There’s More to Nothing Than We Knew

[groovedaddy]

Why is there something, rather than nothing at all?

It is, perhaps, the mystery of last resort. Scientists may be at least theoretically able to trace every last galaxy back to a bump in the Big Bang, to complete the entire quantum roll call of particles and forces. But the question of why there was a Big Bang or any quantum particles at all was presumed to lie safely out of scientific bounds, in the realms of philosophy or religion.

Now even that assumption is no longer safe, as exemplified by a new book by the cosmologist Lawrence M. Krauss. In it he joins a chorus of physicists and cosmologists who have been pushing into sacred ground, proclaiming more and more loudly in the last few years that science can explain how something — namely our star-spangled cosmos — could be born from, if not nothing, something very close to it. God, they argue, is not part of the equation. The book, “A Universe From Nothing,” is a best seller and follows recent popular tomes like “God Is Not Great,” by the late Christopher Hitchens; “The God Delusion,” by Richard Dawkins; and “The Grand Design,” by the British cosmologist Stephen Hawking (with Leonard Mlodinow), which generated headlines two years ago with its assertion that physicists do not need God to account for the universe.

Dr. Krauss is a pint-size spark plug of erudition and ambition, who often seems to be jetting off in several directions at once on more missions than can be listed on a business card. Among other things he is Foundation Professor and director of the Origins Project at Arizona State University.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/21/science/space/cosmologists-try-to-explain-a-universe-springing-from-nothing.html?ref=science

[Lint Head]

1. Arizona? Hope he stays away from Jan Brewer.

So, the next time my wife asks, "You're home kinda late. What you been doing?" and I say "Nothing." she now has proof that I was doing something.

[groovedaddy]

2. I once thought I was onto something but it turned out to be nothing. Now, as they seem to be saying

Nothing really is something (or not). So by finding nothing, I was really onto something.

[Lint Head]

13. LOL!!

[Ichingcarpenter]

3. Watch Brian Green's series he has an espied on nothing

The Fabric of the Cosmos


The Fabric of the Cosmos, a four-hour series based on the book by renowned physicist and author Brian Greene, takes us to the frontiers of physics to see how scientists are piecing together the most complete picture yet of space, time, and the universe.

With each step, audiences will discover that just beneath the surface of our everyday experience lies a world we’d hardly recognize – a startling world far stranger and more wondrous than anyone expected.
Brian Greene is going to let you in on a secret: We’ve all been deceived. Our perceptions of time and space have led us astray.

Much of what we thought we knew about our universe – that the past has already happened and the future is yet to be, that space is just an empty void, that our universe is the only universe that exists – just might be wrong.

Interweaving provocative theories, experiments, and stories with crystal-clear explanations and imaginative metaphors like those that defined the groundbreaking and highly acclaimed series The Elegant Universe, The Fabric of the Cosmos aims to be the most compelling, visual, and comprehensive picture of modern physics ever seen on television.

&list=PL300BF5A42D3C21C4&feature=player_embedded#!

[tridim]

6. I believe that's pronounced, "Noothing-g"

I love Brian's dialect.

[Ichingcarpenter]

7. Are you thinking of Brian Cox?

Brian Green has a US east coast accent.

String theory guy, elegant universe book

[tridim]

8. Yep, at least you knew who I was talking about based on that one word.

[RegieRocker]

4. Atheism reveals it's religious core.

They will never be able to prove something from nothing.

[laconicsax]

16. It's already been done in multiple settings.

One example is a team that worked out how to convert virtual photons into real ones: http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110603/full/news.2011.346.html

Another is the Casimir effect, where the virtual particles move physical objects.

Then there's the matter of magnetic fields, which are mediated by virtual particles.

Richard Feynman proved the existence of virtual particles decades ago. Nothing that Krauss describes in his book is revolutionary; it's all been known for years.

[RegieRocker]

19. OMG. Virtual objects are not nothing. They are made up from something. Even

thoughts are electrical impulses in your brain. Unbelievable.

[laconicsax]

23. That's absolutely correct--they are something.

What you don't seem to understand is that they are literally created out of nothing.

[RegieRocker]

24. Are you saying you're nothing?

Something can't be created from nothing.

[laconicsax]

25. Sigh...wrong again.

Something will always be created from "nothing" because "nothing" is unstable.

Virtual particles, which are a very real phenomenon, are spontaneously created from nothing constantly.

You might want to read up on quantum physics--your "something can't be created from nothing" is way out of date.

[qazplm]

26. black holes

virtual particle pairs are created at the event horizon, one just above it, one just below, they don't get to annihilate each other because of the event horizon, so you end up with a stream of virtual (now real) particles coming off the black hole.

Something, from nothing.

I would also argue it isn't really nothing. The zero point energy of space-time can't be tapped to do work, but I do believe it is involved in the creation of virtual particles, making nothing not quite nothing.

[FiveGoodMen]

28. And there's YOUR religious core

You are in no position to declare that something can't be created from nothing.

That's just what you think.

You're entitled to think it.

You're not entitled to expect us to agree.

[sir pball]

30. You're not even entitled to think it (without disdain), because it's not true

It's an observable, provable fact that virtual particles exist and are quite literally created from nothing, by some very odd fundamental principles of LTUAE* that allow them to flash in and out of existence and sometimes to stick around (e.g. Hawking radiation). You're free to say you don't believe it, but I treat that with the exact same dismissiveness that I treat a lack of belief in evolution or climate change.

* Life, The Universe, And Everything

[FiveGoodMen]

31. That appears to be the case

...although I can imagine the counter-argument that the nothing those particles pop out of is really just something that we haven't detected yet and haven't imagined theoretically.

In other words, there could be something (that looks like nothing) underlying the appearance of these particles.

With the fairly recent addition of dark matter and dark energy to our model of the cosmos, you could easily say that something often appears to be nothing.

I'm not making that argument, but I can see the possibility.

In any case, what I was definitely arguing with is the notion that "something can't come from nothing and that matter is settled," because it isn't.

[WingDinger]

5. If God is the cosmic watchmaker, He would be an idiot, if it required resetting, rewinding or any co

conspicuous attention to defect. That includes miracles. I am a christian, that would be fine with a deist model.

A bad conception of God would be the pope, adjusting to the Gregorian calendar. Or God tricking mankind with PLANTED bones. Why God must SHOW his power, is beyond me.

If God were an actor, and an anachronistic creature, there would be no need for the WORD, of God. The WORD being the action part of all that is. There certainly wouldnt be required pulling that part out of the whole.

And if the WORD was a constant requirement for keeping good time, there would not be a need for the Holy Spirit, who communicates in the WORD's stead.

I think eventually, we will find that NOTHING, has power. That void, causes actions. And that the running of the universe, needs no modifications.

[Warpy]

10. Which is rather the conclusion the Buddha came to

some 600 years before Jesus supposedly walked the earth.

We know a lot more than we did even 20 years ago about what the rest of the neighborhood looks like along the radiation spectrum. What we don't know is how it got there, what caused things to coalesce into atoms and then dust and then rocks and then stars. Perhaps that question will be answered at some point and the meddlesome primitive gods will all vanish into a fog of Higgs bosons or something.

While I have a great deal of sympathy for the deist point of view, I'd be tempted to take it one step further to the Taoist point of view, that the universe in its entirety is a living organism without self awareness. And being unaware of itself, it's hardly aware of us.

It will just be fascinating to see what turns up over the next century if we don't self immolate along the way.

[WingDinger]

15. I also subscribe to the zen buddhist angle. I think they are congruent.

[immoderate]

9. Here's Krauss' original lecture. It's quite good.

Introduced by Dawkins, Krauss is very entertaining. I highly recommend this. (I think I'll watch it again now.)

--imm

[Warpy]

11. Believe it or not, it's been on the Science Channel

They run a lot of the good stuff late at night but it's catch as catch can, it could just as easily be some industrial process.

However, the lecture is very good and quite compelling and well worth the hour of your time.

[immoderate]

12. Science Channel for me is premium. I get the pseudo-science channel.

Bigfoot, Sasquatch, ghosts, ancient astronauts...

--imm

[Warpy]

14. I get the fancy Direct TV, one step below getting HBO and all

the other super premium channels I don't watch even when I get them for free for short periods of time.

The Science Channel is one of the insomniac's best friends because they don't switch to infomercials until 3 AM and late is when they often show the best stuff.

[Shankapotomus]

20. They ran THAT lecture on the Science Channel???

Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. I don't beleive it.

[laconicsax]

17. Here's a much more polished version of the same lecture:

[immoderate]

22. Yeah, a couple of good refinements.

--imm

[Shankapotomus]

18. That was awesome...thank you.

It almost feels like our learning about the Universe is only beginning.

[immoderate]

21. You're welcome. And I think that will always be true.

There's still so much we don't know about the earth -- and ourselves.

--imm

[Fantastic Anarchist]

27. Kind of reminds me of Isaac Asimov's "The Last Question"

Very interesting. Bookmarking for the lecture videos.

[Edim]

29. Ah, the fundamental question.

Why is there something, rather than nothing at all?

Who says there's something?

[groovedaddy]

32. Or, as Einstein responded when asked: "Is life an illusion?"

AE: "Yes. But a very convincing one."