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Mathematical Proof That the Cosmos Could Have Formed Spontaneously From Nothing
KentuckyFC writes: "One of the great theories of modern cosmology is that the universe began in a Big Bang. It's backed up by numerous lines of evidence, such as the cosmic microwave background and so on. But what caused the Big Bang, itself? For many years, cosmologists have fallen back on the idea that the universe formed spontaneously; that the Big Bang was result of quantum fluctuations in which the universe came into existence from nothing. But is this compatible with what we know about the Big Bang itself and the theories that describe it? Now cosmologists have come up with the first rigorous proof that the Big Bang could indeed have occurred spontaneously and produced the universe we see today. The proof is developed within a mathematical framework known as the Wheeler-DeWitt equation. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle allows a small region of empty space to come into existence probabilistically due to quantum fluctuations. Most of the time, such a bubble will collapse and disappear. The question these scientists address is whether a bubble could also expand exponentially to allow a universe to form in an irreversible way. Their proof (PDF) shows that this is indeed possible. There is an interesting corollary: the role of the cosmological constant is played by a property known as the quantum potential. This is a property introduced in the 20th century by the physicist David Bohm, which has the effect of making quantum mechanics deterministic while reproducing all of its predictions. It's an idea that has never caught on. Perhaps that will change now."
... I will punch you in the face.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
This is an abuse of the word "nothing", which is a universal negation "not anything". But quantum fluctuations in the quantum vacuum are something, and not nothing. The research might be interesting, but it does nothing for the question the philosopher is asking when he is wondering "Why there is somerthing rather than nothing?"
This is not a "proof that the universe could have formed spontaneously from nothing". As is common in popular versions of science (and often even in peer-reviewed articles by scientists), there is a confusion between modeling reality and reality itself. All this proves is that the current most accurate (in terms of making predictions that we can measure) mathematical model of reality does not contradict the claim that the universe spawned from nothing (and of course the term "nothing" here is tenuous at best--it certainly isn't philosophical nothingness, because something did indeed exist, i.e. a state in which quantum fluctuations were occurring, such a state is not nothing, it is something... perhaps by "nothing" they mean a vacuum, but again, a vacuum is something since it is still governed by laws). And let's not forget that though QM has a lot of predictive power as a model, it is still just that, a model.
In "God and the Astronomers", agnostic Robert Jastrow chronicles the development of the Big Bang theory, and how for decades many physicists resisted it; not because of data, but because it meant the universe had a beginning, which was at odds with their worldview (“The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be." --Karl Sagan). They recognized that if there was ever truly NOTHING, that science would never be able to explain why there is SOMETHING. The question of origins is outside the reach of scientific inquiry. I wish the physicists would stop playing in the philosophical and theological sandbox.
Since the equations only express the properties of the universe, what exaclty did the quantum fluctuation occur in? This seems to be more of a confirmation of M-theory than that the universe came from nothing. What is the formula for the state directly before the fluctuation ocurred? It seems that state would be necessary to calculate what the fluctuation occurred IN. That would, to me, be more of a discovery.
So "nothing" has quantum fluctuations.
I have zero apples, which one will produce an apple seed to grow a tree.
Note: The article itself doesn't imply what the summary says, but the summary here makes the article seem like nonsense.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
But it is proof that disproving Aquinas's argument that no physical phenomena can arise ex nihilo is currently beyond the capacity of science, mathematics and philosophy.
Well, adding 'zero' to the number system was a pretty big deal about nothing.
I remember reading about an European mathematician who set out to prove that Euclidean geometry was the only possible geometry. He came up with lemma after lemma, conjecture after conjecture, but no matter how hard he tried he could not prove non-Euclidean geometry could not exist. All those proofs, lemmas and work on conjectures formed the mainstay of the branch of non-Eucledian Geometry.
So all the math proof tells you is, if you make a set of assumptions, cosmos could be created spontaneously.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
So that's why huge amounts of Wikipedia have gone missing!
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
At some point it becomes illogical to ask "what caused it" or "what comes before". Both these questions postulate the prior existence of time. If time itself came into being, then asking "what caused this" or "what happened before this" is meaningless since both questions imply a time based causation which could not have happened in the absence of time itself.
This proof, while impressive, does not proof that the cosmos could have formed spontaneously. It only shows that the big bang was not the start of the cosmos and something early and yet unknown pre-existed it. The old axiom that "ex nihilo nihil fit" (nothing can come from nothing), still holds, because if there were nothing, no matter, no energy, no anything, then there couldn't be quantum fluctuations to spontaneously form the universe.
As such, the big bang must not have been the start of universe, but probably very, very, very close to the start of the universe.
Sheesh. I mean, I'm a theorist. I love theory. But let us not lose sight of the difference between metaphysical speculation and "proof". All that has been done is that it has been shown that -- subject to a whole slew of prior assumptions (premises, axioms) that may or may not be correct (and that cannot be verified or sorted out either way) -- that a particular kind of "empty" Universe could consistently give rise to a vacuum fluctuation that grows a la big bang. Of course, there is a big difference between an "empty" Universe subject to all sorts of quantum rules and nothing -- as nothing tends to come without anything, including a set of rules quantum or otherwise.
So let me summarize the argument. If the Universe already existed, complete with a set of physical laws, but just happened at some point in meta-space and meta-time to be empty, then if those probably non-unique laws had parameters within some almost certainly non-unique range, then mass-energy could have poofed into existence in a big bang as a quantum vacuum fluctuation that grew. It is proven that all of this could have happened.
And we are now precisely as knowledgeable as we were before. We already knew that it could have happened because it did. We still know absolutely nothing (more) useful about the state of the Universe before the bang, because the bang erased the prior state in a blast of cosmic entropy and all of our ability to make inferences comes from weak extrapolation of observation of its visible state "now" (that is, into the distance-mediated past). We cannot use the "proof" to make any useful predictions that can be tested (either verified or falsified).
Don't get me wrong, I think it is a lovely result, and it may prove useful in some indirect way by providing an incentive to reformulate quantum theory in ways that are at least consistent with the big bang, just as quantum theory ultimately proves useful when discussing things like black holes. But it is still theoretical metaphysics, not physics.
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.