Can some thing really come from no thing?

[Mordred]

Good advertising though lol. Give too much technical detail and no one will hear about it.

Edited June 13, 2017 by Mordred

[Phi for All]

Good advertising though lol. Give too much technical detail and no one will hear about it.

 

A literary agent I know claims you cut your readership in half for every equation you put in your book.

[Mordred]

Only half I thought it would be higher 😆

[imatfaal]

 

A literary agent I know claims you cut your readership in half for every equation you put in your book.

 

That tallies with what was told to Stephen Hawking before he first published A Brief History of Time - it was why only e=mc^2 was included in that book

[mistermack]

The question of why things exist, rather than nothing, is riddled with infinities, everywhere you look.

Once you understand real infinity, you can start to examine the question of something from nothing.

I'm infinitely far from that understanding, and I haven't heard of anybody being any nearer.

 

What bugs me though, is that some people try to extrapolate that problem, into the existence of a bearded man in the sky, who I know nothing about, but should still "love" and praise every day. (and give them some of my money)

[Thorham]

The question of why things exist

 

Seems easy enough: Something has always existed.

[Strange]

 

Seems easy enough: Something has always existed.

Can't argue with that - at least there is no evidence against it.

[Joel_Edgerton]

In my opinion, if there is nothing at first, then the "some thing" you mentioned is made up of nothing. If it is made up of "nothing", it is called "nothing" but not "some thing". Therefore, it all comes to how you define "nothing" and "some thing".

[Thorham]

it all comes to how you define "nothing" and "some thing".

 

Absolute nothingness is simply a total lack of anything,

[mistermack]

 

Seems easy enough: Something has always existed.

I don't find the idea of an infinite past any easier than any other kind of infinity.

[Thorham]

I don't find the idea of an infinite past any easier than any other kind of infinity.

 

It's easy, because there's nothing to understand, it simply is.

 

Also, infinities aren't necessarily hard to understand.

Edited June 19, 2017 by Thorham

[mistermack]

 

It's easy, because there's nothing to understand, it simply is.

 

Also, infinities aren't necessarily hard to understand.

It's obviously easy to think you understand them.

[Imiksimi]

Having limited life span we have created the idea of beginning and end. I think it just is. I don't think anything is created or destroyed simply changed. So something from nothing no , something from something else yes.

 

I really think that science should have more control of language creation , as it is the basis of all our understanding, you think in your language thus bound and constricted by its failings and shortfalls.

[beecee]

https://futurism.com/proof-that-the-universe-could-have-come-from-nothing/

 

 

 

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1404.1207v1.pdf

 

Spontaneous creation of the universe from nothing:

 

An interesting idea is that the universe could be spontaneously created from nothing, but no rigorous proof has been given. In this paper, we present such a proof based on the analytic solutions of the Wheeler-DeWitt equation (WDWE). Explicit solutions of the WDWE for the special operator ordering factor p = −2 (or 4) show that, once a small true vacuum bubble is created by quantum fluctuations of the metastable false vacuum, it can expand exponentially no matter whether the bubble is closed, flat or open. The exponential expansion will end when the bubble becomes large and thus the early universe appears. With the de Broglie-Bohm quantum trajectory theory, we show explicitly that it is the quantum potential that plays the role of the cosmological constant and provides the power for the exponential expansion of the true vacuum bubble. So it is clear that the birth of the early universe completely depends on the quantum nature of the theory.

 

 

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION:

In summary, we have presented a mathematical proof that the universe can be created spontaneously from nothing. When a small true vacuum bubble is created by quantum fluctuations of the metastable false vacuum, it can expand exponentially if the ordering factor takes the value p = −2 (or 4). In this way, the early universe appears irreversibly. We have shown that it is the quantum potential that provides the power for the exponential expansion of the bubble. Thus, we can conclude that the birth of the early universe is completely determined by quantum mechanism. One may ask the question when and how space, time and matter appear in the early universe from nothing. With the exponential expansion of the bubble, it is doubtless that space and time will emerge. Due to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, there should be virtual particle pairs created by quantum fluctuations. Generally speaking, a virtual particle pair will annihilate soon after its birth. But, two virtual particles from a pair can be separated immediately before annihilation due to the exponential expansion of the bubble. Therefore, there would be a large amount of real particles created as vacuum bubble expands exponentially. A rigorous mathematical calculation for the rate of particle creation with the exponential expansion of the bubble will be studied in our future work

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

I see three important questions emanating from the above paper........

[1] Does/can nothing ever really exist?

[2] What do we define as nothing.

[3] Can anything really arise from nothing as suggested in the paper?

I can only answer the third with a resounding yes...and I really see that as obvious with regards to my definition of nothing..

The secret rests with the terminology used in the article/paper..."quantum potential".

Edited July 4, 2017 by beecee

[Thorham]

It's obviously easy to think you understand them.

 

Perhaps, but what do you think is hard to understand about them?

[Mordred]

Here is a later time mechanism via the vacuum for particle production.

 

Parker particle

 

"Stimulated creation of quanta during inflation and the observable universe"

 

https://arxiv.org/abs/1106.4240

 

This was put forward by Parker roughly around the same time as A. Guth. (Though I wish I could find that paper) had a copy saved just gotta dig deep lol).

Edited July 7, 2017 by Mordred

[seriously disabled]

Scientists often assume that dimensions or direction or time are are a physical thing.

But if I had to guess I would say that dimensions are just a mathematical construct that we humans invented in order to measure things and the same can be said for direction or for time.

In my opinion things like dimensions or direction or time or even point particles have no physical existence.

[Itoero]

20 minutes ago, seriously disabled said:

Scientists often assume that dimensions or direction or time are are a physical thing.

But if I had to guess I would say that dimensions are just a mathematical construct that we humans invented in order to measure things and the same can be said for direction or for time.

In my opinion things like dimensions or direction or time or even point particles have no physical existence.

Correct. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how Nature is. Physics concerns what we say about Nature.

 

[swansont]

1 hour ago, seriously disabled said:

Scientists often assume that dimensions or direction or time are are a physical thing.

But if I had to guess I would say that dimensions are just a mathematical construct that we humans invented in order to measure things and the same can be said for direction or for time.

In my opinion things like dimensions or direction or time or even point particles have no physical existence.

I think it's more accurate to say that lay people think this. Scientists are much better equipped to realize that they are not. We build models that tell how how nature behaves. 

[beecee]

8 hours ago, seriously disabled said:

In my opinion things like dimensions or direction or time or even point particles have no physical existence.

Spacetime may not be a physical entity, but that does not mean it is not real. In essence it is as real as a magnetic field. We feel the effects of a magnetic field when it interacts. We also see the evidence for spacetime in gravitational lensing and gravitational waves.

Other logical reasons why spacetime is real.

(1) It is the unified multi-dimensional framework within which it is possible to locate events and describe the relationships between them in terms of spatial coordinates and time.

(2) The concept of spacetime follows from the observation that the speed of light is invariant, i.e. it does not vary with the motion of the emitter or the observer.

(3) Spacetime allows a description of reality that is common for all observers in the universe. 

(4) Intervals of space and time considered separately are not the same for all observers, and in different frames of references.

(5) In GR gravity is described in relation to the geometry of spacetime.

 

 

 

Edited September 15, 2017 by beecee

[Eise]

17 hours ago, Itoero said:

Correct. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how Nature is. Physics concerns what we say about Nature.

<Antfuckermode>Wrong. Disciplines that concern themselves with what physicists say about nature could be linguists and sociologists. Physicists try to describe how nature behaves. Therefore they use models, which of course are not how nature is. (or better: of which we cannot know if they describe nature as it really is).</Antfuckermode>

17 hours ago, seriously disabled said:

In my opinion things like dimensions or direction or time or even point particles have no physical existence.

'Physical existence' is not well-defined. E.g. objects and processes are different 'be-ables' (I think it was Bell who used this term for everything that possibly can exist), both are subject of physics. Space and time are a separate physical category.

Processes can cause other processes. Objects are the points at which processes 'touch each other'. It is clear that space and time are none of these. Processes and objects exist in space and time.

In special relativity the Lorenz transformations can be seen as rotations in spacetime. But rotations have no influence on what is rotated, i.e. objects themselves do not change: observers see distances and periods differently dependent on the inertial frame they are in. I assume something similar holds in general relativity. But that would mean that the bending of light in a gravity field is also an effect of perspective, and no causal effect as with processes in spacetime. @Physicists here: does that make sense?

Edited September 15, 2017 by Eise

[swansont]

10 hours ago, beecee said:

Spacetime may not be a physical entity, but that does not mean it is not real. 

One needs to define what is meant by real. Does it mean "physical existence" (i.e. could be, in principle, picked up?) Or does it mean "not an hallucination" Too many of these discussions unravel because they vacillate between the two meanings.

A hole is real in the latter sense, but not real in the former.

[MigL]

OK, I've gotta know.
What sort of colloquialism is "antfucker mode" ??

Is it a concern with trivial stuff, like nit picking ?               '

[beecee]

10 hours ago, swansont said:

One needs to define what is meant by real. Does it mean "physical existence" (i.e. could be, in principle, picked up?) Or does it mean "not an hallucination" Too many of these discussions unravel because they vacillate between the two meanings.

A hole is real in the latter sense, but not real in the former.

 Agreed, mostly....likewise one needs to define what nothing means when one speculates a universe arising from. I see the second choice as more applicable. We could also talk about magnetic field lines in the same manner.

[Eise]

15 hours ago, MigL said:

OK, I've gotta know.
What sort of colloquialism is "antfucker mode" ??

Is it a concern with trivial stuff, like nit picking ?               '

Yeah. Could have written '<nitpickingmode>'. 

In the course of this discussion I thought it not very important to nuance Itoero's reaction. 'Physical existence' is just different for objects, processes, and spacetime: it is not that some of them do not exist physically.