Why is there something rather than nothing

[epepke]

The post by hackenslash is good.  I only have a couple of comments.

"Observation" was an unfortunate choice of words back in the early 20th Century.  I can sort of understand why it came about.  People were trying to observe things.  Quantum Mechanics came about because people were trying to observe small things and developing finer and less obtrusive ways to do that, but as the instruments got better and better, the ability to observe in a classical way bottomed out.  Still, the word "interaction" would probably have been better and would have obviated some of the silly stuff that people say.

I studied QM and QED years before I learned that the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle borrowed from an uncertainty principle in classical waves.  I wish someone had told me, as I think it would have eliminated a lot of brain hurt.  Consider a tone.  Say it's middle A, at 440 Hz, or 440 cycles per second of a sine wave.  That's the frequency.  Put another way, one cycle of the wave happens in 1/440.  Let's say you want to know how long the tone lasts.  If you want to know to the precision of a second or a tenth of a second, you're in pretty good shape.  However, if you want to know to a precision of less than 1/440 of a second, you run into trouble, because there is not enough time for even one cycle.  If you wanted a middle A tone that is, say, a tenth of a millisecond, then it wouldn't be a tone any more.  It would be more like a pulse, or a pop.  It turns out that a pop is made up of many frequencies.  So, beyond a certain point, the smaller and more precisely you locate the tone in time, the more its frequencies spread out.  It just doesn't make any sense to talk about a pure tone that is shorter than a certain amount.  There are two properties of a tone, frequency and time, and they are such that it doesn't make any sense to have both specified certainly.

Of course, QM involves a lot of weirdness, but this is the basic idea behind the uncertainty principle.  In the case of QM, the two properties can be position and momentum of a particle.  They can also be many others, including, as hackenslash mentioned, properties of a field.  In this case, the most interesting one is the energy of a point.  It can't simultaneously have a definite value and be stable.  So it cannot be a constant zero.

[happyukatheist]

Wow!

It just goes to show you, not everyone has a sense of humour.

Thank you all for the replies, try not to send me to sleep next time.



"I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life's realities."
Theodor Geisel

"People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind."
William Butler Yeats

"The limits of the possible can only be defined by going beyond them into the impossible."
Arthur C. Clarke

"Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the things you can think up if only you try!"
Theodor Geisel

[The Magic Pudding]

[happyukatheist]

Say about what ?

[PoopShoot]

Wow!

It just goes to show you, not everyone has a sense of humour.

Thank you all for the replies, try not to send me to sleep next time.

Perhaps if you had started a thread with less potential to get so deep into subjects you find boring, it wouldn't have dried out so quickly.  It's not as if the lighthearted nature of your intentions is inherent in grand cosmological questions.

[meta]

If there was nothing, you wouldn't be here asking the question.  You are asking the question.  Therefore there is something: you asking the stupid question, and all of us hearing/reading it.

Richard.

[leonswan2000]

I think it has to do with sqeaky ducks and little mermaids.

[leonswan2000]

I think all philosophers need to take a time out

[Whitney]

If there was nothing, you wouldn't be here asking the question.  You are asking the question.  Therefore there is something: you asking the stupid question, and all of us hearing/reading it.

Richard.

In the future please try to be more civil in your approach to telling someone that they should have thought a bit more before asking a question.  Not to mention that asking "why is there something rather than nothing" is not a stupid question...many intelligent people ponder it.  

How would you like it if someone said that it is stupid to say that us existing is a reason to not ask why there is something rather than nothing?  

[Thumpalumpacus]

If there was nothing, you wouldn't be here asking the question.  You are asking the question.  Therefore there is something: you asking the stupid question, and all of us hearing/reading it.

Richard.

In the future please try to be more civil in your approach to telling someone that they should have thought a bit more before asking a question.  Not to mention that asking "why is there something rather than nothing" is not a stupid question...many intelligent people ponder it.  

How would you like it if someone said that it is stupid to say that us existing is a reason to not ask why there is something rather than nothing?  

Ah, but Meta (Greek: beyond) is above such proletarian concerns.  His very screen-name says as much.

[DropLogic]

I don't think we will ever be able to explain why there is something...rather, accept that there is something, and then decide what to do with it.  The universe does not need to explain itself, it is only us who feel the universe should explain itself to us.

[theantithesis]

[youtube:2qt13d5i]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo[/youtube:2qt13d5i]

Here's a lecture by Laurence Krauss on the topic of a universe from nothing. It's an hour long, so have snacks handy, but it's really good.

The relevant point from the video is that there is no such thing as nothing. You know that empty space between atoms you were told about in high school? Well, it's not empty after all. It contains something called dark matter. I'm kind of shaky on how all this works and this is still fairly revolutionary science.

[TheJackel]

Actually nothing does exist.

If you tell me that there's a wad of money in a box on your shelf and I open it to find that the box is empty, I'll turn to you and say, "There's nothing in here." And I'd be right!

Incorrect. Space that fills your wallet is not nothing. You are using the Term nothing to only describe the absence of what you expected to be there. Hence, without space, or energy itself their would be no box, or an inside to said box.

Now look up the terms Zero point energy, Vacuum Energy, and Ground state. In science nothing or Zero is in reference to Zero-point energy, or the very base of existence itself.

[Ulysses]

I always used to think that you cant get something from nothing, and i was always sceptical that the Big Bang could happen from nothing, i mean, there had to be something to start things rolling.

Well there is the theory of the multiverse, in which our universe is just one of many, and this theory can show that there was something before the big bang. but then we have to ask, where did that begin?

[TheJackel]

I always used to think that you cant get something from nothing, and i was always sceptical that the Big Bang could happen from nothing, i mean, there had to be something to start things rolling.

Well there is the theory of the multiverse, in which our universe is just one of many, and this theory can show that there was something before the big bang. but then we have to ask, where did that begin?

The theory that the Universe has a Net energy of Zero is correct. However, they are not talking about literal zero. It's zero-point energy. Hence the base of existence is considered the value of zero. This is also referred to as vacuum energy or even Ground state. There never was literally "Nothing". However if you are interested, I had an interesting discussion on this here:

http://thinkingaloudforum.com/forum/vie ... 75#p543703