a universe from nothing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo

a nice talk by lawrence krauss i just came across. at the end even hilbert's hotel gets mentioned so i guess it's very fitting for this forum.

video wont load at a reasonable speed after 00:26:**

Just when it was about to get interesting :<

it worked without problems for me. maybe try again a bit later...

" Scientists love mistery, religious people like to know everything and they know nothing "
L. Krauss

Mr Krauss explained what I said a couple of times in this forum

The " existence " is no more a mistery for modern quantum physics
A " creator " is not needed
It seems a paradox but a " destructor" should be necessary
Obviously nobody can really grasp this concept, not even Mr Krauss , I suppose , being anti intuitive but this is the plain truth

That saying is inaccurate, he is wrong. We don't want to know everything.

A Creator IS needed. When people die, what happens to them? They can't just be removed from existence. Where are they? I find that funny, people will say "Hell", but I say, "Heaven and hell, depending on their decisions."

Why not?

That's the cycle of life and death.

Even if there was a place where you go when you die, with so many dead people over all the years, it would be a terribly crowded place. Why would I want to go there?

Why ?
Dont confuse your ( and my ) wishes with the bloody evidence

It always gets me when scientists want to know how the world began, Bing bang theory? possibly?

But I want to know what was before the big bang, possibly another big bang as the world is forever expanding and condensing leaving it to implode on itself?

Or shall I rephrase as to what was before the first big bang?

We have the time dimension and find it hard to percieve anything else, and as it always leaves us in the unknown or just asking the next question of "But what was before that", some shout God, some say nothing.


Or for a totally different angle, if the answer of "The universe was always there" isn't good enough. Who created God or what was before him?


Final thought: Big bang theory, we all were created and evolved from star dust, and got to where we are today some 15billion years later, and you still look that similar to me?!?

That's the thing about it. There was nothing. Just nothing. Without the universe around, there was no 4th time dimension. And without time there is no "before", there is no "after". That's just it, nothing in the purest way possible. No matter, no light, no time, no beginning and no end.

Ouch, my brain hurts... its been stretched too far...

In the video, in the 'hilberts hotel' section, he speaks of combining infinites.
And this has made me realise that infinity is larger than I previously believed.

Follow this logic...
1> Assume the 'universe' is infinite is size.
2> It therefore has room to contain an infinite number of 'child' universes.
3> These 'child' universes have the room within the 'parent' to not touch each other, seeing as the 'parent' is infinite is size.
4> Each 'child' universe will also have the room within the 'parent' to be infinite in size. So go back to step one for each 'child'.

Thats BIG...

The time since the big bang is actually quite short (if you
use another perspective)

If the universe is 13 billion years old, and life on earth maybe
3 to 4 billion years, then eartly life (right here where we sit) existed
for 30%!! of the WHOLE TIME OF THE UNIVERSE.

Given that, The age of the Universe seeam less impressive to me.

It all depends on your personal interpretation of 'early life'.
(this timescale is pretty rough BTW)

4 billion years ago, the earth was still soft and molten.

3 billion years ago, it has cooled enough for here to be 'oceans'.

2 billion years ago, erarly life was just "slime" that could spread.

1 billion years ago, some of it developed enough to be called 'plants'.

It took till a mere 300 million years ago before the first fish-with-spines appeared.
TO ME, that is "early" life.


I see your point though, we are a young planet in a young universe.
But life here "wasted" much of our 4 billion years.

What if 'life' on another planet didnt waste as much time being slime as we did?

For me the "early slime" is more impressive than the
steps to the "higher" evolution.

Getting life into existance out of lifeless matter at all, even if very primitive, is more impressive than some further DNA changes
that created more complex variations.

(Although life could have originated somehwere else, and
was brought to earth on some comets, beeing much older than earth)

---

Even if life had evolved into high creatures in other places,
they obviously did not get powerful enough so
that we notice them without any problem
(SETI etc)

If there where really some powerful Aliens, they
should have at least send out some sattelites to
serve as beacon, scan or even make contact. (even if they had to fly around forever)
Its not much outh there obviously.

I feel the (mathematically) like HAS evolved to our level or higher elsewhere.

We havent heard from them merely due to the vast distances involved.
The greater the distance, the longer it will take for something as primitive
as 'radio' transmissions to reach each other. Its just too far I think.

Once we get a Faster-Than-Light communications system figured out (IF possible),
then we will start hearing someTHING...

There is many mathematical (using rather simplistic factors) models.
But the biggest unknown is the likelyhood to evolve
from a high animal to a concious smart intelligence.

There was like 150million years time on earth with high
animals, but only some the primates in recent time
got over the level of sniffing on others butts.

To evolve a concious intelligence is
not an automatism as many think of it.
its not even economical for most lifeforms, who
rather spend they energy on beeing faster, smelling better or breeding more.
(The local maximum in the evolitionary search)

I see the human intelligence more of a lucky coincidence
than an evolitionry automatism.

We just have different opinions there then.

To me its a certainty, due to the sheer numbers involved.

There are are monsterously huge numbers of stars, only some of which have planets.
Of that (still) stunningly huge number of planets, only some are capable of supporting life.
Of that remaining amazingly huge number of life support-able planets, only some get lucky enough to form.
Of that remaining vastly huge number of life supporting planets, only some get lucky enough to form higher life-forms.
Of that remaining (still) huge number of planets with higher life, only some get lucky enough not to nuke themselves out of existance.

So seeing as we are starting with billion upon billion upon billions of stars,
near infinate, then intelligent developed life (in my opinion) IS out there somewhere.
But its unlikely we will be close enough to make contact without FTL of some sort...
Think of is as we have evolved on a grain of sand on a beah America,
and other life evolved on a grain of sand on a beach in china....

"lucky coincidence"'s occur often when trialled MANY MANY times...

Nice talk there, funny biologist jokes too .



No matter how I agree with Michael, 18 billion people died over the last 17 thousand years, and 18 billion living people is what we will soon reach. Pretty crowded world .

Its funny that we should ask European students what the sum of all angles in a triangle is...

Seriously I think if Dark matter in empty space accounted for the large majority of energy in the universe then what is to stop the dark matter which is beyond the universe to become the overpowering factor?

Because beyond any universe is more empty space for infinity, if that empty space has mass then gravity would pull everything apart...is this the mechanism of universal expansion?

The amazing discovery was not the universal expansion rather the universal acceleration
Both ordinary matter and dark matter are attractive thus the expansion should slow down after the big bang

The Einstein's equation of general relativiy claims that it would be possible to have also a repulsive gravitational force if you have a negative pressure
Remember when Mr Krauss moved the constant from the left to the right side of the equation

The dark energy can supply a sufficient repulsive force at the condition that it is diffused everywhere ,its density being of course, extremely low .

Consequently vacuum does not exist or even better "vacuum" can not exist
Remember when Mr Krauss showed the computer simulation of the space "grid"

If vacuum exist than quantum physics is wrong but Quantum Physics is right being confirmed by thousand experimets

The dark energy is a direct consequence of the Heisemberg's principle of indetermination and it had been confirmed in Lab, many years after, thanks to the Kasimiri's effect
A few years ago it has been drammatically further confirmed at universal scale


Thus the title " Univere from nothing "

"dark matter" and "dark energy" are first of all
inventions to make the calculations fit the observations.

So there are 3 posiibilities:

1: "dark matter" and "dark energy" exist
2: the observations ar faulty
3: the calulations/models are faulty.

So as long as there is no direct proove,
dark matter" and "dark energy" are just theoretical implications.

if a creator IS needed , then the creator needed a creator , and that creator needed one too! but of course im sure i will hear the double standard , we needed a creator not god , and i think thats just bending the rules to fit your needs. im more for the big bang than anything else , makes the most sense.

That thing about the crowded ...
well have you ever though about that, we are souls that encarnate .. again and again?

because that way it wont be 18 billions to come, because they are the same souls, that after death will return..
So its a cycle. And thus no real mortal.

And if you dont agree.. universe is infinite , thus, there is space for everybody


My only question is, what is the boundary of the universe if its infinite? how can something have no limit?
if its finite, what is the wall that make the universe apart from the otherside?

Well Mr Krauss answered also this question

The terms "wall" or "boundariy" assume that you can watch the universe from "outside" but in the theory of relativity it does not make sense to speak of something "outside" the Time-Space
Dont think that I really understand what I wrote one line above
Modern Physics is not intuitive but it is supported by experimental evidence

well if you mean that the existance of dark matter and dark energy has not been proved yet beyond any reasonable doubt, it is ok but you can not put the 3 alternatives on the same level

As I told in my previuos thread the existance of the energy of vacuum is a direct consequence of the Heisenberg's principle of indetermination
Kasimir proved in lab that it should really exist
Just a few years ago the acceleration of the universe seem to confirm that this strange form of energy is actually is diffused everywhere


Pure coincidence ? faulty observations ?

Well in theory it may be but alternative a ) is definitely the most likely hypothesis

Direct proves are almost impossible in the modern physics but indirect proves are considered as valid as the direct ones

a thing i didn't quite get... do all supernovae have the same brightness? or what exactly is this standard candle he was talking about?

...and i found it very intriguing that in the future, observers won't be able to figure out the true nature of the universe. what if the universe already plays tricks like that on us now?

"what if the universe already plays tricks like that on us now?"
I think this can't be the case, because we see the microwave background, which is 14 billion light years away, and the universe is 14 billion years old. So there can't be anything invisible to us that was visible before, because it was never possible to look beyond the microwave background.

Excerpt from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_candle#Supernovae)

Type Ia SN (Super Novae) are some of the best ways to determine extragalactic distances. [...] Because all Type Ia SN explode at about the same mass, their absolute magnitudes are all the same. This makes them very useful as standard candles. [...] Therefore, when observing a type Ia SN, if it is possible to determine what its peak magnitude was, then its distance can be calculated. [...] Using Type Ia SN is one of the most accurate methods, particularly since SN explosions can be visible at great distances (their luminosities rival that of the galaxy in which they are situated), much farther than Cepheid Variables (500 times farther). Much time has been devoted to the refining of this method. The current uncertainty approaches a mere 5%, corresponding to an uncertainty of just 0.1 magnitudes.

makes sense but is it easy to figure out how old the supernova is? or what state it is in?
this is what i mean. how is it possible to figure out the peak magnitude?


i mean in general. not specific to the age or something. ...what if something else has happened already that distorts the observation of the universe's true nature?

You could just read the Wiki link

It is not intrinsically necessary to capture the SN directly at its peak magnitude; using the multicolor light curve method (MCLS), the shape of the light curve (taken at any reasonable time after the initial explosion) is compared to a family of parameterized curves that will determine the absolute magnitude at the maximum brightness. This method also takes into effect interstellar extinction/dimming from dust and gas.

Similarly, the stretch method fits the particular SN magnitude light curves to a template light curve. This template, as opposed to being several light curves at different wavelengths (MCLS) is just a single light curve that has been stretched (or compressed) in time. By using this Stretch Factor, the peak magnitude can be determined.

Stars having certain characteristics should emit the same amount of energy
This conclusion come from the physics of solar
Thus the brightness of these stars is an indication of their distance from the earth
Remember that Mr krauss said also that in the study of universe an accuracy 1 to 10, is a good result

That with the triangle was really cool. It makes sense. The universe is flat.

yes, i was lazy. ...but actually you could end many threads here with a link to wikipedia.

" The grand design " a new book by Stephen Hawking

"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist,"

Excuse me for bumping up this old thread, but I recently rewatched it again.

So, if space extends by the vacuum's "dark energy", everything is pushed away from everything else without the universe itself really expanding. A different way to visualise is that everything is simply shrinking. Everything but light. As pointed out by Dr. Lawrence Krauss, in 1 gazillion years we do not see any matter anymore outside our own starsystem. The CBR is gone outside our reach of vision: the infrared light waves are longer than the size of our universe, which has essentially shrinked in relation to light which has a statically defined wavesize.

So, as we shift into indefinite insignificance where in 1000 gazillion years we can't even see our own starsystem anymore, is it a plausible thought that in a different order of magnitude new matter is coming in? Is the universe really just an endless pool of sinking sand where matter is created not at a single point like the big bang, but everywhere in the universe's nothingness (the universe's "constant level of energy" type of nothing) on top of the pool, forging matter by ripples through this energy level, which then slowly decreases in size by the sinking-sand-space into nothing again?


EDIT:
Rereading this I think I am throwing quite some confusing terms in my explanation. I made a little graph explaining hopefully more clear what I mean:



This is a depiction of a linear metric expansion of the universe. Matter is created where time is 0%, but not per sé at 0% distance. It can boil up anywhere over the x-axis. As time progresses to 100% (whether that takes infinitely long or not) the universe's metrics expands. Green area is where light can still reach us as the metric expansion didn't exceed lightspeed, red area is where metric expansion exceeded lightspeed and light can not reach us anymore. Light travels under 45 degrees (see yellow line). All matter created at the beginning of time (time=0%) and the end of the universe (distance=99%) is outside the visible universe (which is marked by the blue CBR line), but will reach us at one point in time: time=99%. It could take nearly infinitely long though.

The blue line is not affected by the white line. The blue line is our observation of the CBR. The further up in time, the longer the path to travel due to the expanded metrics. But light is not affected by the expansion. In relation to the lightwaves, we shrink, thus for us the lightwaves appear bigger resulting in a redshift. The CBR is the furthest distance of what we can see from matter created at the same timeframe as us.

Even now, while we are halfway up this graph (the sinking-sand metaphorically), new matter is boiling up at time=0%. We just can't measure it as the lightwaves do not reach us at all, it exists in an entirely different timeframe. If there would be a way to shift through the universe's metric scale, you'd shift in phase of a different ordering of matter, made up by quantum fluctuations before or after our own creation.

In the end, at time=100% we must be somehow completely be recycled into the constant energy level of the universe again to keep the balance.

What do you professional physicists and astronomers think of this perception?

Regards,
Joozey

From what I remember, according to the WMAP satellite images (microwave radiation, etc) the universe is ever expanding, growing colder and no new matter is being created (in our universe). Thus, our universe is doomed to die a cold death (and not gazillions of years, but in trillions ). However, there is the possibility of untold numbers of other universes. Several theories speak of a "multiverse." Some believe that these "verses" come into existence all the time ... like bubbles in a boiling pot of water.

I think you misunderstood me. According to kepler's observations the universe is not just simply expanding, it does so in an accelerating way. It is like everything is pushed away from eachother.

As a result, if you would move outside of the universe, you would not see a growing universe. Instead you'd see a universe that remains its size, but all matter within is shrinking in size. All lightwave sizes however remain the same.

Back in the universe again, we actually don't notice ourself shrinking, but rather see everything moving away, plus the lightwaves growing. This clarifies why far away objects appear redshifted. The light that was emitted by a far away object reaches us so much time later that we have shrunken noticeably in size in the meantime. The lightwaves are thus bigger for us as it was back when the object emitted the light, meaning we see it more red.

This is depicted by the yellow line, which moves in time at the speed of light (45 degrees) towards us from time=0% to time=50%. it starts at metric scale of 0%, but reaches us halfway up the metric scale at 50%. The scale of space expanded. Green to red area is the speed of expansion, crossing the white line expands faster than light. And relatively seen we shrink. The light (yellow line) maintained its size though.

Now supposing we are now at 50% on the metric scale (this is just a made-up definition, not a very scientific theory), at 0% new matter still boiles in. We just can't see it as it is out of our scope. No matter where and how you draw light lines (under 45 degrees) at scale=0%, it will never reach a different timeframe. But it would make sense for the universe not having a begin and end, and rather be a continuous cycle. Such a universe would have a total energy of 0. So I thought of this solution.

Sorry for correcting old stuff.

no, the Kasimir effect is an evidence for quantum fluctuations and the zero point energy of vacuum. It is not yet clear if dark energy and the zero point energy are the same thing.
See http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0406504.


http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=number+of+people+who+ever+lived

yes and no
Same as mr Krauss himself says in the movie , should the zero point energy of vacuum and the dark energy be the same stuff then the dark energy should tear the universe apart

In other words the dark energy is not so strong as the theoratical calculus assume

Having said that, it is evident that all begins from the Heisenberg's principle which lead to a non intuitive and astonishing result
Vacuum does not exist

The first experimental evidence has been the kasimirìs effect

The acceleration of the universe and the Heisenberg's principle are therefore related stuff even though some parameters must be still tuned

if a big bang can form from nothing whats to say a God couldnt from from nothing? its kinda weird to me how people say stuff like before the big bang "There was nothing. Just nothing" but when a christian applies that same type of reasoning to the theory that there is a god, they're "not being logical" or "they can back prove their claims". many people have skewed veiws of what they think heaven is. they think heaven is a magical place in the clouds somewhere in the stratosphere, and we all float up there with wings on our back the second we die.I belive that the universe is infite in space and theres possiblity for anything to exist out there.and i still dont get how the big bang could occur if absolutely nothing existed before it to trigger its explosion.and if there were anything to trigger it, would that mean it proves it self to be worng? i think the big bang theory is just a way to place an orign of time and space and the creation of the universes.its like the chicken or the egg. you say the chicken came first so you can get on with life .

This is the key point
The universe does not come from nothing
The other way around
Something "must" exist
The existance is a "necessity" it is not an "option"
This is the astonishing consequence of Heinsenberg's principle

When people say there's nothing before the big bang, they either got it wrong or do not mean nothing. As Dr. Krauss points out, vacuum, alas nothing, is not nothing, it is something. It is the universe's default energy level. From this the big bang could be initiated and appears to exist from "nothing".

Whether or not God came from nothing depends on your view of God. Since God is not very well defined in the first place; many religious people will give different answers if you ask what God is; it does not qualify to be (dis)proven by empirical experiments. Any individual answer can be verified, but if the facts keep shifting from man to man you can't come with a general conclusion for God's existence anyway.

But if you ask an astronomer what the big bang is, they all should give the same answer.

So if God came from "nothing", like the big bang, it means God was created by conversion of energy to matter/structural patterns ( if that is possible at all ), but that would be disputed by many religious people, since God wasn't created!

It's not like there are no answer to think of to hypothese God's existence, it's just that religious people wont acknowledge any of them.


EDIT: what AlbertoT says.

Well ,should the modern physics theory be proved beyond any reasonable doubt then religion would not make sense anymore

It is hard to grasp the concept that
"Something must exist "
It is hard ( and not yet proved ) that such primitive form of energy can turn into ordinary matter

Assuming that it can even turn into God , it is mere fantasy

The question why something exists over nothing is a weird one, yes. What's that blob of energy doing there, in all eternity?
Especially when you reason that the only useful explanation for a blob of energy to exist is to be discovered by something else, like us. But us doesn't make sense as we are part of it.

Ah well, at least it answers the question of whether or not a falling tree makes noise when nobody is around to hear it. Apparently it does, stuff doesn't need external awareness to exist. Also verified by the universe triangle explanation of Dr. Krauss. Two parts do not need to be aware of eachother/itself (e.g. attract to a single point) when the distance is too large, and yet still exist.

Keep in mind that the depth of your perception is (from my beliefs) or maybe (from anyone else's) extremely limited. The way I see it, the cosmos can be compared to a virtual machine running inside of a real machine. You might be a process inside of that virtual machine and have no idea where you really exist relative to the other processes and parent machines above you. If we think of God as the "programmer" over this machine, then we can imagine quite simply that at one point, He spawned a virtual machine (this universe) and subsequently initiated some processes inside of that machine to act as life in the universe. (I actually like to think of people as external clients connected to the virtual machine, but that's beyond the scope of what I'm trying to say right now.)

At any rate, being God, He could have initiated this "machine" with its "hardware" set to any state he chose. Light projected from stars billions of light years away would take multiple millennium to reach Earth, but only if He let time play out like that -- and the Bible points out quite clearly that this was not the case. Being in complete control of this machine, He could certainly have "thought" the setting of the universe into existence at whatever state He chose; and being a sub-process inside of this machine, of course there's no way a simple being such as yourself could see whether this is the case or not! (what's interesting about that last statement is that, if we really have no clue where we come from, how does an idea as far-fetched as "God" really come into existence? hint: it's an implanted thought.)

So if you think about the universe as nothing more than the projection of rational thought (just like a computer), in this case that of God himself, than the idea of a universe that once was not -- and then was -- and soon will not be -- makes perfect sense.

This all still begs the question, however -- where did God himself come from? Scientifically speaking, no one knows. The Bible says that He has always existed, and I am satisfied with that. And how can you blame or scoff at me for saying such a thing -- there are multiple theories today that suggest that the physical universe was never created, but has always existed in one way or another. So how is the idea of an omnipresent God any different?

The explanation for a blob of energy to exist is the Heisemberg's uncertainty priciple ,which , by the way, is a law

The non intuitive claim
"Existance is a necessity "
is a direct consequence of this principle

The zero point energy has not been discovered
Its existance has been predicted in theory as a natural consequence of quantum physics
Should "vacuum "as synonimous with "nothing" exist then quantum physics should be refuted

I should have said reason, not explanation .

Then again, reason seems to only make sense for those who value it. A lump of matter does not.