Something From Nothing

[eccles]

For those who heard Lawrence Krauss speak at the GAC or are familar with his ideas and have a knowledge of Physics, what are your thoughts about his idea. Personally I am skeptical about it.

[AndyP]

Originally Posted by eccles

For those who heard Lawrence Krauss speak at the GAC or are familar with his ideas and have a knowledge of Physics, what are your thoughts about his idea. Personally I am skeptical about it.

I did not fully understand it, but I did get a fairly high level idea of what he was banging on about, and it did make sense.

I think the term 'nothing' is not the best word for the job, because obviously he means there is some material or particle, its just that we cannot observe it. At this stage of my limited understanding, I would say that 'nothing' is something like hawkins radiation. Or at least that is the only way my little brain can process it.

[simonecuttlefish]

I really enjoy listening to Lawrence Krauss as he tends to make the intractably inaccessible seductive, but I don't for one moment pretend to grasp anything he is actually saying. I am quite open in acknowledging my ignorance about the ideas and concepts about which he speaks, and to which he has devoted his career.

Is he right? I don't know. I don't take anything he says as 'doctrine'. I certainly don't need to start invoking the names of scientists and physicists to justify my lack of belief in the supernatural. I certainly won't start doubting or accepting anything just because a famous person says it. I certainly won't start attacking things they say because I 'don't like it', or 'it conflicts with my opinions', given that my opinions are not based on knowledge of the subject.

I am happy that people who do understand these concepts continue their search toward better explaining the nature of reality. It's only a dark age when you stop searching for an understanding of reality.

[Fearless]

I have watched a few of his vids since and it has helped me to get a better grasp of the concepts, but in order to understand him completely I think I would need to study in that field a bit first.

I might also say that in order for anyone to be skeptical with conviction I would assume the skeptic should have a pretty firm grasp of the field of study first.

I could be skeptical but that would be more that I just don't quite get it.

Once upon a time you tell someone that a multi tonne piece of machinery could fly with metal wings it would have had you laughed at and treated like a crazy person. Now we marvel at how fast it can travel around the world, not that it can get off tge ground so much.

The word 'nothing' has clearly been the most confusing single element of the whole big bang shebang for both sides (ok, one more than the other ) it's a pity it has been the stumbling block of understanding and the one thing that will continue to ensure the ignorant can remain so.

[FSM]

I just read his book, and it seemed reasonable enough to me.
Everyone can (and should) be skeptical, but until you have actually done real research in the field I suspect it's hard to actually get a good handle on this stuff.
Just like most of leading edge science and certainly stuff that involves quantum brain entanglement concepts

Dave.

[Xeno]

Eccles and AndyP, you will find some related discussion about Krauss here.

Kraus is not positing nothing as being particles but (closes eyes, takes leap) a quantum foam from which particles or universes can theoretically emerge. The net energy of the universe is nothing. Prior existing particles would, as you know from Einstein, not be nothing, owing to mass-energy equivalence.

Also, AndyP, it is Hawking, not Hawkins.

[Loki]

The use of the word "nothing" is perhaps the problem. Krauss contends that an absence of "thing" (including particles, fields etc) is not possible as such a state is inherently unstable and leads to the creation of particles from the instability.

This is not simply an assertion, there is a lot of evidence to support such a position, including the well documented Casimir effect (which can be demonstrated by anyone with an interest and the ability to procure two very flat mirrors).

[AndyP]

Originally Posted by Xeno

Also, AndyP, it is Hawking, not Hawkins.

My apologies, you will get lots of this from me! I type about whats going on inside my brain, usually without paying much attention to spelling or grammer.

[AUSloth]

The idea of a space of nothing is pretty hairy. Out some where in the universe in a perfect vacuum of no matter or energy (gravity and EM fields would still be present) is a nothing or at least according to more classic definitions of science nothing. If you introduce an atom it is subject to all our known laws of physics as normal. The question is did the atom generate those laws from its nature are they implicit with the atom or were they lurking in wait for an atom to act on in which case there was some thing lurking in our supposed nothing
The nothing Krauss is talking of (many grains of salt here please this is my vague version) is the second space with the lurker and you are not required to introduce anything because it is unstable and particle/anti-particles will pop in and out of existence themselves in very tiny time scales. At any time the energy balance for the space will be zero because there is either nothing or a particle/antiparticle which are exact opposites and therefore cancel until they reunite annihilate and go back to the original nothing

From what I know Hawking's radiation is this effect occurring at an event horizon such that one part of the instantaneously formed particle/antiparticle is captured by the black hole before it can recombine with its opposite. The net result is liberation of one of the particles and a change in the energy sum at that point. The black hole appears to emit radiation (the newly created positive energy particle/antiparticle) and swallows the negative which annihilates in blackhole to reduce its mass. Just to pickle your noodle this is happening with virtual particles (like those undetectable beasties that carry gravity) as well. In essence it's a mechanism for black hole to wind up and die at the end of our universe, bit of a wait first

I'll just wait here for the real physics people to point & laugh at.

[Blue Lightning]

I agree with simonecuttlefish!

To "understand" all of the physics he speaks of is a very tall order indeed. I think if it this way: Our brains, and what we perceive, are products of evolution. So, we are very good at perceiving external things which are similar to those that our ancestors have encountered: "medium sized" phenomena, generally restricted to "moderate" speeds, that persist for "moderate" periods of time.

Reality is nowhere near so limited.

The very small and the very large scales, the very fast, and the very short or very long-lived, we have not evolved to perceive so well, or, perhaps, at all. Enter mathematics. Maths is a most remarkable thing, and it takes great practice to refine it to a high level. It is a tool, from which we can construct models that approximate to aspects of reality that we are not otherwise so well placed to understand. And from these mathematical models, we can visualise by analogy. How often have we seen a black hole portrayed as a funnel shaped depression in a trampoline surface? Nice, but limited, picture; good for some purposes, but - "the map is not the territory!"

Skilled physicists, like Lawrence Krauss, can take the mathematical models and put them into beautiful language that is accessible to an audience at the GAC, or to the readers of "A Universe from Nothing". Which is a fabulous read.

I do not have a fraction of the scientific and mathematical skills of Lawrence Krauss, and, indeed, the great majority of physicists. But I'm happy that there are real scientists, applying the brutally destructive methods of science, to develop better and better maps of the territory. In which the Gaps progressively diminish ...