A Universe from Nothing?

[Tomorrows_Child]

I'm not sure if I can post a poll on here but who here believes that the universe originated from nothing? As some of the major scientific theories from the 20th century claimed or was there an originator of some sort? Doesn't have to be God necessarily in your opinion. Who believes the universe has no beginning? I'm just curious as to what you guys believe with regard to this topic and what the basis of your belief would be?

 

[Skwim]

Gotta ask, what major scientific theories from the 20th century claimed the universe originated from nothing?

 

[Parsimony]

I don't see how "something from nothing" is even sensible. Nothingness did not, does not and cannot exist. It is a lack of existence. A lack of laws, mechanisms, ideas and everything else. Once you start attributing properties of any kind to nothingness, you are no longer talking about nothingness. For as long as time has been around, there was something, even if that something was only time itself.

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

My personal belief is that the universe had no beginning. Everything that is always has been. It is "recycled", after a fashion, over periods of billions, possibly trillions of years, in a grand cycle of contraction and explosion/expansion. The basis of my belief (and I admit that it IS only a belief) is the overwhelming proliferation of cyclical activity of the universe. Any planet orbiting a star - on a track toward consumption by that star, but until then ringing that star in millions upon billions of cycles. Entire galaxies rushing toward one another due to gravity's pull - eventually colliding and each individual member affecting others and creating new orbits, new cycles. The substance of any given large, planetary object continually shifting and moving - almost like water, but much, much slower. It's contents being sucked toward the center and spewed out to the surface again until the object is a near perfect sphere when seen from a distance. Even spinning - by it's definition a cycle - and one of the most prolific natural occurrences in ALL matter in the entire universe. The cycle of radioactive energies breaking down, but never truly being lost - awaiting a time when they are energized once more and made new in the culmination of the intergalactic, near-universal recycle.

I feel all of the interactions we have observed throughout the universe point to my belief. Even the idea of a "big bang" - matter being sent forth from a central "explosion" of sorts - the recycling event - even as other matter never quite made it there in time for the party. Which explains any bodies whose movement and trajectory doesn't necessarily conform to the "big bang" - because it wasn't the first, nor will it be the last.

 

[ArtieE]

I'm not sure if I can post a poll on here but who here believes that the universe originated from nothing? As some of the major scientific theories from the 20th century claimed or was there an originator of some sort? Doesn't have to be God necessarily in your opinion. Who believes the universe has no beginning? I'm just curious as to what you guys believe with regard to this topic and what the basis of your belief would be?

There are many interesting theories, but I don't "believe" any of them. Since you mention a universe from nothing you might be interested in this video.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

My personal belief is that the universe had no beginning. Everything that is always has been. It is "recycled", after a fashion, over periods of billions, possibly trillions of years, in a grand cycle of contraction and explosion/expansion. The basis of my belief (and I admit that it IS only a belief) is the overwhelming proliferation of cyclical activity of the universe. Any planet orbiting a star - on a track toward consumption by that star, but until then ringing that star in millions upon billions of cycles. Entire galaxies rushing toward one another due to gravity's pull - eventually colliding and each individual member affecting others and creating new orbits, new cycles. The substance of any given large, planetary object continually shifting and moving - almost like water, but much, much slower. It's contents being sucked toward the center and spewed out to the surface again until the object is a near perfect sphere when seen from a distance. Even spinning - by it's definition a cycle - and one of the most prolific natural occurrences in ALL matter in the entire universe. The cycle of radioactive energies breaking down, but never truly being lost - awaiting a time when they are energized once more and made new in the culmination of the intergalactic, near-universal recycle.

I feel all of the interactions we have observed throughout the universe point to my belief. Even the idea of a "big bang" - matter being sent forth from a central "explosion" of sorts - the recycling event - even as other matter never quite made it there in time for the party. Which explains any bodies whose movement and trajectory doesn't necessarily conform to the "big bang" - because it wasn't the first, nor will it be the last.

I'd agree that a cyclical system of some kind is the only way to solve the infinite regression paradox. Multiverses do nothing to explain the universe, they only expand it beyond investigation

A self perpetuating cycle was the concept behind the 'Big Crunch' but as far as we can tell, the universe is set to expand indefinitely.. winding down ever closer to absolute cold and darkness, stars will not continue to reform indefinitely.

lots of things in nature with definitive beginnings have cycles, our solar system, orbits, tides, the rotations of galaxies themselves, all from a very specific beginning, creation event- but all fall foul to entropy in the end, gradually slow towards a halt yes?

So what in nature could drive a sudden halt to all this, a regeneration?

Perhaps a cyclical universe, and ID are not mutually exclusive, perhaps the only way for the Big Bang to be regenerated, for the clock to be rewound, is for a creative intelligence to make it happen?

 

[Skwim]

There are many interesting theories, but I don't "believe" any of them. Since you mention a universe from nothing you might be interested in this video.

Which plays way too fast and loose with the word "nothing."

 

[George-ananda]

I'm just curious as to what you guys believe with regard to this topic and what the basis of your belief would be?

I think there is something more fundamental than the universe; Consciousness. The universe is the divine sport/play/drama of Consciousness. The universe is a derivative of Consciousness; the secondary derived from the fundamental.

 

[Deathbydefault]

I'm not sure if I can post a poll on here but who here believes that the universe originated from nothing?

I do.
This Man is a main reason as to why I do.

 

[Skwim]

I do.
This Man is a main reason as to why I do.

Comments on his book A Universe from Nothing

Reception
Philosopher of science and physicist David Albert, in a review for The New York Times, said the book failed to live up to its title, and he criticized Krauss for dismissing concerns about his use of the term nothing to refer to a quantum vacuum instead of a "philosopher’s or theologian’s idealized 'nothing'" (i.e. instead of having the meaning "not anything").[5] Commenting on the philosophical debate sparked by (and largely ignored in) the book, physicist Sean M. Carroll asks "Do advances in modern physics and cosmology help us address these underlying questions, of why there is something called the universe at all, and why there are things called 'the laws of physics,' and why those laws seem to take the form of quantum mechanics, and why some particular wave function and Hamiltonian? In a word: no. I don’t see how they could."[6] Similarly, physicist George F. R. Ellis, when asked whether Krauss has "solved the mystery of why there is something rather than nothing", notes that the "belief that all of reality can be fully comprehended in terms of physics and the equations of physics is a fantasy ... Krauss does not address why the laws of physics exist, why they have the form they have, or in what kind of manifestation they existed before the universe existed (which he must believe if he believes they brought the universe into existence)."[7] Mathematical Physicist I. S. Kohli also analyzed the main technical arguments in Krauss' book, and concluded that "many of the claims are not supported in full by modern general relativity theory or quantum field theory in curved spacetime".[8]

Caleb Scharf, writing in Nature, said that "it would be easy for this remarkable story to revel in self-congratulation, but Krauss steers it soberly and with grace".[9]

Samantha Nelson, writing for The A.V. Club, gave A Universe from Nothing a 'B' grade and commented that it "is solidly in the New Atheism camp, a cosmologist’s version of Dawkins’ The Blind Watchmaker" but noted that "the concepts he explores are so complex, and filled with so many factors that top physicists and cosmologists don’t understand, expanding on them in print actually makes them more confusing".[10] In New Scientist, Michael Brooks wrote that "Krauss will be preaching only to the converted. That said, we should be happy to be preached to so intelligently. The same can't be said about the Dawkins afterword, which is both superfluous and silly."[11]
Source: Wikipedia

 

[psychoslice]

There is not such thing as nothing, its all in your mind.

 

[vaguelyhumanoid]

There never was nothing.

 

[Native]

The very idea of "everything from nothing" derives from the false perception of "the modern linear time thinking" and from the biblical interpretation of creation which is read as "a beginning" of everything.

IMO the numerous global Stories of Creation deals with the ancient known part of the Universe, namely our Milky Way in which we live, and the stories deals with the pre-formation and formation of the Milky Way and subsequently of our Solar System. These stories don´t deal with the creation of everything in the Universe, just our Milky Way.

One of the best cultural tellings of this pre-state and creation of the Milky Way, is the Egyptian "Ogdoad":

Together the four concepts represent the primal, fundamental state of the beginning. They are what always was. In the myth, however, their interaction ultimately proved to be unbalanced, resulting in the arising of a new entity. When the entity opened, it revealed Ra, the fiery sun, inside. After a long interval of rest, Ra, together with the other deities, created all other things".

When studying comparative mythology and especially the stories of creation, these very often speaks of a cyclical creation where something is eternally created, dissolved and re-created again, as for instants with the "Ragnarok" in Norse Mythology, where the deities undergoes cosmic changes and rebirth.

So, according to our ancestral perception, there is NO beginning and NO end but an eternal creation.

PS: "Ra" in the Egyptian Ogdoad is scholarly intepreted as "the Sun", but this should be the "central Milky Way light".

 

[HonestJoe]

I don’t have any specific belief about the origins of the Universe. More significantly, I don’t need any specific belief. How I believe it happened doesn’t really have any impact on my existence now. How it really happened probably doesn’t have much impact on my existence now and even less likely in a manner I have any kind of influence over.

I don’t think our mundane terminology is enough to explain the various concepts proposed in relation to how the Universe came to be. “Nothing” doesn’t really mean enough or explain exactly what kind of environment we could be discussing and if we’re talking about time as well, we really don’t have the language to easily discuss it (when phrases like “The beginning of time” crop up). Long and complex scientific papers are written to explain single elements of this whole that only a handful of other people can really get their heads around and half of them contradict each other.

It’s an interesting thing to speculate about but as far as actually studying, understanding and explaining the whole question, I’ve much better things to be spending my lifetime on.

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

A self perpetuating cycle was the concept behind the 'Big Crunch' but as far as we can tell, the universe is set to expand indefinitely.. winding down ever closer to absolute cold and darkness, stars will not continue to reform indefinitely.

Perhaps this observation is only fueled by our inability to wrap our heads around the ultimately vast spans of time we are truly talking about here. The pull of entire galaxies - huge masses with tremendous draw - is not simply something that will one day "peter out". Those masses will continue to accumulate - and their forces continue to have them experience accretion over time. I think we can agree that a a star "dying" is merely the mass it contains being re-appropriated - likely absorbed into the nearest larger mass. A black-hole is so dense that not even light can escape - an effect we couldn't fathom until we witnessed it, wondered what the hell it was, and then set to figuring out what was causing it. Who is to say that another effect isn't waiting in the accumulation of even greater mass? That there isn't something even crazier bound to happen as that black-hole becomes something even more - an even denser, larger body.

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

lots of things in nature with definitive beginnings have cycles, our solar system, orbits, tides, the rotations of galaxies themselves, all from a very specific beginning, creation event- but all fall foul to entropy in the end, gradually slow towards a halt yes?

I came to one other thought with regards to these ideas - because it does seem plausible that nature's abhorrence of the vacuum would, in the end, leave the universe with a bleak, hazily-spread smattering of matter - the entropy of all matter to a dispersal throughout the empty space. However, the one thing in opposition to this it gravity - a constant force that experiences no winding-down, no end. Eventually even small bodies would draw together, make a larger body, draw in more surrounding, become even more of a draw, etc. I don't know if I could comprehend that ending, honestly.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

I came to one other thought with regards to these ideas - because it does seem plausible that nature's abhorrence of the vacuum would, in the end, leave the universe with a bleak, hazily-spread smattering of matter - the entropy of all matter to a dispersal throughout the empty space. However, the one thing in opposition to this it gravity - a constant force that experiences no winding-down, no end. Eventually even small bodies would draw together, make a larger body, draw in more surrounding, become even more of a draw, etc. I don't know if I could comprehend that ending, honestly.

Under classical physics yes, you'd expect that gravity would ultimately draw all matter to the same place again...

But we also apparently have an opposite force do we not?, dark energy, driving expansion at every increasing rates.

But this aside, even if conventional gravity won out, and all matter coalesced into one point, the Big Bang was not just an expansion of stuff but also the development, in specific steps, of that stuff, space/time/matter /energy as we know it

i.e. creating a 'new' universe by simply squashing this one back into a singularity, is a little like trying to create a new person by squashing an old one into the size of a zygote-
Likewise there's no particular reason to expect this would reverse the development of the universe into it's initial state , reverse entropy,

In a sense the singularity was a self extracting archive of highly compressed information right? as well as matter, it's this information, instructions, just like the DNA in the zygote, that would need to be regenerated somehow..

I think ID is most probable method of achieving this, the only way, ultimately, that entropy can be reversed, that anything can truly be created?

 

[sayak83]

I'm not sure if I can post a poll on here but who here believes that the universe originated from nothing? As some of the major scientific theories from the 20th century claimed or was there an originator of some sort? Doesn't have to be God necessarily in your opinion. Who believes the universe has no beginning? I'm just curious as to what you guys believe with regard to this topic and what the basis of your belief would be?

No, do not believe it. Unfortunately what some cosmologists were arguing was something else entirely, that the net energy density of the universe, if it were flat would be 0 as the negative energy of gravity will be equal to the positive energy of mass-radiation (this is a very loose description.) However this energy scale is a fairly arbitrary scale, you can assign zero anywhere and have both negative energy and positive energy and has very little to do with the metaphysical "nothing". It is interesting if the universe does have a net zero energy density and the information is useful to develop theories of the Big Bang state of the universe, but there is no philosophical profundity here.

 

[sayak83]

Under classical physics yes, you'd expect that gravity would ultimately draw all matter to the same place again...

But we also apparently have an opposite force do we not?, dark energy, driving expansion at every increasing rates.

But this aside, even if conventional gravity won out, and all matter coalesced into one point, the Big Bang was not just an expansion of stuff but also the development, in specific steps, of that stuff, space/time/matter /energy as we know it

i.e. creating a 'new' universe by simply squashing this one back into a singularity, is a little like trying to create a new person by squashing an old one into the size of a zygote-
Likewise there's no particular reason to expect this would reverse the development of the universe into it's initial state , reverse entropy,

In a sense the singularity was a self extracting archive of highly compressed information right? as well as matter, it's this information, instructions, just like the DNA in the zygote, that would need to be regenerated somehow..

I think ID is most probable method of achieving this, the only way, ultimately, that entropy can be reversed, that anything can truly be created?

Well, there are regions in space-time today where highly dense states do exist in a similar fashion. They are the Black Holes. The state of matter or the entropy of that matter inside the Black Hole is unknown, though a lot of recent ideas suggest that they hold the key to connecting quantum mechanics, theory of relativity and entropy thermodynamics into a single consistent frame. Time will tell.

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

I think ID is most probable method of achieving this, the only way, ultimately, that entropy can be reversed, that anything can truly be created?

If you believe the laws of physics which state that the amount of matter and energy in the universe is fixed, then you have to know that it is only ever re-appropriated - never ultimately lost. So, that entropy of heat energy that is "lost" to the depths of space is not truly lost. If a black hole teaches us anything, it is that even energy or waves have a "mass" that can be affected by gravity. And the formula for gravitational attraction does not allow for an absolute zero value. Can it be ridiculously close to zero? Of course. But even ridiculously close is not zero. Multiply the force-effects/acceleration of that slightly greater than zero quantity by INFINITY (as in, a literal eternity of time available going forward) and you have an inevitable return of mass to mass by my estimation - it doesn't really matter how long it takes.