Does nothing exist?

quote:

Originally posted by Nigel Cavendish:


I can speak only for myself; but when an "open mind" means accepting the possibility of God, then my mind is fully made up. People can believe whatever mumbo-jumbo they want (and if God is what you want, then the more the merrier I say) but include me out.

Okidoki

quote:

Originally posted by Chillkram:
I suppose my view would be that existence, ie. the state of being of the universe(s)(not man), is the natural order. There is no 'non-existence' to consider as existence has always been and will always be as Don suggests above.

But, as Don also suggests, whichever theory you cling to you are met with a concept that is impossible to grasp.

The limitations are within the human mind.
Mark

Hello Mark

I don't know if I am interpreting your view correctly, but you seem to be separating man quite clearly from the universe, perhaps echoing Descartes' dualism, which I think has caused a few problems. If we try to construct a (monistic) philosophical system which reflects the interconnectedness of everything, we may get nearer to the truth.

Best wishes, Ears

Nothing means nothing. It doesn't become something just because you've realised you can give a name to it. It doesn't become a philisophical question just because of the mechanics of our language. I do believe however that if you believe in something, then that thing takes on an existence as an idea. That's why Santa exists, because to many children, he does exist - simple as that. Things can exist as a concept. In my world they can anyway.
I'm off home soon in my Aston Martin to my wife, Monica Bellucci, who might have the champagne on ice for me.

Stephen

“The Big-Bang probably wasn’t the absolute beginning of the Universe
It was of this Universe”
Well, this is debatable and the scientific evidence is very limited. Quite often we find we are really discussing “semantics” eg I like the idea of the Big Bounce. If we are now in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th…..nth Big Bounce and each “bounce” = a Big Bang, then I don’t consider the Big Bang to be the absolute beginning of the universe or even this universe. But, as I say, this is now semantics.

“The Universe has probably “Bounced” a few times
Possibly. No data to support or deny.”
This is the general gist of much of our understanding (IMHO of course) and I wouldn’t dismiss the new ideas too quickly. Fred Hoyle suffered from this problem.

“We have absolutely no idea whatsoever when and how the Universe really started
We have a lot of data that gives us a pretty good indication of how and when the Universe began (background radiation, understanding of nuclear and sub-nuclear process, movement of galaxies etc.) So 'absolutely no idea whatsoever' is wrong.”
Sorry, I disagree on this one. I accept your summary of the data you outline but not your conclusion that this therefore “gives us a pretty good indication of how and when the Universe began” Many agree that it points to a Big Bang about 13 Billion years ago, but we don’t know whether that was the absolute beginning of the Universe or not. We might be back to semantics of course.

“We haven’t got the imagination necessary to conceive the reality of
Speak for yourself.
Who we are
I'm Me
Where we are
We are in the physical universe

Why we are here
Chance occcurrences of physical and chemical phenomena made us. See it's easy.....

Stephen”
That was just Soooo reassuring………..especially coming from a scientist rather than a politician./economist/environmentalist/journalist/other specialist who knows these things.

Of course, Man, carrying out experiments, extending his imagination, might, one day, be able to gain an understanding of the nature of what lies beyond the limits of our universe (both the physical limits and pre the Big-Bang) and the current limits of our imagination. This might lead to an understanding of infinity and timelessness and other concepts which we simply can't imagine at the moment. This, of course, is only my view. And I don't have any evidence that we have made much progress.

I also like to think (ie MHO again) that I have an open mind that isn't restricted by the limitations imposed by scientific "knowledge".
Others are welcome to refer to this as "bullshit"

Cheers

Don

Ears

Sorry I was merely separating my comments from my earlier (flippant) posting of the Descartes quote.

However, I do not see man as wholly significant in the context of the universe, in fact quite the reverse.

When I am talking about existence, I mean the existence of the universe, or multi-verse or whatever you wish to call it. This 'theatre of being' that we inhabit.

Man's role for me is only of a 'bit part' player, of observer and interpreter, but nothing else.

Regards

Mark

quote:

Originally posted by Rasher:
I'm off home soon in my Aston Martin to my wife, Monica Bellucci, who might have the champagne on ice for me.

Damn! Monica, he's on his way home. Hide that empty champagne bottle and have the chauffeur bring the Bentley around to the front!

Someone accusing my girl of polygamy?

quote:

Originally posted by Don Atkinson:
Stephen

quote:

quote:

[QUOTE]The Big-Bang probably wasn’t the absolute beginning of the Universe

It was of this Universe”

Well, this is debatable and the scientific evidence is very limited. Quite often we find we are really discussing “semantics” eg I like the idea of the Big Bounce. If we are now in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th…..nth Big Bounce and each “bounce” = a Big Bang, then I don’t consider the Big Bang to be the absolute beginning of the universe or even this universe. But, as I say, this is now semantics.

The accepted semantics seems to be that "universe" refers to that which resulted from our Big Bang (that being the concensus as the "starting" event). In the context of this discussion (ie cosmology) "Universe" is a technical term having a well understood meaning.

"Multiverse" seems to be a common phrase used to discuss "the group of all the universes". (And yes, I'm aware that the original meaning of "universe" was something like "everything", so Multiverse really means "all of the everythings"). See Universe/Multiverse on Wikipedia



All the matter in the universe is currently flying apart due to the Big Bang (you are obviously aware of that). The gravity between those lumps of matter (galaxies & dark matter) slows the expansion.

Before the rate of expansion and the average density of matter were known, infinite expansion or eventual collapse were equally feasible as our ultimate fate.

Later, the density of matter was shown to be insufficient to halt the expansion. A Big Crunch would never happen, and a "heat death" seemed inevitable.

This would result when all the stars have burnt all their available fuel. After incredible periods of time (10-to-the-100 years or much more) even the particles decay to radiation, and eventually even the black holes evaporate. The continued expansion stretches the radiation to longer and longer wavelengths, ie colder & colder.



Over the last few years, this picture has been found to be too simplistic. After eight-ish billion years of the universe behaving as above, the last six-ish billion years have shown some form of anti-gravity to be in operation. The expansion is accelerating.

It is suspected that something called "dark energy" has caused this, and if things continue as they are now, the universe will expand faster & faster forever.

At the very end, this would get so violent that the stars in our galaxy would get separated, then the planets would get ripped away from their suns. The end would be near when our bodies & the planets under us are ripped into individual molecules, then the molecules stripped down to single atoms.

It would be complete when the electrons are stripped off the atomic nuclei, and then the nuclei dissociated to their constituent particles.

After this, every particle would be flying apart from every other at more than the speed of light [**], and can never again interact. Obviously, the gaps between the particles would become inconceivably vast, although there is some question whether space or distance have any meaning when there is no matter within the event horizon (Mach's principle, IIRC).

[**] This doesn't break the laws of physics - the space between particles is expanding, rather than anything moving through space faster than light. This is a weird result of General Relativity.



This "Big Rip" scenario relies on the expansion accelerating forever. Noone understands why it started, so who can say if it might stop or even reverse?



String theory raises a different possibility, that at some tiny random point in our universe the laws of physics would "decay" to some different combination. This new bubble would expand outwards at tremendous speed, possibly quickly enough to eventually engulf our whole universe. Inside the bubble, a big bang would occur at the point of its creation, resulting in a "daughter" universe within the original one. Of course, this would also be the mechanism by which our own universe (bubble) was created.

You might consider this a "death by disease" where the heat death scenario is "death by old age".

Crude estimates suggest there may be 10-to-the-power-500 different combinations of physical laws, only a miniscule proportion of which (1 in 10-to-the-power-120?) might be able to avoid an instant Big Crunch or Big Rip, and have the right conditions for matter to exist and interact and form structures conducive to life.

quote:

quote:

quote:

“The Universe has probably “Bounced” a few times

Possibly. No data to support or deny. File under Stephen Baxter”

This is the general gist of much of our understanding (IMHO of course) and I wouldn’t dismiss the new ideas too quickly. Fred Hoyle suffered from this problem.

Stephen Baxter - one of the best authors for speculating on "deep time" - real hard science.

As for bouncing...

Perhaps the universe is finite - it came into existence once, and will die in some manner. It is hard to picture what "caused" it to come into existence, and what it was formed "from". [These aren't really questions we are supposed to ask in a scientific sense, because their answers would involve probing beyond the event horizon at the Big Bang. It doesn't stop the theorists, though, and nor should it stop us]. Anyway, if our universe is finite, what created the thing that we were created from? It just gives us a different "where did it all come from" mystery.



If our universe was created from the crunch of a previous universe (note, they're not continuations of the same universe), then suggesting it has happened four times only puts back the question of the origin of the first Bang.

This would seem to suggest either a one-off event or an infinite series of crunches into both the past & the future.

quote:

quote:

quote:

“We have absolutely no idea whatsoever when and how the Universe really started

We have a lot of data that gives us a pretty good indication of how and when the Universe began (background radiation, understanding of nuclear and sub-nuclear process, movement of galaxies etc.) So 'absolutely no idea whatsoever' is wrong.”

Sorry, I disagree on this one. I accept your summary of the data you outline but not your conclusion that this therefore “gives us a pretty good indication of how and when the Universe began” Many agree that it points to a Big Bang about 13 Billion years ago, but we don’t know whether that was the absolute beginning of the Universe or not. We might be back to semantics of course.

We are.

As Stephen says, the universe began with the Big Bang, which is understood with a bizarre mixture of incredible accuracy (eg of nuclear processes going back to billionths-of-billionths of a second after the Bang), and some breathtaking arm waving (eg inflation - "dunno why, but if the universe expanded by an incredible amount at just this point, then all the matter in the universe could be created out of nothing").

You are referring to the question of "what came before the universe", "how was that created, and from what", and questions of infinity. I'm not aware of anything which even begins to answer these questions scientifically (I'd love Stephen to point me in the direction of something that does, although his answer didn't offer any hint of such).

quote:

quote:

quote:

Who we are

Where we are

Why we are here

Chance occcurrences of physical and chemical phenomena made us. See it's easy.....

Stephen

That was just Soooo reassuring………..especially coming from a scientist rather than a politician/economist/environmentalist/journalist/other specialist who knows these things.

OK, the "politician / economist / environmentalist / journalist / other specialist" thing was a bit of a joke, wasn't it? It was pretty funny! George W Gump, you have two minutes on your specialist subject "the meaning of life", starting...now.

Politicians seem to go out of their way to avoid appearing "brainy", since they seem to think this will make them unelectable.

Economists can tell you the value of a life, but not its meaning.

Environmentalists can tell you how you're running your life wrong.

I tend to think of journalists as simply reporting the news, but I guess some do write editorial. I'm not aware of any special insight granted by journalism, though.

I would guess your other specialist would be a philosopher. Meaning-of-life is their job, although it seems to be the most under-rated profession. I don't think I couldn't name a single living philosopher.



Anyway, why do there have to be reasons?

The observable universe is something like 10-to-the-58th (10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) times larger in volume than the Earth, and is esimated to contain well over 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars, with possibly more than that number of planets.

It is quite possible that the non-observable bit of our own universe is bigger again by some even more unimaginably large amount.

What is the chance that life wouldn't start randomly on at least one of those worlds? If life wasn't started for a purpose, it doesn't have any inherent meaning or purpose, only that which we invest in it for social reasons.

Man has lived in civilisation for around 10,000 years. The drive for morals & purpose comes from the practical experience that they make society work, and work for the better.

In a world where life arises & evolves at random, physics will not answer any of the philosphical questions, although anthopologists may give us a little insight.

It does attempt to answer "How we got here", though.

quote:

Of course, Man, carrying out experiments, extending his imagination, might, one day, be able to gain an understanding of the nature of what lies beyond the limits of our universe (both the physical limits and pre the Big-Bang) and the current limits of our imagination. This might lead to an understanding of infinity and timelessness and other concepts which we simply can't imagine at the moment.

There is an event horizon at the Big Bang, which is an unassailable limit. There does not appear to be any way to measure beyond that, out to other/earlier parts of the multiverse (ie your usage of the word universe), let alone measuring anything outside/before the multiverse.

I suspect that such questions would indeed involve infinity, and would be the deepest physical questions that we could ask. These would perhaps offer underlying explanations for the "theories of everything" which we currently hope to put together to explain everything!

quote:

This, of course, is only my view. And I don't have any evidence that we have made much progress.

Strangely, the big cosmological questions are being worked on by those trying to fuse Quantum Theory & General Relativity into that Theory of Everything.

String theory has an explanation for how we live in a universe with laws & properties "just right" for life. If one universe can bud off a new region with different laws, then eventually the "right" laws will occur. Although this might explain where our apparently four-dimensional universe comes from, it doesn't explain how the 11-dimensional string "landscape" from which it was formed came into being.

Loop Quantum Gravity is trying to describe what space & time is, and how they behave.

We could have answers to these things within a couple of decades.

cheers, Martin

Martin,

Thank you, Your description is clear and concise and extremely helpful. I really appreciate the thoughts, time and effort that you put into these threads and I'm sure that many others do too.. Even if I had the time, (which I haven't) I wouldn't achieve your clarity.

Of course knowing the vocabulary (eg universe and multverse) and using it consistently and accurately helps. so thank you for sharing these things.

i suppose that my view on this subject is that scientists keep publishing pieces of work which sometimes support and clarify a previous understanding; but other pices of work change a previous understanding. We are still unclear. And we might never be able to find out the origin of our universe or the multivese or the multi-muliti verse (no - don't tell me there is an agreed term for that....). This is not a suggestion that we shouldn't explore or that to do so is futile. Far from it. But I do despair sometimes at the absolute certainty with which scientific facts are quoted along with the associated "consequences" of those facts. You are not guilty of this by-the-way (apologies for patonising)

For a long time, we seemed to be under the impression (or even to assume) that the physical laws of this universe were constant and errr....universal, throughout the universe, past, present and future. i have often wondered why we should think this to be the case, or what evidence we have that this is the case. i believe that I recently spotted a headline in one of the popular "scientific" journals that suggested this might not be the case. In which case I have stared to wonder whether any of our current measurements and associated predictions can be relied upon to describe much more than "the present" (+/- say 10 billion years).

But that's another subject.

Cheers

Don

quote:

Originally posted by Don Atkinson:


[QUOTE] But I do despair sometimes at the absolute certainty with which scientific facts are quoted along with the associated "consequences" of those facts.

Indeed. Me too. Well said Don.

quote:

For a long time, we seemed to be under the impression (or even to assume) that the physical laws of this universe were constant and errr....universal, throughout the universe, past, present and future. i have often wondered why we should think this to be the case, or what evidence we have that this is the case. i believe that I recently spotted a headline in one of the popular "scientific" journals that suggested this might not be the case.
Cheers

Indeed. Me too. I read the article. Its nice to see a well known scientist stick his neck out like that (unfortunately there are no whopping great big research grants available for any scientist, and yes, there are a few, who do appreciate that conciousness, for example, is primary in the world and not matter and that matter, in the classical sense just does not exist at all! It is blasphemy not because it is wrong science, its blasphemy because there is no money in it. Academics protect their turf as viciously as anyone else. There is a lot of research dosh in string theory and yet there is not one speck of evidence to support the theories which are a little more than mathematical masturbation in my view and will come to nowt. Ditto dark matter. Ditto Higgs-Bosun.

Regards,

Acad

Martin

Thanks for a very full and very clear summary. A very interesting read.

I am no expert on the subject of cosmology or quantum physics but an interested reader and
it has been a fascination for many years.

Like Don, it does sometimes annoy when people quote the latest scientific thinking as irrefutable fact. History should have taught us by now that it is just the best explanation we currently have based on our observations and our experience gathered over (in cosmological terms) an insignificant amount of time.

quote:

It is quite possible that the non-observable bit of our own universe is bigger again by some even more unimaginably large amount.

And there is no reason to think that when we 'discover' that bit of the universe there might not be another unimaginably large bit lurking around the corner; like the potholer who thinks he has just found the last and largest cave in the system only to find yet another cathedral-like opening on the other side of a tiny crack in the wall.

quote:

Anyway, why do there have to be reasons?

There don't other than that human beings probably can't do without them.

quote:

After this, every particle would be flying apart from every other at more than the speed of light [**], and can never again interact. Obviously, the gaps between the particles would become inconceivably vast, although there is some question whether space or distance have any meaning when there is no matter within the event horizon (Mach's principle, IIRC).

[**] This doesn't break the laws of physics - the space between particles is expanding, rather than anything moving through space faster than light. This is a weird result of General Relativity.

Could this be the 'nothing' I am looking for? If the big rip is our ultimate fate, particles stop interacting with each other and spacetime itself rips apart?

Or could nothing and something be one and the same. If we accept the principle that the net energy of the universe is zero with positive and negative energy cancelling out each other. The universe itself is nothing!

Perhaps nothing was right under my nose all the time!

In fact I know the answer, nothing does exist; when I am staring enigmatically into space and my wife asks me what I am thinking about and I reply, "oh, nothing", that really is the truth!

Mark

I see people every day (usually driving with a phone pressed to their ear, whilest either trying to shave, put on lipstick, and change gear all at the same time).
I have always assumed that they have zero between their ears. This would make that assumption incorrect then.

Mark,

Our limitations lie within our conceptual/dualistic minds which I have hinted at in my first post (the 'something and nothing being the same' of your last post comes close but you still might have to dig a little deeper IMO). There are minds that go beyond concepts but they have to be cultivated and are not the norm. It is impossible to go where you want to go with this thread and find anything other than vague approximations unless you go beyond conceptual minds and if you did you could not then be able to communicate it as you would have to use concepts to describe something that is beyond concepts and that is impossible (Wittgenstein got the nearest to recognising this). All you can do is refine your approximations which will either be based on science (which will chase its own tail around for ever and never come up with the real Theory of Everything - Quantum Theorist David Bohm got nearest to recognising this IMO)or philosophically (which will require a good deal of very patient study of enormously difficult and abstruse texts - Nagarjuna and Chandrakirti are the best sources and Descartes probably the worst IMO!)or belief in God (which requires very little intelligence, wit or wisdom and is created by man to provide simplistic answers to difficult BUT not impossible to answer questions IMO)but you wont get to the ultimate truth without conditioning your conciousness first. Science does not teach this, nor any western philosophy and nor do any of the theistic religions IMO.

quote:

Originally posted by acad tsunami:
Mark,

Our limitations lie within our conceptual/dualistic minds

Agreed.

I reckon that science, far from describing the world as they think it really exists (independent of conciousness) is conciousness describing itself (on the gross dualistic level)and the laws (which are not there waiting to be discovered or tripped over but created by us as being consistant with experience - at the time - ['Never run after a bus, a woman, or a cosmological theory. There will always be another one in a few minutes']) merely reflect the symmetry within collective conciousness - conciousness being a unified field.

Without an observer, there are no laws of physics.

I think nothingness is only possible as a concept within a coporeal understanding of 'everything'.There is something therefore there is nothing. Science is a means of measuring that which we know within the paramiters of certain rules designed to enable us to have some grasp and understanding of things as we see them. This is useful but limited as it is essentially observation explained. Beyond this we only have conjecture based upon those observations.

A metaphysical approach is no more or less limited. However it does provide us with other possibilities which science cannot and does not claim to offer. 2+2 only = 4 when we are willing to submit to the rule of mathematics.

If we think onotologically and allow the concept of eternity. That is, something which has always existed and always will, regardless of time and space, then we are able to percieve of something which does not need abscence to exist. In this nothing is impossible.

In the limitations of time and space however nothing is always present as the abscence of something.

God Bless

T.C

Does anything exist beyond our own imagination? I cannot prove it. In fact I cannot prove that everything is not some wild apparision. I don't thank my imagination for its fecundity.

But perhaps if any thing exists, and there is a positive and a negative, which somehow suggests an energetic presure away from the neutral, non-existent state, then at the crossing point between the positive and the negative, then possibly it might be reasonable to suggest a state of zero: a vacuum, a lack of current flow, or whatever...

Thought for the night from Fredrik

Subjectivity will always be a position of fall back which can be used to negate any theory or argument.A meaningful discussion can only take place when we accept that many human experiences are similar or the same. In this way we can agree upon some understanding which enables an objective framework. Otherwise 'I' become the only measure truth and inter-subjectivity is replaced with a form of madness.

Kind regards

T.C

The bit I always have trouble with is that the big bang was the start of time, as well as space - so the concept of what caused it is meaningless. 'Cause' implies something within time.

I think trying to understand this sort of stuff is like my goldfish trying to understand the internet.

Not that I've got a goldfish.

My wife thinks these sort of discussions are a waste of time and that art is far more important. I disagree.

I'm currently reading a new anthology of 'hard sci-fi' short stories. Excellent.

Chris

quote:

Originally posted by Madhatter:
The bit I always have trouble with is that the big bang was the start of time, as well as space - so the concept of what caused it is meaningless. 'Cause' implies something within time.

Chris,

this is completely correct (and something I have posted about in an earlier thread). According to General Relativity, time is something that started at the Big Bang, and cause implies something "before" the beginning of time.

Although there is no way for us to "see" what is "outside" (before) our universe, the latest results from String Theory suggest that our Big Bang may have happened inside a "parent" universe with similar physical laws as our own. The process of creating our universe would then have separated the two forever.

One could consider a thought experiment from a point of view within the parent universe. Apparently, one might see a point suddenly convert from their laws to ours (a random "quantum" event). This point would then expand at tremendous speed (possibly faster than light), eventually forming a vast sphere consuming a huge (and forever growing) part of the parent space.

BTW, one can't think of our universe being "inside" the parent in the sense one could travel in or out through the boundary.

cheers, Martin

PS what is the anthology? Sounds interesting.

quote:

BTW, one can't think of our universe being "inside" the parent in the sense one could travel in or out through the boundary.

The consequences of attempting such a journey are well known!

This is a fascinating thread and has inspired me to renew my subscription to New Scientist. I had let this lapse a couple of years ago due to the cost - somewhat inconsequential now I have discovered the wonderful world of Naim!

Martin - The book I referred to is 'The Mammoth Book of Extreme Science Fiction', which includes stories by Gregory Benford, Stephen Baxter, Greg Egan and Greg Bear, as well as old favourites such as Clifford D Simak, Theodore Sturgeon and Harlan Ellison. Great stuff it is too.

Chris

quote:

Originally posted by Madhatter:
This is a fascinating thread and has inspired me to renew my subscription to New Scientist. Chris

Me too, Chris!

Mark

The Self Aware Universe - by Amit Goswami

A jolly good book - here is an interview with the physicist author

quote:

Originally posted by Martin Payne:
[QUOTE]



the latest results from String Theory suggest that our Big Bang may have happened inside a "parent" universe

Hello Martin,

The latest 'results'? Can you explain the use of this word here? What are these 'results' the result of?

Regards,

Acad