not. It's senile BS, the only reason of which is to spread religious formal propaganda between laymans.

Why the hell is everyone arguing using the philosophical and dictionary def's of 'nothing' as that is clearly not what is meant by the 'nothing' in the article?

Nothing has no attributes, so it cannot differ from another "nothing", no matter with sense you're trying to atribute it. If it would have such an attributes, it wouldn't be a "nothing" anymore.

Thing is, 'Nothing' has no qualities. None. If something can come from it then there are no constraints on that.

That is an important observation. Authors are trying to use
physical theories like quantum mechanics (which themselves would not exist in "nothing") to justify instability of nothing, which is clearly recursively defined. If anything can be used to reason about nothing, it is mathematical theories, which do not relay on any physical experiments to be proven true. An example of such analysis, that indeed shows that something can arise out of nothing for
purely mathematical reasons (exactly _because_ it does not
have any qualities such as time) is given here:
http://sudy_zhenja.tripod.com/something_out_of_nothing.html

I've read some idiotic comments here, even at times been guilty. However the statement ..

I think something (physical) can come from nothing (metaphysical)."

.. has got to rate as the dumbest comment I have read here.

Its not science. Its not logical. Its not even religion.

to justify instability of nothing, which is clearly recursively defined.

Nothingness is a placeholder. It is the expression of an idea - not a possible state.
Much like the number zero. You cannot have "zero elephants" since that state has no property that elephants have (which means it cannot be grouped with the set that contains elephants - which is defined as the set containing ONLY elements which have the properties of elephants).

Infinity is another of those ideas. It takes a sensible concept (take one, add one more, add still one more, ... ) and extrapolates it to absurdity.

Just because something is a useful mathematical concept doesn't mean it has to have a representation in (any) reality.

To all of the above, I must say... I agree completely.

Oh wait... No I don't.

Eh. Whatever. It is the same either way.

http://cs.nyu.edu...int.html

:)

Assuming the U is everything, then if it did not come from nothing it would not be the U because then you would be missing whatever it came from which should also be part of the U. So we're really between a rock and a hard spot.

I think I posted something about this before but I didn't realize all the consequences. The idea that dark energy is the energy of compression of spacetime. Obviously at the BB the energy density of spacetime was very high. This energy is converted to expansion (actually decompression of spacetime). In this process matter/antimatter particles are condensed, each having positive energy but polar opposites relative to the energy density of spacetime. Antimatter having less energy density than spacetime it tends to rise to the surface of spacetime. Matter being of higher density it sinks to the more dense region of spacetime. But as spacetime expands its density becomes equal to or less than that of antimatter. Now at this point antimatter may dissolve back into normal spacetime energy density or if it holds together it becomes heavier than spacetime and starts to sink like matter until it contacts normal matter, resulting in another BB.

cont...
But I think Occam's razor would have it that hadronic antimatter is not designed to resist expansion, only the compression force of normal density spacetime. So hadronic antimatter basically evaporates if it doesn't decay, leaving only leptons/antileptons, radiation, and spacetime. Leptons/antileptons don't decay as I understand so antileptons collect in an outer shell of less energy density spacetime and begin to sink (since now the density of expanded spacetime is less than that of the sinking antileptons). Meanwhile leptons have already collected in an inner higher density shell of spacetime. I think of these shells as the ones identified by Penrose in the CMBR. Collapsing shells of antimatter onto matter would make quite a BB it seems. But I heard somewhere the sound of the BB represented as a sort of whooshing sound. Could be. Who knows? Note - careful how you spell hadron, as in the Large Hadron Collider.

@bluehigh

That you don't understand the expression...

I think something (physical) can come from nothing (metaphysical)."

...is clear. But that does not mean it is not logical. As I went on to say in my post...

E.g., I think action (physical movement of my arm) can be initiated by thought (a metaphysical idea).

This is an expression of the mind-body problem, the body is physical the mind is metaphysical (it is a category error to think it physical). This is a well known position to take in the philosophy of mind, it is a logical understanding.

From the philosophy of religion it is also a well known position to take that the physical/natural world is a consequence of a creative metaphysical/supernatural act (a "nothing" in physical/natural terms).

I think you may be guilty of what Thomas Kuhn has termed "incommensurability", your paradigms and frameworks of thought do not accept the validity of these philosophical concepts, and you revert to mocking them.

Martin,

There is not much to misunderstand in your fallacious argument. Your nonsense is not worth a another thought. Enjoy your fantasy world or if reality causes you pain then go seek
psychiatric help.

Damn, why do I let these numskulls annoy me - I am starting to behave like Deesky or CHollman ... wrong, incorrect, false.

Chants to self - Must be tolerant of dull and ignorant people, must be tolerant of dull and ...

(Apologies CHollman you have been rather rational lately)

@Bluehigh

Your lack of respect for me is not an issue for me. But that you simply choose to ignore well established positions in philosophy because they do not suit your point of view is intellectually weak.

Rather than apply ad hominem attacks on folks that have a differing point of view to you, I recommend you try to engage with their paradigm, to see where they are coming from. Argue the case, feel free to disagree, but do not descend to such puerile comments - you lose possible benefits to yourself when you do that.

In particular when you recognize that their perceptions are not unique, but represent a common theme in another discipline, perhaps ones that you are unfamiliar with, you have a chance to learn and to grow.

I will leave this forum now, since I do not wish to participate on your terms of argumentation. It's tiresome

Edit - never mind - I nearly got drawn into replying to a troll then. Post content removed to avoid saying more about my lack of patience than anything useful.

I will leave this forum now, since I do not wish to participate on your terms of argumentation. It's tiresome

YEAAHHH.

Thank you for your cooperation in this matter. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Ethelred

We can discuss our shortcomings without end. Wittgenstein asserts this 'shortcoming' has an origin embedded in any language.

So what if there is never a 'last say' in any matter in any language. I can not even begin to imagine what "nothing" is.
I like it when our imaginations conjure up ideas worthy to challenge the impossible - like 'something' from 'nothing'.
Our definitions change. It's like fighting over borders we conjured up - until such constraints are no longer useful.

@kevin If there's no God, i.e. one who represents the absolute truth, then all you can do is act irrationally. The reason is quite simple - if there's no absolute truth you have no way of knowing whether what you're thinking is true or not. It becomes relative to who likes and can enforce what.

There is no "absolut truth" apart from man makes canonical. I guess you didn't get the memo about relativity. You know, that stuff that uses numbers? Are you one of those flat earthers too?

BTW there is Absolute vodka which is inferior to the real thing. Perhaps you should switch brands before posting?

The very science you so love requires that via the laws of logic something must be absolutely true. Just think about that for a moment.

That statement is absolutely wrong. So you have achieved an absolute. Maybe Satan will give you a shiny star? Evil does love stupid.

i like to reverse the question, not Why, but Why not? if there is "nothing"to stop it then anything could happen, once these things can happen, until finally a stable selfconsistant situation (with 2nd law of thermodynamics, lightspeed constraints etc) arises naturally in Darwin style evolution, dear I say inevitably gets selected out of a trilliontrillion dicerolls.

i like to reverse the question, not Why, but Why not? if there is "nothing"to stop it then anything could happen, once these things can happen, until finally a stable selfconsistant situation (with 2nd law of thermodynamics, lightspeed constraints etc) arises naturally in Darwin style evolution, dear I say inevitably gets selected out of a trilliontrillion dicerolls. Note that this still leaves room for a God or a multiverse to flash into existence from nowhere, to give birth to our present universe, if that seems unlikely to you than we should ponder the question if the universe has always existed in some form of compressed or expanding state, why should there be a beginning, even better, why not, should there be an endless universe?

The Universe is the way it is because we are here to observe it. The Universe is therefore the illusion of the living.
Case in point: imagine the whole universe, completely devoid of life. Nothing alive, anywhere. What meaning, then, would Time and Space have? Dead stuff would be changing, but would be unnoticed. Change would have no meaning if it could not be sensed in one state, then sensed again in a new state and noticed. Dead stuff, without scale, or duration. Thirteen billion years or an instant? Meaningful only to an observer!

Nothing has never been observed. Sure there are containers, and they are under-utilized if they lack any objects inside, but that is not nothing. That is man's motives and intent to use SOMETHING. The universe of the container is not necessarily our universe. It can be completely virtual. That does not create nothingness.

Ultimately questions about nothingness are intimately related to causality, at the interface between now and the immediate future. There it is possible to discuss nothing because it is not yet something, merely a potential. Thus it is possible to employ the limit theorem of calculus because one can use a continuum of possibilities. If those possibilities were real they would occupy space, be finite and countable. One could never reach the limit, and calculus would be useless.

......Well something had to happen, we'd all all be bored shitless otherwise, that's for sure.

Apparently you're not bored enough, if you're willing to refuse dense aether model. In this model the particles of matter condense from vacuum in the same way, like the droplets of fluid are condensing from vapor and it has no meaning to speculate, how something can emerge from nothing: both causality, both the mechanism of this formation is clear for everybody. Why to invent various abstract models and formal theories, when the simplest possible physical mechanism is apparent and apparently ignored?

"For 2,000 years people have been asking where our universe came from "

Why that number? Jeebuz was the first cosmologist?

"For 2,000 years people have been asking where our universe came from "

Why that number? Jeebuz was the first cosmologist?

No, he was the first cosmopolitan, his followers forgot all that though..

There it is possible to discuss nothing because it is not yet something, merely a potential.

- the russian guy

Not even a potential. It is unknowable to any observer and of course does not exist in our reality.

Go ahead and look for nothing and you will find something.

Nothing is an interpretation connected to certain understandings, with language being the expressive agent. Read on...

Interpretation arises from mind phenomena.

Mind phenomena arises from mind.

Mind arises through certain (relatively) complex material/energy patterns.

Complex patterns arise from simpler ones.

Simpler ones arise from the laws of physics.

The laws of physics arise from what some have interpretated as "nothing".

Interpretation arises from mind phenomena....

...And so on in a "circle"!

Question: In what context does this "circle" exist?

In dense aether theory the nothingness has its robust interpretation. It's easy to understand with the common life analogy of water surface. With respect to the surface wave spreading the underwater is invisible, empty environment, because these waves cannot propagate through it at distance. It's singular space and pretty nothingness, albeit still quite physical one from higerdimensional perspective. The reason of why this environment is behaving like nothing is the high degree of randomness. With respect to us, organized human creatures whole the vast cosmic space appears empty too, albeit it's still full of physical reality. This reality is just too random for being observed easily. Most of people tend to ignore random phenomena like the insignificant noise, only temporal, organized phenomena are considered. From the same reason we don't see the particles of gas in the atmosphere, only the density fluctuations, i.e. organized gradients of it. We are living in gradient driven reality.

Shall we propose a "nothing of the gaps"?

It would certainly make more sense than trying to squeeze god in there. Those gaps keep getting smaller you know.

"God is nothing" ?

Works for me...

This idea is actually quite old. Newton was bigot Catholic and he speculated together with his friend de Duillier about origin of gravity with shielding of ultramundane particles in the role of God. In Newton's belief that gravity does not occur by mechanical means, but was direct manifestation of God. IMO the notion of God has its physical origin right here: if you want to see a God, just have look at the omnipresent and omnipotent vacuum fluctuations and CMBR noise. Because they're mediated with superluminal waves, they're omniscient too. This insight has even its geometric representation, as every highly complex and intelligent being in hyperspace appears like random noise from low dimensional perspective in the same way, like the our behavior appears chaotic for our silly animals pets. IMO the notion of God is of archetypal origin and it has its very good physical meaning in context of dense aether model.

Newton is a perfect example of the negative aspects of religion.

All the good, valuable things Newton did, he did in his spare time.

He primarily concerned himself with biblical prophecy and alchemy.

Imagine if the man had not wasted the majority of his time.

Newton is a perfect example of the negative aspects of religion. Imagine if the man had not wasted the majority of his time.

Just try to imagine, where the human civilization could be, if we wouldn't waste our time in futile attempts to try every blind alley before we choose the simplest and straightforward one. 9/10 of people on the Earth are just plain useless, they serve only for reproduction and void consummation of resources, if not doing of crimes. And so on.

But IMO this redundant behavior of human society just reflects the cosmological paradigm, in which every new quality requires huge amount of quantity to manifest itself. One speckle of dust per myriads of vacuum fluctuations and neutrino particles.

Question: In what context does this "circle" exist? - pokerdice 1

In the context of any language? And all are insufficient, incomplete and necessary?

The following was quoted many times by many throughout the entire existence of this Website here:

Bonaparte: "Where does God fit into your theory?"
Laplace: "Sir, I have no need of that hypothesis."

Newton was bigot Catholic

Ah the wonders of the anti-Catholic pro-Protestant bigot.

Newton was not Catholic.

http://en.wikiped...us_views

Although born into an Anglican family, by his thirties Newton held a Christian faith that, had it been made public, would not have been considered orthodox by mainstream Christianity;[4] in recent times he has been described as heretical to orthodoxy.[5]

According to most scholars, Newton was Arian, not holding to Trinitarianism.[5][18][21] 'In Newton's eyes, worshipping Christ as God was idolatry, to him the fundamental sin'

Hey a Jehovah's Wittiness before they existed.

As well as being antitrinitarian, Newton allegedly rejected the orthodox doctrines of the immortal soul,[5] a personal devil and literal demons

Oh dear Newton will join all us Agnostics and Atheists in the fantasyland of Hell.

Ethelred

Even as a Christian in his own time, Newton managed to remain particularly reasonable compared to his contemporaries. He does not belong in a list of "religious scientists" because he'd go to hell if your beliefs were true, like Ethelred said. Probably most of those scientists would be in Hell by now if any of your BS religion was true.

should there be an endless universe?

Probably until the laws of nature are repealed.

Nothing has never been observed.

Actually you may have a point. We come from nothing, so we are something, at least until we return to nothing. So nothing is just a thing of the past and maybe the future.

Nothing is apparently the free space between us.

Nothing is apparently the free space between us.

I understand there's some zero point energy in that free space though.

In AWT the free space is analogy of water surface. The tiny Brownian noise is the analogy of ZPE, but it's just very tiny top of iceberg of energy hidden beneath the water surface. Sometimes I'm saying, we are brittle creatures living at the mirror-like surface of molten iron inside of blast furnace. Due the low temperature gradient we can get the impression, we are living inside of cold Universe. It still doesn't mean, this immense energy is available for us easily.

"Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

3 And God said, Let there be light, and there was light. 4"

So what's new?

Nothing in that post. You are still full of crap and fantasy.

The light came LONG before the Earth.

In the Bible the light came before the Sun. Its a myth told by ignorant people. People that had grass growing without a Sun. Just about as silly as the Norse have the Earth formed by a giant cow licking a block of ice. Not as colorful but just as wrong.

Ethelred

I understand there's some zero point energy in that free space though.

It averages out to zero or the Universe would not be flat. In any case even it didn't average out to zero you couldn't do anything with as the it, except use it as a sink, because it would be the lowest possible energy level and work is done by directing energy from high levels to low levels.

Ethelred

you couldn't do anything with it

I'm not entirely sure that that is corect. The zero point energy fluctuations do have a statistical distributed. This means that once in a while (if you are able to spearate the charges as in the dynamic Casimir effect) you might get a spike.

I.e. you could, conceivably, build a dynamic Casimir apparatus that only allows the escape of a particle if that spike has a certain size.
In effect you'd be working on the energy gradient of a local (random) maximum against another local (random) minumum right 'next' to it.

I have no idea whether it is even possible to manufacture such an energy sieve so that it would output more energy than you put in, but the possibility is intriguing.

IMO it's unnecessary to attempt for draining of energy from vacuum, if we can get lotta energy from matter: every atom nuclei larger or smaller than the iron nuclei tends to be unstable in contact with another one. Everything what we need to do is to accelerate this reaction.

It would be more interesting to create the matter from vacuum with using of energy instead, because it would enable us to construct the reactionless drive. http://en.wikiped...ss_drive

I'm not entirely sure that that is corect.

I am.

This means that once in a while (if you are able to spearate the charges as in the dynamic Casimir effect) you might get a spike.

A spike that is less than the other end of the energy flow is still less than the other end and thus the energy would flow towards the spike.

I.e. you could, conceivably, build a dynamic Casimir apparatus that only allows the escape of a particle

No. Two problems. One, the Casimir effect only pushes on the outside of the plates. What will push the plates back?

Two, you have created a Maxwell's Demon situation and there the information involved in deciding what and when uses up any energy. But the main problem is that one way push.

but the possibility is intriguing.

Well someone made two rather silly space opera books using it but it was pretty clear the author didn't give a damn about reality in them. Can't remember the name.>>

The one way push has been an obvious problem since around or just after the first time I ran across the idea. Later I saw someone point out that the Zero Point energy is the lowest energy level possible so its useless.

Then sometime after I saw the concept that gravity seems to have negative energy equal to the energy of the mass that produces it a lot things made more sense. First of course was Krause's idea that it makes the Universe total energy equal to zero. Then just recently it came to me that it explains why the Universe is flat overall. Which may remove any need to use the idea of Inflation to explain the shape of the Universe.

Of course if Krause is wrong and the gravity isn't the other side of positive energy then it all goes away. I don't have the skills to figure out if he is wrong.

Ethelred

A spike that is less than the other end of the energy flow is still less than the other end and thus the energy would flow towards the spike.

Either way you have an energy potential - which can be harnessed to do work

One, the Casimir effect only pushes on the outside of the plates.

That's the static Casimir effect. I'm talking about the dynamic Casimir effect.

Zero Point energy is the lowest energy level possible

On average: Yes. But since it fluctuates (vacuum fluctuatons) you can still get local differentials. Anywhere where there are differentials stuff can happen.

Just like life: Entropy always increases globally - but it can be made to decrease locally.

Entropy always increases globally - but it can be made to decrease locally.

Entropy only increases bellow CMBR wavelenght scale - above this scale the objects are attracted with gravity more, then they're dispersed with radiation and they tend condense and collapse. In AWT the observed entropy content in Universe is given with entropy of human observers and it remains essentially the same all the time: some galaxies are condensing, some others are evaporating and most of them is doing the both at the same moment.

Its a myth told by ignorant people.

The 'myth' written by 'ignorant' people seems to be qualitatively describing what happened.
Attribution seems to be your only objection.

In the Bible the light came before the Sun. Its a myth told by ignorant people.

It could be related to the cosmological events called to so-called lepton epoch, or not? The mainstream cosmology believes, this epoch happened BEFORE the hadronization, so that the young Universe couldn't contain any Suns - just photons.

http://en.wikiped...on_epoch

If this explanation is correct, then the Bible would describe the creation of Universe in the correct order - no matter how counter-intuitive it may appear at the first sight for mainstream science trolls, who even don't know their own theories..

Its a myth told by ignorant people.

The 'myth' written by 'ignorant' people seems to be qualitatively describing what happened.
Attribution seems to be your only objection.

Marjon, you conveniently ignored the sentences immediately prior to the one you quoted. They showed how the bible DOES NOT qualitatively describe "what happened."

The light came LONG before the Earth.

In the Bible the light came before the Sun.

Entropy only increases bellow CMBR wavelenght scale

So? With increasing expansion of the universe the CMBR wavelength increases also.

The 'myth' written by 'ignorant' people seems to be qualitatively describing what happened.

Just can't stop lying can you. The Bible has the order wrong and much is plain stupid. Light without Sun. Grass without Sun and before animals.

The Bible is the word of ignorant men. The attribution to a god is false as can be seen in all those errors. Really I thought you had given up on fundamentalism. My mistake. You can't even learn that much.

Ethelred

Pirouette you should stop making sockpuppets and telling lies.

No one fought in Vietnam for religious freedom.

We do have religious freedom. That is why I can tell the truth about the Bible being full of crap. I bullied no one. YOU just tried to bully me and that lying post has been reported.

OH and I did tell you that your continued vile behavior with sockpuppets will result in a reply in kind. Sorry I am don't have the time at the moment. Tomorrow, since you did continue and even created another spinner sockpuppet.

Ethelred

the Bible being full of crap

Maybe - but what about the rest? It represents the intersubjective experience of human civilization (collective unconscious) collected for years (after all like the many other religious resources) - something like the "junk" DNA in genome of organism). For example, I do believe, the notion of deity has many connections to CMBR noise and extradimensions. The Genesis has many references to mainstream cosmology which I do believe was actually affected with creation hypothesis more than it's willing to admit by now.
So I'd compare the Bible to the dual source of informations mediated with longitudinal waves, whereas the mainstream science maintains the informations mediated with transverse waves. These two views are worth of study and mutual reconciliation, it should not be neglected, ignored or even denied.