Why Is There Something Rather than Nothing?

[rug]

The Big Picture

On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself
By Sean Carroll

Published 05.10.2016
Dutton
480 Pages



By Sara Lippincott
SEPTEMBER 23, 2016

UNLIKE MANY of his physicist peers, Sean Carroll welcomes the interest, curiosity, and what must sometimes seem the naïve questions of laypeople. A theoretical physicist and research professor at Caltech, he is also a consummate communicator of science. He tweets and has a widely followed blog, where he has described his work as focusing “on two big themes”: first on “the foundations of quantum mechanics, especially connections to cosmology and emergent spacetime,” and second on the evolution of entropy and complexity. Of the latter he writes:

The arrow of time (the difference between the past and future) in our observable universe can be traced to low-entropy conditions near the Big Bang, and I’ve proposed models to help explain that puzzling cosmological feature. As entropy grows, complexity first appears and then eventually fades away, and I’m interested in understanding the processes by which that happens.

Part of Carroll’s appeal is that he applies his scientific acumen to subjects closer to the human condition. He continues:

I have further aspirations to insinuate my research into other areas. I’m interested in different kinds of philosophy (metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, metaethics), the behavior of complex systems, and also in the origin of life.

Hence The Big Picture.

This is Carroll’s fourth book. His first, Spacetime and Geometry, an overview of general relativity, appeared in 2003. Most recently, he tackled the Higgs boson in The Particle at the End of the Universe (2012). Even if you’re only peripherally interested in cosmology or particle physics, you will recall the excitement in July of that year when scientists at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN announced that their magnificent machine had finally coughed up the Higgs boson, the carrier of a field that endows our world’s other particles with mass. We would not be here without it, which accounts for its wince-inducing nickname of “the God particle.” Fans of science who watched the CERN press conference on TV will probably never forget the rapturous applause and the sight of 83-year-old Peter Higgs, the eponymous proposer of the field in the 1960s, dabbing his eyes with a handkerchief.

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/something-rather-nothing/#!

[SusanCalvin]

1. .

https://m.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

2. Sean Carroll: God is not a Good Theory

[Loki Liesmith]

3. There can't be nothing

Because nothing cannot be.

[rug]

4. Was there ever nothing?

[Loki Liesmith]

6. That would imply that nothing has temporal characteristics

Which would make it something.

The question has no meaning. It's like asking what time the banana is.

[rug]

11. What do you call something beyond the edge of a temporal (and finite) universe?

[Loki Liesmith]

13. "beyond the edge"

"beyond the edge", or even just "beyond" locates that "something" in space, as being "beyond" something is a spatial property. Therefore it can't be beyond the edge of space.

The phrase contradicts itself.

The problem with these debates: just because we can construct grammatically correct sentences and questions around an idea doesn't mean the idea expressed in those sentences has any content at all.

Similar question: What happened before time?

[rug]

14. I see. You consider it somerthing that cannot be measured.

Therefore the answer to your question is what was before rtime is something inherently extranatural, or, if you prefer, supernatural. Because as we all know to date, everything natural has a beginning and an end.

[Loki Liesmith]

5. Put more concisely

"Being" is a property of things that exist. Nothing by definition does not have any properties and therefore does not existence.

[Thirties Child]

8. Wondering "What if there was nothing" just about drove me nuts when I was a child.

Never did figure it out.

[struggle4progress]

7. What could we do with a definitive answer to that question?

If an answer wouldn't enable us to do something, that we could not do without the answer, then the question has no scientific meaning

[muriel_volestrangler]

10. "There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for ...

... and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened."

Douglas Adams, unsurprisingly.

[struggle4progress]

16. 42!

[rug]

12. The author posits nonscientific meanings as well.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

9. Speaking of "nothing"...

... I sometimes wonder if there's such a thing as zero-energy information?

The speed limit of light applies to anything with mass/energy, but I don't think it would apply to anything without energy. Physics is so energy-focused, could we be overlooking something?

I was thinking about it while pondering quantum entanglement and "spooky action at a distance." Since energy can be briefly generated from "empty space" per Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle to create virtual particles and such, I wondered if "zero energy information" could have an influence in that way?

Since it's likely impossible to ever detect anything that has no energy, the idea is probably pointless. Maybe someone could deduce it in an indirect way, though?

[rug]

15. Beats me. The Science Group may have an answer.

[Brettongarcia]

17. No one knows how the universe began. But science has the best guesses

Again and again, religious explanations and promises fail. Over and over, science and technology worked a trillion times better than praying for physical miracles.

Given that record? Science is far, far more likely to have the best guesses, than Religion.

Given the very, very high record of success for science, likely the ultimate explanation for things is naturalistic, not supernaturalistic.

[cpwm17]

18. Why Is There Something Rather than Nothing?

The fact that there is something rather than nothing is a brute fact of nature. There really isn't a reason why.

[rug]

19. There is certainly a how.

[uriel1972]

20. Why is a little misleading...

It can imply purpose. How is probably a better word. Once that is nutted out, then we can use why in context if necessary.