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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."
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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.
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.