What Do You Mean By Nothing?

[Mintaka]

In space there is a vacuum, a lack of air.

 

At school we are taught that this is 'nothing'.

 

 

It is said by some that before the 'Big Bang', there was 'nothing', no space or time.

 

Does this mean that not even a vacuum existed?

 

What is the difference between a vacuum and 'nothing'?

 

Will scientists ever be able to explain the beginning of the universe without sounding even more desperately lost than the creationists?

[sanctus]

Vacuum in space is not really empty, you have the so called quantum fluctuations, which is something like creation of a pair of anti-particles (eg. positron and electron) and subsequent annihilation...

 

Nothing for me means the absence of any particle or field, so I guess that would be no space-time ;-)

[athinker]

Vacuum as presented in school means empty space. Not non space.

 

We should really talk of space as "space" because we observe "space" from a point of view as "objects" in "space" and of "objects" in "space".

 

In M theory "space" is a "material" contained in a "hyperspace". M theorists profer that the "objects", the "motions" of "objects" and "forces" observed between "objects" can best be understood in terms of complex motions and properties of "space" as a membrane in a context of "hyperspace". In effect there are no "particles" in space. There are only motions and properties of "space" as a membrane. Though, at present M theorists still speak in terms of "particles" "stuck" on a membrane. They are not yet conclusive in rigorous mathematical descriptions of "particles" entirely as complex distortions of the membrane itself.

[Mintaka]

so, before the big bang there were no fields and no particles?

 

We explain life on earth as sprouting from some first 'seed' , in the primaeval soup.

 

How did the first conditions arise for something explode, if nothing was there to create them?

 

Is it possible that, just as we are part of a galaxy which is one of many billions of others, that the whole observable universe is just one of many others?

 

Do you think that 'infinity' is just an idea that the human mind can't comprehend?

 

Is this our biggest stumbling block perhaps?

 

It seems we're stuck, doesn't it, between a rational need to find a 'beginning point' but the irrationality of trying to explain how something could have been created from 'nothing'.

 

Sorry, I'm just waffling and tjhinking aloud..

[Sci]

Nothing is nonexistence, and if you think about it… there can be no other source for existence.

[CraigD]

It is said by some that before the 'Big Bang', there was 'nothing', no space or time.

 

Does this mean that not even a vacuum existed?

 

What is the difference between a vacuum and 'nothing'?

so, before the big bang there were no fields and no particles?

According to the large scale quantum fluctuation explanation of the Big Bang (AKA "the universe is simply one of those things that happens from time to time.”), there was a vacuum full of virtual particles before the big bang, which is intuitively if not clearly “something” rather than “nothing”.

 

I think this lead to a deeper level of cosmogonological question. The pre-Big Bang vacuum consisted, in a quantum physics sense, of a superposition of a vastly many virtual particles. These particles, though, virtual though they may be, obey the physical laws of quantum mechanics. These physical laws are a profound “something”, demanding the asking of questions like “have they always existed?” and “have they changed? (other than ‘tuning’ their various constants)”.

 

There are some branches of theoretical physics that attack these questions, hinting at the nature of something more fundamental than the physical law that is, a something that these laws are built of, and inspiring speculation about the possibility of them being naturally or artificially changed - Penrose, Smolin and Rovelli’s spin network approach, for example.

 

The math of these approaches, though simple and fundamentally discrete, tend to be difficult, their conclusions tentative, their theoretical physical predictions scant – in short, not fertile reading for enthusiasts like me. Some SF writers have filled the gap, some with SF so soft as to be practically fantasy, more rarely with hard SF – an awe-inspiring undertaking, IMHO, given its difficulty. An example of the latter is Greg Egan’s Schild’s Ladder.

[Mintaka]

Thank you Craig!

 

I will look for this book,

 

Joe.