Is nothing possible?

Aphrodisiac · #1 (**permalink**) 09-09-2008, 06:48 PM

I was thinking about the whole big bang thing and it made me ask this question. Why the big bang, why anything, why not "it's just the way it is"? Is it even possible for there to have ever been noting? I have heard people say humans can't grasp the concept of forever. Well what about the concept of nothingness, that's something I can't grasp. In my mind it only seems logical to say always there was something and never was there nothing. I think it's the nature of reality whatever reality is. Nothingness is a impossibility as there always has been and must be something. Something cannot come from nothing, if something comes from nothing, then how was there ever nothing as nothingness cannot create something.

**Ginevra** · 09-09-2008, 06:54 PM

Maybe we don't know everything about nothing.

Aphrodisiac · 09-09-2008, 07:05 PM

When you think about it, what is nothing? You could give the simple answer "lack of something" but then think about what something is and nothing would be. Nothing would lack all descriptions of the senses, even existence itself, no temperature, no shape, no size, and nothing cannot contain something because if it does it must be something. So how can anything have existed in or come from nothing? Perhaps there are no ends to space, Even in the areas where it's cold and dark, no planets or stars, there is still something. Why must there be an end or a beginning of "time" as we call it? Why must there be there be something beyond space, or why must it be expanding? Why not something everywhere and nothingness nowhere?

**Ristaron** · 09-09-2008, 07:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aphrodisiac

I was thinking about the whole big bang thing and it made me ask this question. Why the big bang, why anything, why not "it's just the way it is"? Is it even possible for there to have ever been noting? I have heard people say humans can't grasp the concept of forever. Well what about the concept of nothingness, that's something I can't grasp. In my mind it only seems logical to say always there was something and never was there nothing. I think it's the nature of reality whatever reality is. Nothingness is a impossibility as there always has been and must be something. Something cannot come from nothing, if something comes from nothing, then how was there ever nothing as nothingness cannot create something.

Your question is really inconsequential. Even before the Big Bang, there was something. See my thread: Theories of the Big Bang.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ristaron

As Guth knew, the grand unified theories, or GUTS, of particle theory predicted that the vacuum of the early universe would have been dominated by particularly energetic fields. As these primordial “scalar” fields fluctuated, their potential energy would have risen and fallen. Guth realized that it was theoretically possible for the potential energy of the fields to have gotten temporarily “stuck” at a high value. Admittedly, this was an assumption. But when Guth worked through its implications, he stumbled onto inflation.

His calculations showed that stuck scalar fields would have caused a tiny bubble of “false vacuum” to nucleate from the primordial patch of spacetime. The amazing thing about the bubble, Guth saw, was that it would have contained a huge amount of antigravitational energy.

Although this idea may seem unbelievable, it’s actually in accord with standard particle theories. Here’s how it works:
Since an ordinary vacuum contains energy in the form of quantum fields, gravitational energy must be present as well. To understand why, it helps to remember Einstein’s famous equation, E = mc2. According to the equation, energy (“E”) and the mass of matter (“m”) are really two forms of the same stuff. So if matter, such as planet Earth, exerts a gravitational pull, so must energy. In other words, the energy-containing quantum fields of an ordinary vacuum exert a gravitational pull, albeit a weak one.

But when Guth used Einstein's relativity equations to see what happen inside a bubble of false vacuum, he found that the gravitational energy would have the opposite effect of ordinary gravity. In other words, this gravity would push, not pull — it would, in essence, be a powerful of antigravity.

Starting out as small as one billionth the size of a proton, the initial bubble of false vacuum would have doubled in size many times in an incomprehensibly short interval, propelled in this exponential growth by the antigravity. According to one inflation model, in just 10(-35)** seconds, the bubble would have grown to the size of a basketball. And some inflation models predict far larger growth than that, perhaps as large as 10(10)(12)* centimeters in diameter. That exponential number is a one followed by a trillion zeroes. (To print that many zeroes would require more than a million average size books.) Amazingly, if this picture of inflation is correct, it means that the portion of the universe we observe today is just an infinitesimally tiny mote compared to the whole.

The bubble of false vacuum would have had another peculiar property as well. According to particle theory, as the bubble expanded, the density of the energy within it actually would have remained constant. To picture this, imagine an inflating balloon. If the density of air inside is to be maintained, the total amount of air must be increased. Similarly, to maintain the same density of energy within the expanding bubble, the total energy must be increased — and by a huge amount, because the inflating bubble is growing exponentially. This theory seems to be saying that energy was created from nothing. And, in fact, Guth calls inflation the “ultimate free lunch.”

“It may sound as if I wasn’t there in my physics class when they talked about the conservation of energy,” Guth jokes. “But I was.” During inflation, he says, “the total energy of the system is conserved.” The enormous positive energy that builds up with ferocious speed during inflation creates a precisely balancing amount of negative gravitational energy (the ordinary attractive kind). “And so the net probably is zero,” Guth says.

Eventually (meaning in a very tiny fraction of a second), the false vacuum would have decayed, Guth realized. As this happened, the enormous energy that had been accumulating within the false vacuum would have been suddenly released, creating an exploding fireball of radiation and hot particles.

In other words, the big bang. “Inflation,” Guth concludes, “supplies the beginning to which the standard big bang theory is the continuation.”

* That is ten to the power of ten to the power of 12.
** Ten to the power of -35.

Aphrodisiac · 09-09-2008, 07:48 PM

I would have posted it in your topic but it brings up the possibility of creators. Not the God type but still creators so I kept it out.

Ok, one thing I still don't quite see how the physical things we acknowledge would come from this. If it can though, and if it's recreated on a smaller scale will it create a miniature universe? Is it possible the universe was created by some other being testing out this same theory and creating a "big bang"? I mean, if we can understand this is it illogical to think that the "big bang" as we know it was just an experiment that resulted in the universe as we know it? Is it illogical to think with the proper tools and knowledge we could be creators in a sense?

**Brother of Yeshua** · 09-10-2008, 01:14 AM

In simpler terms, like how at the end of men in black, our galaxy is a marble in some cosmic aliens' back yard game of marbles? Just that our perceived reality could be much smaller than it is from our perspective? Like we could be little amoebas swimming in a petri dish to someone else?

Possible. How do you know that single celled organisms don't view the world similarly to how we do, and we just think they look like simple little creatures?

I mean this could go on forever, but I think it's safe to say no one has a real clue, and it's all just guess work, backed up by some level of evidence.

Aphrodisiac · 09-10-2008, 01:28 AM

Nice way of putting it, I wouldn't have thought of the men in black comparison. Like you said though, it is all guesswork. Still some amazing stuff to think about though.

09-10-2008, 04:42 AM

I feel Nothing to be an entity in itself.

**Brother of Yeshua** · 09-10-2008, 10:49 PM

And at the same time, everything can be reduced to nothing, at least in terms of perception.

There are times in my life where the concept of "nothing" is "everything" to me.

It gets way convoluted when you think to much, like I have a tendency to do.

**SARS-expl0ted** · 09-11-2008, 07:58 AM

Brother, you and I always think the same.

I believe that no one can perceive how this world has come to be, where it came from [where anything came from] and what all of this is exactly. I honestly think that we will never know.

To me, that is what religion was made up for. A simple little answer for why things are the way they are. You believe in it because it makes sense and gives you something to hope for. If you have faith, then you feel as if you understand this world a lot better. Why is the world this was? Because God made it this way. Why did my mother die? Because that is what God wanted. Where does lightening come from? Zeus. Where does love come from? Aphrodite.
I mean, science has explained how lightening is created but only has theories on numerous things in life as to where we came from, for example. I honestly cannot bring myself to believe in anything unless I witness it first hand.

Everyone's mind has been clouded by information that we have been fed and also fed to ourselves. It is hard to look past what we have been taught and these theories that have been created in the past. Everything we know about the past are things we have heard from someone else or things we read in a book written somewhat years ago.

I can go on and on about how I feel about all of this but I am going to stop right there for now.