Cosmology 101 question.

[Rum]

So I read that something can come from nothing after all, essentially because 'nothingness' is unstable. All well and good but the nothingness must have had that rule -about it being unstable that is - embedded in it somehow. How I wonder?

By God?



Just messing around with ideas I wish I had more knowledge to UNdersand properly.

[klr]

Stop trying to make my brain work overtime so late at night!

[Gawdzilla Sama]

[Clinton Huxley]

I think it was Douglas Adams who wrote, "In the beginning was nothing, which exploded".

[Rum]

Watched and enjoyed most of this last night. Thanks!

[mistermack]

It appears that they are talking about some sort of bank.

The bank has no money, but lends a million dollars. So it has to borrow a million dollars. Lending a million dollars of matter has to involve borrowing a million dollars of antimatter.

It's hardly something coming from nothing. You need a bank, and capital, and punters.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The "nothing" here is "nothing we can understand".

Imagine the transition from this:

Trigger Warning!!!1! :

To this:

Trigger Warning!!!1! :

Then imagine that on a universal scale.

[Pappa]

I think it's more of a misunderstanding of what "nothing" is. Empty space is teeming with action. Subatomic particles pop into existence infinitesimally. Far from being void, it's a seething foam.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

We stupid monkeys looking at the sky.

[macdoc]

Einstein spent his waning years fighting Bohr on the issue - Einstein lost.

[Hermit]

Stephen Hawking and co-writer Leonard Mlodinow tried to explain how something can come from nothing in The Grand Design. You can read it in PDF here. Although the book is squarely aimed at non-physisists, I must admit to not being able to digest the later chapters, but you may have better luck.

[mistermack]

I think it's more of a misunderstanding of what "nothing" is. Empty space is teeming with action. Subatomic particles pop into existence infinitesimally. Far from being void, it's a seething foam.

Yes. But it makes you wonder why we keep on with the "empty space" label.
I've had some huge disagreements over the years, arguing that space couldn't possibly be empty, and usually been treated like a crank. But now we know that it's not, people in the physics game persist with the "empty space" label, while explaining that it's anything but.
It's like they can't let the notion go, even though it's gone.

A thread I started on the science forum got moved to the pseudo corner less than a year ago, because I insisted that space couldn't be empty. And the first thread I started here got loads of derisory comments when I suggested that space couldn't be empty. Special relativity insists that "there is no medium" and people are just glued to that, like a religion.

[Pensioner]

I have watched this three or four times.