Universe From Nothing

[maddog]

I'm talking about existence itself. Not the bells and whistles that can also be experienced as hallucinations, not the "esse est percipi" of Berkeley. More like "the thing in itself". I'm talking about what it means to exist, to be real. Now you are right; it is by experience that we assess the reality of things, because experience is all that we can know. We can know nothing that we have not experienced. Thus, reality is communicated by experience. We cannot experience anything unless (1) we exist to experience it and (2) it exists to be experienced. In this way, experience validates existence, not because we actually experience the existence of things but because things must exist in order to be experienced; because experience derives from existence. And I'm talking about existence as a principle independent of and transcendent to space and time; ...

It is good to get this nailed down as what you have said here I can agree with. Even if not I could understand what are saying.

 

... space and time are only two other things that exist, elements of the set of existing things, so existence cannot be restricted by the qualities of space-time, ...

It might be better to describe spacetime as a reference coordinate system against which we measure our experiences. It is just a proverbial "yardstick".

 

maddog

[maddog]

What kind of qualification do i need to ask questions... PHD in Astrophysics???? :D

This is a place where we discuss sense or non sense questions with proof.

The subject of "Universe from Nothing" is a theory by Theoretical physicist. So he must be asked whether its a question with any sensible qualification :D

I may sound a bit odd with this reply, but it wasn't some non sensible questions by some ignorant person but a theory proposed by an Theoretical Physicist, his name is Lawrence Krauss. My link

 

I think you misunderstood the context in which I meant "qualification". I did Not mean a Credential as in any kind of PhD, MS, JD or any such thing.

 

I meant in simply to limit on that which speak of. I will have to go back and look where the specific question that wish to have further qualify

before I can comment further. Sorry. :(

 

maddog

[maddog]

Can you tell me what exists outside space?

This is the question that wish further qualified....

 

1. What space to be outside of ?

2. Outside of in what way ?

 

I would need help in these two items before I could begin to consider what the "what" could be. It was the lack of knowing

any definition to 1 and 2 above that had me even consider this being somewhat of a "nonsensical" question.

 

maddog

[Time_Travel]

I think you misunderstood the context in which I meant "qualification". I did Not mean a Credential as in any kind of PhD, MS, JD or any such thing.

 

I meant in simply to limit on that which speak of. I will have to go back and look where the specific question that wish to have further qualify

before I can comment further. Sorry. :(

 

maddog

 

I have already replied in an earlier post where i misunderstood both Nonsensical and qualification terms used.

Didn't mean to be rude in reply as i was just joking "whether i need a Phd".If offended in anyway i apologize.

[K.Consciousness]

This is the question that wish further qualified....

 

1. What space to be outside of ?

2. Outside of in what way ?

 

 

If I take an elementary particle such as a quark with no known substructure, I would doubt there is any space "inside" of that particle; on the other hand if I take an atom, I would say there is "space" inside of the atomic nucleus as well as between the nucleus and the electron(s) of that atom, force carrier particles notwithstanding.

 

Question is "what is it" that is inside of the atomic nucleus or in between the nucleus and the electron(s)?

 

In that context, to me, "outside of" implies outside of matter with the rider that the "outside" is blurred since what is on the outside is also present on the "inside" except at the very fundamental level, even though, we all probably agree that what is fundamental today might not be that fundamental tomorrow. In other words, they might find a substructure to quarks tomorrow.

 

 

Leaving aside semantics, we all know (including Kindergarten attending kids) and recognize space. We are just not able to wrap our minds around that because it appears unbounded.

[maddog]

If I take an elementary particle such as a quark with no known substructure, I would doubt there is any space "inside" of that particle; on the other hand if I take an atom, I would say there is "space" inside of the atomic nucleus as well as between the nucleus and the electron(s) of that atom, force carrier particles notwithstanding.

In the current Standard Model - Elementary Particles are thought of as "point particles" which is to say there

is no internal structure other than their coordinate location. So true electrons are thought to behave as a zero

dimensional object moving within a defined space about the nucleus of an atom. In actuality this is not

the conventional single orbit about the nucleus kind of moving. It is more a swirl cloud in all directions into a

category of orbital shapes. These constitute the obritals: s, p, d, f, ...

 

Question is "what is it" that is inside of the atomic nucleus or in between the nucleus and the electron(s)?

Simple. Space. I'm not being flippant. Just space.

 

... In other words, they might find a substructure to quarks tomorrow.

There are ideas on this, the most beefy one now being Superstring Theory or now relabeled M-Theory. There currently is no evidence supporting this interpretation for that internal structure.

 

maddog

[K.Consciousness]

Be that as it may, I am not sure why "outside of" would be considered equivocal unless you subscribe to something like a holographic universe.

[sigurdV]

Is there any possibility or at least any sort of smallest evidence that the universe started from nothing and came into being everything.

It is simply impossible for me to think the existence of something from nothingness.

If there is some sort of proof it may enhance my understanding of nothingness's definition and its truth.

 

I think analysis of nothing started with Parmenides an ancient greek philosopher who stated that there is no such thing as nothing... Which probably implies there never was a nothing something could come from :)

 

Ordinarily when the word is used it is to declare that no object was selected from a certain set of objects, the problem arises when the set of objects is the set of ALL objects which (if it exists) perhaps also should include an object "nothing"...

 

Say that you are a dead christian and find ureself in purgatory where you are given the task of collecting all objects for god to inspect... suppose you have done the job and you happily tell god that you have done whats been asked of you... -Are you sure nothing was left over? god asks... Yes! you say... Do you then think its fair if God throws you back to purgatory with the words -And dont come back until the job is done!

 

The point of my fairy tale is that our theory of statements and meanings is perhaps as yet not on a solid enough foundation and if youre interested in my first step towards that goal youre invited to the thread "the final solution of the liar".

[roadglue]

In my head i just imagined absolute nothingness,which for some reason is a white/grey and all of a sudden a small molecule type affair pops into existance, for no reason what so ever and then we know the rest.

I couldn't imagine there was nothing at all at some point.How could something come from nothing.But then i thought why not.There doesn't have to be a reason why it happened.

We think there should be but maybe there isn't.

If that makes any sense at all :)

[sigurdV]

In my head i just imagined absolute nothingness

If that makes any sense at all :)

 

Absolutes should be handled with great care it seems possible to prove that they dont exist ,never existed nor will exist... provided we can trust logic. See the proper theory of beginnings... As yet to my knowledge only imagined :)

 

Why not start a thread on imagining things? Perhaps dedicated to Korzybski?

[roadglue]

@op..I don't know if you'll ever find the proof you're looking for.It is hard to imagine something from nothing because it doesn't fit in our box but if it did happen,it happened and you'll never find reason.

I think either there was nothing and all of a sudden there was something or that there was always something.

Might not make sense to us,i'm no brains but tbh if there is no real answer then all the brains in the universe wont find it.

It would make more sense to me that there was never actually anything,never will be anything and we shouldn't be here discussing it.But we are :).

Maybe in the end there just is no answer.Something has always been around and there was never a point when it wasn't?.

This is just how i think and it might be simple or unscientific but it satisfies me as an answer :)

[sigurdV]

@op..I don't know if you'll ever find the proof you're looking for.It is hard to imagine something from nothing because it doesn't fit in our box but if it did happen,it happened and you'll never find reason.

I think either there was nothing and all of a sudden there was something or that there was always something.

 

It seems my report on nothing didnt reach in here. I forgot how to cut and paste so please go to the theory of nothing #28.

 

Summary: There never was a nothing something could come from!

[Rade]

A paper on the mathematics of nothing and its relation to the origin of universe:

 

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1111/1111.0301v1.pdf

[newdealtn]

If nothing exists, then there can be no explanation of the possibility that something might begin to exist. No explanation at all. Not even quantum uncertainty, since not even quantum uncertainty could exist. The absolute absence of any existence must necessarily preclude any possibility of something beginning to exist. Furthermore, if something appears to come from nothing, we must presume that the appearance of nothing has hidden within it the potentiality whereby the more obvious appearance of something has come about, there being no other possible explanation for the becoming of that something. Let me be clear here that I am not speaking of a local instance of nothing, but a nothing that is universal and absolute. The essential proposition is that something (that exists) cannot come into existence absent any adequate explanation of its doing so, from which we may conclude that the present existence of something entails the causally previous existence of something indefinitely into the causal past. More later.

[sigurdV]

If nothing exists, then there can be no explanation of the possibility that something might begin to exist. No explanation at all. Not even quantum uncertainty, since not even quantum uncertainty could exist. The absolute absence of any existence must necessarily preclude any possibility of something beginning to exist. Furthermore, if something appears to come from nothing, we must presume that the appearance of nothing has hidden within it the potentiality whereby the more obvious appearance of something has come about, there being no other possible explanation for the becoming of that something. Let me be clear here that I am not speaking of a local instance of nothing, but a nothing that is universal and absolute. The essential proposition is that something (that exists) cannot come into existence absent any adequate explanation of its doing so, from which we may conclude that the present existence of something entails the causally previous existence of something indefinitely into the causal past. More later.

To put it simply:

There never was a nothing something could come from.

Something always comes from somewhere.

Edited March 3, 2012 by sigurdV

[newdealtn]

To put it simply:

There never was a nothing something could come from.

Something always comes from somewhere.

Yeah, sigurdV, that's about it. Space-time begins with the universe and ends with the universe, because space-time is the universe--the arena in which matter and energy play out their activities. Before the universe, there was neither space nor time, but there was existence.

 

As one of our posters has questioned, the idea of existence "outside" of space-time doesn't really make sense, does it? How can you exist outside of space since outside is a quality that is defined by space? Well, it's a simple linguistic problem. We mean more properly to say that existence is independent of space-time; that existence does not require space-time. But what can exist outs...oops! independent of space-time? To understand this, we must first understand what qualities of things are defined by space-time.

 

We've already decided that "outside" is a no-no if there is no space. There can be neither outside nor inside, neither size nor shape, neither number nor division, neither size nor shape without space. Therefore, what exists independent of space is not only a single thing, it is one without other. It is indivisible, undifferentiated, neither this nor that, neither here nor there (did I mention that it can't have location?), nameless and unnameable. I like that because it sounds so much like a mystic describing the Brahman. I think what they are experiencing is their own existence independent of spacial context.

 

Existence independent of space-time is also devoid of qualities associated with time. It is unchanging, without process or event, immutable, and without beginning or end. Because it is without beginning or end, whatever exists independent of space-time must be boolean, by which I mean that it must either exist or not exist. If it doesn't exist, it can never begin to exist. If it does exist, it can never cease to exist. And it must exist, because you and I exist. If I didn't exist, how are these words written? If you don't exist, how are these words read? In philosophy there is a term called "necessary existence", a term used often by people who are trying to prove the existence of God. I'm not trying to prove the existence of God, but I think that existence independent of space-time does, by its boolean nature, fully satisfy the definition of "necessary existence".

 

I think "initial condition" is a scientific rather than a philosophical term, but I'm prepared to stand corrected if someone knows better. :-) When a scientist says that the universe comes from nothing, she is basically saying that nothing is the initial condition from which the universe comes. Nothing is precisely what existence independent of space-time would appear to be, but it would not be nothing. Existence independent of space-time is the potentiality for everything that will become the universe or a part of the universe. I have no idea what that potentiality is, what the nature of that potentiality is, I only know that whatever existed before the universe must have possessed the potentiality by which the universe is explained. In fact, if there is a multiverse of universes, that initial condition of existence independent of space-time must have possessed the potentiality adequate to explain all the universes of the multiverse.

 

Because it is an initial condition, it remains immutable and changeless, undiminished by all the universes that may "awaken" from it--that is, have their origin from it. Existence is the initial condition, t=0; the universe is t=1...n and all the changes from t=0 that actualize it.

 

Samm

[7DSUSYstrings]

Is there any possibility or at least any sort of smallest evidence that the universe started from nothing and came into being everything.

It is simply impossible for me to think the existence of something from nothingness.

If there is some sort of proof it may enhance my understanding of nothingness's definition and its truth.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_energy

 

This is likely the first stop to understanding what is thought of as a "free lunch." In its simplest definition it is anti-thermodynamics, meaning a closed system that arises from an infinite open system. It is absurd to try finding logic in a universe composed of existential matter that always was in existence as matter. It is not absurd to envision an infinite, eternal void of arbitrary energy satisfying the basic equation that ma = f. The total energy of the arbitrary system is infinite. The arbitrary kinetic energy is infinite. The potential energy is infinite. The relativistic energy is irrelevant, thus infinitesimal. On the existential side, either the potential or kinetic energy becomes infinitesimal. Since infinite mass is absurd, it is the velocity component that approaches infinity, thus infinitesimal mass and time balance the equation. Same as in a heat engine, the closed system becomes subject to entropy in the presence of the open system and collapses into relativistic energy as time approaching infinity.