Late
Sunday morning. You awoke with some aches and pains and assume arthritis is on
the rise because of the cool damp weather. After breakfast and the paper you
had the last of your Jennifer cookies from On the Rise in Cleveland Heights
across from Shaker. Kim has a dozen more for you and Carol in the freezer. Last
night you decided to drop a photo of Kim with her parents at her wedding in
2007 on your Facebook page and it has had many ‘likes’ and comments. You were
somewhat sad that day but you did not lose a daughter you kept her and gained a
worthy son instead. Surprise. – Amorella
1129 hours. Yes. I love wife, daughter, son-in-law and
both boys. It has been a very good life, and continues to be. Earth is an
interesting place to live. You could spend more than one lifetime here but I
imagine that after a while the routine would become tiresome. I would continue
to rely on “Cheer up, things are bound to get worse,” while at the same time
hope for the best for our species. Moving on is what we do whether we like it
or not in the short run, and I hope we evolve for continued successful survival
in the long run.
Later.
Carol is on the treadmill and you completed your forty minutes of exercises.
You now feel ready to meet the day, though it is already half over. You also
dropped a BBC science article onto your Facebook page because you found it
entertaining – thinking that in philosophy and science we do not always have a
word definition to begin from and as such any argument is generally skewed. The
word in this case is “nothing”. Drop the article in here in your notes. We may
find it useful. – Amorella
** **
“Why is there something rather than nothing?”
Some physicists think they can
explain why the universe first formed. If they are right, our entire cosmos may
have sprung out of nothing at all
Presented by Robert Adler
People have
wrestled with the mystery of why the universe exists for thousands of years.
Pretty much every ancient culture came up with its own creation story - most of
them leaving the matter in the hands of the gods - and philosophers have written
reams on the subject. But science has had little to say about this ultimate
question.
However, in
recent years a few physicists and cosmologists have started to tackle it. They
point out that we now have an understanding of the history of the universe, and
of the physical laws that describe how it works. That information, they say,
should give us a clue about how and why the cosmos exists.
Their
admittedly controversial answer is that the entire universe, from the fireball
of the Big Bang to the star-studded cosmos we now inhabit, popped into
existence from nothing at all. It had to happen, they say, because
"nothing" is inherently unstable.
This idea
may sound bizarre, or just another fanciful creation story. But the physicists
argue that it follows naturally from science's two most powerful and successful
theories: quantum mechanics and general relativity.
Here, then,
is how everything could have come from nothing.
Particles from empty space
First we
have to take a look at the realm of quantum mechanics. This is the branch of
physics that deals with very small things: atoms and even tinier particles. It
is an immensely successful theory, and it underpins most modern electronic
gadgets.
Quantum
mechanics tells us that there is no such thing as empty space. Even the most
perfect vacuum is actually filled by a roiling cloud of particles and
antiparticles, which flare into existence and almost instantaneously fade back
into nothingness.
These so-called virtual particles
don't last long enough to be observed directly, but we know they exist by their effects.
Space-time, from no space and
no time
From tiny
things like atoms, to really big things like galaxies. Our best theory for
describing such large-scale structures is general relativity, Albert Einstein's
crowning achievement, which sets out how space, time and gravity work.
Relativity
is very different from quantum mechanics, and so far nobody has been able to
combine the two seamlessly. However, some theorists have been able to bring the
two theories to bear on particular problems by using carefully chosen
approximations. For instance, this approach was used by Stephen Hawking at
the University of Cambridge to describe black holes.
One thing
they have found is that, when quantum theory is applied to space at the
smallest possible scale, space itself becomes unstable. Rather than remaining
perfectly smooth and continuous, space and time destabilize, churning and
frothing into a foam of space-time bubbles.
In other
words, little bubbles of space and time can form spontaneously. "If space
and time are quantized, they can fluctuate," says Lawrence Krauss at Arizona State University in Tempe. "So
you can create virtual space-times just as you can create virtual
particles."
What's more, if it's possible for
these bubbles to form, you can guarantee that they will. "In quantum
physics, if something is not forbidden, it necessarily happens with some
non-zero probability," says Alexander
Vilenkin of Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts.
A universe from a bubble
So it's not
just particles and antiparticles that can snap in and out of nothingness:
bubbles of space-time can do the same. Still, it seems like a big leap from an
infinitesimal space-time bubble to a massive universe that hosts 100 billion
galaxies. Surely, even if a bubble formed, it would be doomed to disappear
again in the blink of an eye?
Actually, it
is possible for the bubble to survive. But for that we need another trick:
cosmic inflation. Most physicists now think that the universe began with the Big
Bang. At first all the matter and energy in the universe was crammed together
in one unimaginably small dot, and this exploded. This follows from the
discovery, in the early 20th century that the universe is expanding. If all the
galaxies are flying apart, they must once have been close together.
Inflation
theory proposes that in the immediate aftermath of the Big Bang, the universe
expanded much faster than it did later. This seemingly outlandish notion was
put forward in the 1980s by Alan Guth at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and
refined by Andrei
Linde, now at Stanford University.
The idea is
that, a fraction of a second after the Big Bang, the quantum-sized bubble of
space expanded stupendously fast. In an incredibly brief moment, it went from
being smaller than the nucleus of an atom to the size of a grain of sand. When
the expansion finally slowed, the force field that had powered it was
transformed into the matter and energy that fill the universe today. Guth calls
inflation "the ultimate free lunch".
As weird as it seems, inflation fits
the facts rather well. In particular, it neatly explains why the cosmic
microwave background, the faint remnant of radiation left over from the Big
Bang, is almost perfectly uniform across the sky. If the universe had not
expanded so rapidly, we would expect the radiation to be patchier than it is.
The universe is flat and why
that's important
Inflation
also gave cosmologists the measuring tool they needed to determine the
underlying geometry of the universe. It turns out this is also crucial for
understanding how the cosmos came from nothing.
Einstein's
theory of general relativity tells us that the space-time we live in could take
three different forms. It could be as flat as a tabletop. It could curve back
on itself like the surface of a sphere, in which case if you travel far enough
in the same direction you would end up back where you started. Alternatively,
space-time could curve outward like a saddle. So which is it?
There is a
way to tell. You might remember from math class that the three angles of a
triangle add up to exactly 180 degrees. Actually your teachers left out a crucial
point: this is only true on a flat surface. If you draw a triangle on the
surface of a balloon, its three angles will add up to more than 180 degrees.
Alternatively, if you draw a triangle on a surface that curves outward like a
saddle, its angles will add up to less than 180 degrees.
So to find out if the universe is
flat, we need to measure the angles of a really big triangle. That's where
inflation comes in. It determined the average size of the warmer and cooler
patches in the cosmic microwave background. Those patches were measured in
2003, and that gave astronomers a selection of triangles. As a result, we know
that on the largest observable scale our universe is flat.
It turns out
that a flat universe is crucial. That's because only a flat universe is likely
to have come from nothing.
Everything
that exists, from stars and galaxies to the light we see them by, must have
sprung from somewhere. We already know that particles spring into existence at
the quantum level, so we might expect the universe to contain a few odds and
ends. But it takes a huge amount of energy to make all those stars and planets.
Where did
the universe get all this energy? Bizarrely, it may not have had to get any.
That's because every object in the universe creates gravity, pulling other
objects toward it. This balances the energy needed to create the matter in the
first place.
It's a bit
like an old-fashioned measuring scale. You can put a heavy weight on one side,
so long as it is balanced by an equal weight on the other. In the case of the
universe, the matter goes on one side of the scale, and has to be balanced by
gravity.
Physicists have calculated that in a
flat universe the energy of matter is exactly balanced by the energy of the
gravity the mass creates. But this is only true in a flat universe. If the
universe had been curved, the two sums would not cancel out.
Universe or multiverse?
At this
point, making a universe looks almost easy. Quantum mechanics tells us that
"nothing" is inherently unstable, so the initial leap from nothing to
something may have been inevitable. Then the resulting tiny bubble of
space-time could have burgeoned into a massive, busy universe, thanks to
inflation. As Krauss puts it, "The laws of physics as we understand them
make it eminently plausible that our universe arose from nothing - no space, no
time, no particles, nothing that we now know of."
So why did
it only happen once? If one space-time bubble popped into existence and
inflated to form our universe, what kept other bubbles from doing the same?
Linde offers
a simple but mind-bending answer. He thinks universes have always been
springing into existence, and that this process will continue forever.
When a new
universe stops inflating, says Linde, it is still surrounded by space that is
continuing to inflate. That inflating space can spawn more universes, with yet
more inflating space around them. So once inflation starts it should make an
endless cascade of universes, which Linde calls eternal inflation. Our universe
may be just one grain of sand on an endless beach.
Those
universes might be profoundly different to ours. The universe next door might
have five dimensions of space rather than the three – length, breadth and
height – that ours does. Gravity might be ten times stronger or a thousand
times weaker, or not exist at all. Matter might be built out of utterly
different particles.
So there
could be a mind-boggling smorgasbord of universes. Linde says eternal inflation
is not just the ultimate free lunch: it is the only one at which all possible dishes
are available.
As yet we don't have hard evidence
that other universes exist. But either way, these ideas give a whole new
meaning to the phrase "Thanks for nothing".
Selected and edited from – http://wwwDOTbbcDOTcom/earth/story/20141106-why-does-anything-exist-at-all
** **
1344 hours. I think ‘nothing’ needs to be redefined. No
thing means no particles (in above context) in my mind.
You had leftovers, ham and turkey veggie
soup, for lunch and topped it off with a snack sized ice cream bar for dessert.
– Amorella
1430 hours. I don’t like how the article uses “eternal
inflation” either. I can’t imagine anything containing any kind of physics
being eternal. It is the wrong word. Long-lasting would be better. Words are
not used as they should be. People do not pay attention to what they are
supposed to mean. If the meaning changes then that should be added or dropped
from the meaning. Abstract words like ‘eternal’ have built in cultural
interpretations and that is the rub. No wonder people find problems translating
from one language to another.
1344 hours. I think ‘nothing’ needs to be redefined. No
thing means no particles (in above context) in my mind.
You had leftovers, ham and turkey veggie
soup, for lunch and topped it off with a snack sized ice cream bar for dessert.
– Amorella
1430 hours. I don’t like how the article uses “eternal
inflation” either. I can’t imagine anything containing any kind of physics
being eternal. It is the wrong word. Long-lasting would be better. Words are not
used as they should be. People do not pay attention to what they are supposed
to mean. If the meaning changes then that should be added or dropped from the
meaning. Abstract words like ‘eternal’ have built in cultural interpretations
and that is the rub. No wonder people find problems translating from one
language to another.
You are too distracted to make
considerations. Later. Post. – Amorella
2015 hours. Just thoughts. . . . It seems to me it would
be easier to add the human heart and mind to the soul at its inception into
gradual human self-consciousness if the universe is an illusion of sorts. Each
individual could be represented as a bubble without the soul’s incorporation. –
Time to continue reading on “A Short History”.
2059
hours. I arrived at page 133 the beginning of chapter nine. Chapter eight is
about Einstein and Hubble mostly. This was much more interesting than the
earlier chapters. I love science but I would not have made much of a scientist.
My observations are mostly intuitive and are not nearly so objective unless I
attempt to surround them with reason and science wherever possible, and this
only for my own sense of propriety to make the Merlyn stories ‘plausible
imagination within the framework of reason.’ This is a definition of fun and
entertainment for me, a way to pass my remaining time – to dance with
conjecture and happenstance.
You were inspecting relatively closely a
watercolor by William Blake, “The Vision of the Last Judgement” on Wikipedia
where you may blow it up to see more detail. What is of interest is the ‘watery
flow’ of what you consider to be human souls. You love Blake’s works when they
show spiritual fire and wind-like and watery motion. This is just what you
expect in a depiction of the mystical in watercolor. – Amorella
2119 hours. It has an authenticity to a mystical
experience or vision. This is the sort of thing I can intuitively understand
but cannot hope to explain.
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