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Mathematical Proof That the Universe Could Come From Nothing

Posted by Soulskill on from the you-are-a-long-term-fluctuation dept.

TaleSlinger writes: One of the great theories of modern cosmology is that the universe began in a "Big Bang", but the mathematical mechanism by which this occurred has been lacking. Cosmologists at the Wuhan Institute have published a proof that the Big Bang could indeed have occurred spontaneously because of quantum fluctuations. "The new proof is based on a special set of solutions to a mathematical entity known as the Wheeler-DeWitt equation. In the first half of the 20th century, cosmologists struggled to combine the two pillars of modern physics— quantum mechanics and general relativity—in a way that reasonably described the universe. As far as they could tell, these theories were entirely at odds with each other.

At the heart of their thinking is Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. This allows a small empty space to come into existence probabilistically due to fluctuations in what physicists call the metastable false vacuum. When this happens, there are two possibilities. If this bubble of space does not expand rapidly, it disappears again almost instantly. But if the bubble can expand to a large enough size, then a universe is created in a way that is irreversible. The question is: does the Wheeler-DeWitt equation allow this? "We prove that once a small true vacuum bubble is created, it has the chance to expand exponentially," say the researchers.

9 of 429 comments (clear)

  1. Nothing? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So quantum fluctuations are "nothing" then?

    1. Re:Nothing? by penguinoid · · Score: 5, Funny

      So quantum fluctuations are "nothing" then?

      You have to be an expert in quantum mechanics to really know nothing.

      --
      Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
    2. Re:Nothing? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      there is always the question 'but what caused that'? really? there is "always" this question only if you continue to think about the world in the same mindset.

      you don't have to search for an answer in the world through Newtonian glasses. "caused" implies causation. causation implies a before, and an after. first there is the cause, then there is its effects. abstract ideas like before and after are looking at the world from a point of view of LINEAR time.

      if you truly study relativity, and i mean read Einstein's essays and not just the summary on wikipedia...you realize the linear view of time is just the way our electro-chemical computers (brains) process information. but in relativity, an atomic clock up in an airplane experiences time an a slightly different rate than you on the ground. since it is further from the earth. just think about that! imagine how warped and non-linerar time must really be, in a universe with supernovae and black holes! we can already measure two different RATES of TIME ITSELF just by using an airplane and an atomic clock. how crazy must the REAL story be? it will blow our minds in a thousand years when we understand it even better.

      so anyway, my point is time is not linear. in fact, most science on cosmology shows that near the big bang...all rules about time and physics break down and make no sense. so why would you expect that, at that critical moment, time is linear and simple and easily understood? why do you insist that at that moment, anything caused anything else? i don't think it really worked that way. it's just that the true way it worked is so complex, we are only now beginning to try to wrap our minds around impossible ideas like how anything would work in a universe without "before" and "after".

      i hope, instead of deciding that there is an un-solvable paradox, that you will continue to think about this stuff. don't give up. :)

      "There are more things in heaven and earth, than are dreamt of in our philosophy." --Shakespeare's Hamlet

    3. Re:Nothing? by Guy+Harris · · Score: 5, Interesting

      there is always the question 'but what caused that'? really? there is "always" this question only if you continue to think about the world in the same mindset.

      you don't have to search for an answer in the world through Newtonian glasses. "caused" implies causation. causation implies a before, and an after. first there is the cause, then there is its effects. abstract ideas like before and after are looking at the world from a point of view of LINEAR time.

      if you truly study relativity

      If you truly study relativity, you'll see the words "causality" and "causal" used. It's not a strictly Newtonian idea. As long as there's no faster-than-light travel, "X happens before Y" is an invariant - it's true in all reference frames.

      At least mathematically speaking, there are solutions to the equation of general relativity that have "closed timelike curves", so you could get causality violations, although those solutions might not be realistic (e.g., infinite rotating cylinders). See, for example, the Wikipedia page on Tipler cylinders, and the references to which it links.

    4. Re:Nothing? by shadowrat · · Score: 5, Interesting

      In our experience, there's always a next question. I wouldn't call that a paradox. That's like saying driving down the road is a paradox because once you finish a mile, there's another mile.

      If we can say for certainty that our universe was created in this quantum fluctuation we answered a question. It raised another question about what is fluctuating, but that question doesn't invalidate the first. We moved ahead.

  2. Dishonesty by MikeRT · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Ex nihilo means literally nothing. There is not even the slightest trace of physical reality in the concept of ex nihilo. If quantum fluctuations are even possible, you are operating a level of existence above ex nihilo.

  3. The mathematics is only a model of the physics by uberdilligaff · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Please. Mathematics provides a basis to model the physics. The mathematical model is not the physics. Models fit the physical world remarkably well, but not perfectly. For example, the equations of Newtonian mechanics fit the observed world very well until we could measure relativistic effects accurately. There are singularities in many of these equations where the behavior of the model may not fit the actual physics. To assert that properties of the model at obvious singularities "proves" the physics should be looked at with a great deal of skepticism.

    --
    Against stupidity, the Gods themselves contend in vain. --Friederich Schiller
  4. Re:Rules by Immerman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The nothing they are referring to is mass-energy. I think that basically they have mathematically confirmed the theory that a cold, empty false-vacuum universe could spontaneously spawn a bubble of stable true vacuum filled with the seething energy that eventually cooled to become the universe we see today.

    --
    --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
  5. Re:Car analogy? by jythie · · Score: 5, Funny

    Ok, so you don't actually have a car, but there is a parking lot, and you have pieces of cars and their antipieces (statistically, for every crankshaft, there is a crankshaft sized hole somewhere else), and given enough time a whole car worth of pieces appears in the parking lot, at which point the driver, who is now quite sick of having to watch where they are going due to the materialization of random heavy metal chunks in the air, can finally leave and get to their job at the car factory.

    Oh, and probably something involving proprietary gas. All the cars made at the plant after this one all use Void brand gasoline and explode unexpectedly if you try using any other kind.