Nothing Comes from Nothing

The principle that nothing comes from nothing might not hold with today’s physicists. When it comes to the beginning of all known things there are really only two choices; either you believe that something always existed or something was created out of nothing. Really, though, it depends on what we mean by nothing. What we should mean, is lack of everything. Nothing then, is not only no time, no material, no substance and no space. As there is no time there is no motion and no change. And logically, it seems that if there is no element of change or anything to in fact change that nothing will remain nothing. It certainly seems absurd to claim that in the beginning something spontaneously erupted from nothingness, for no particular reason. If, however, nothing is claimed to be some sort of unknown state of affairs, that lacks all the characteristics of existence as it is now, but has some properties as yet indefinable, then it is possible for something spontaneous to occur that led to the creation of the universe. It may be then that absolute nothing is merely an intellectual concept, one that never has existed and never will.

Today most cosmologists agree the universe as we experience was indeed created approximately eighteen billion years ago. It basted into existence in a massive explosion known as the ‘big bang’. Space and time are considered to have been created in the big bang. It was during the big bang that “huge quantities of energy were available to cause the incoherent production of vast amounts of matter and antimatter.” (p. 28, Davies). When matter and antimatter meet they annihilate each other and release energy. In fact, a universe with equal parts of antimatter and matter would not survive. Therefore, “in the ultra-high temperatures of the big bang it is possible that a very slight excess of matter was permitted.” (p.29, Davies).

The big bang only accounts for the creation of the physical universe, it does not account for where all that energy came from in the first place. That very thought implies there was something, some state of affairs, prior to the big bang. We might then think there was energy transforming into something else, as in matter. From here Paul Davies suggests that matter was created from zero energy. He states that energy can be both positive and negative, and certain processes give rise to one or the other, and thus, balance each other out. In this case, “the energy of motion or mass is always positive” and the energy of attraction “such as that due to certain types of gravitational or electromagnetic fields, is negative.” (p. 31, Davies). The gravitational field is only a “spacewarp- curved space. The energy locked up in a spacewarp can be converted into particles of matter and antimatter. Thus we have matter appearing out of empty space. Therefore the question becomes “did the primeval bang possess energy, or is the entire universe a state of zero energy, with the energy of all material offset by the negative energy of the gravitational attraction?” (p. 32, Davies). Apparently certain equations of the total energy of the universe do indeed come to zero. So it seems “the creation of matter is adequately defined in terms of expanding space.” (p. 41, Davies). There seems to be no limit to the elasticity of space such that we can picture space as a tiny bubble that at the moment of creation rapidly expanded outward. And, apparently, this phenomenon may occur out of nothing, as hard that is to fathom. What caused the space bubble to occur? And indeed, what is space? It is hard to say the universe came from nothing when space seems to be substance in-itself.

One of the main reasons theories about the universe coming out of nothing seem unrealistic to us is because of our ideas of causation. We believe that everything has a cause and for anything to be created there must be some raw material that is manipulated to create something else. Some might suggest that God is the first cause but that would then mean everything has a cause except God. Yet the very notion of causes and effects “are firmly embedded in the notion of time.” (p. 37, Davies). Which naturally leads to if the big bang or God caused the universe, what caused them? Yet if the creation of the universe is also the creation of time, then it is meaningless to think in cause and effect when they are not applicable if time does not exist. Neither God nor the big bang require a cause. According to the quantum factor also allows “effects to occur that have no cause.” (p. 102, Davies), at the subatomic level. Bizarre, certainly, but conceivable. For instance “An individual particle will come into existence abruptly and unpredictably at no special designation or moment.” (p.35, Davies). Subatomic particles randomly appear and disappear and have no sure motion, and even at some level seem to be affected by human observation and other particles. By “blurring the distinction between subject and object, cause and effect, it introduces a strong holistic element into our world view.” (p. 111, Davies). Perhaps fundamentally at the particle level everything is one and connected but at our level of existence we do not feel connected to other things through our subatomic make-up. The quantum factor would also “allow spacetime to be created and destroyed spontaneously and uncaused in the same way that particles are created and destroyed spontaneously and uncaused.” (p. 215, Davies). So that spacetime bubble would erupt and expand uncaused out of nothing and necessarily lead to the creation of matter.

The Mind of God: The Scientific Basis for a Rational World

The Mind of God: The Scientific Basis for a Rational World

Buy Now

At the subatomic level matter is mostly space and particles. These particles are just bound up energy. Fundamentally the entire universe is made up of bound energy and the spaces between. And “if some way can be found to unlock it, matter will disappear amid a burst of energy. Conversely, if enough energy is somehow concentrated, matter will appear.” (p. 26, Davies). We have yet really to understand the nature of energy; when we observe subatomic particles sometimes they behave as a particle and sometimes as a wave depending on how we measure them. Matter appears to be solid, just as we appear to be distinct from others. Matter came from a spacetime warp that occurred out of nothing. Makes us wonder how tangible and solid our universe is. We get this sort of mystical sense of oneness. And of the distinction between appearance vs. reality. We are all a unity (composed of particles and space) but at another level we appear to be distinct and tangible.

It is not only matter that has a doubtful reality, but space and time as well. A modern day physicist, Juliam Barber, claims that time is just an illusion. Time is not as structured as most people take it to be anyway, like space it is very flexible. Time “can stretch and shrink, warp and even stop altogether at a singularity. (such as a black hole).” (p. 123, Davies). One way to picture the universe without time is to understand that the universe has only a fixed amount of energy, and therefore “The universe has nothing to interact with except itself” and “the energy of the universe does not change over time.” (p. 58, Folger). Thus the universe is just rearranging itself, with the same amount of energy always present. The universe at any given “instant simply consists of many different objects in many different positions.” (p. 58, Folger). Barbour simply states that “Every possible configuration of the universe, past, present, and future, exists separately and eternally.” (p. 58, Folger). Barbour, oddly enough, uses a temporal term to describe these static configurations. Barbour calls “each of these possible still-life configurations a ‘Now’ and “Every Now is a complete, self-contained, timeless, unchanging universe.” (p. 58, Folger). These Nows are not linked together in any sort of sequence either, “There is no movement from one static arrangement of the universe to the next. Some configurations of the universe simply contain little patches of consciousness- people- with memories of what they call a past that are built into the Now.” (p. 60, Folger). As there is no time, nothing really moves. Even if we do not want to go to this extreme, we can have a presentist view of time. One where only the present moment exists and only instantaneous change is real. Thus a universe where the universe is merely what exists in a certain configuration at one moment. In fact we may have some serious concerns over Barbour’s account. If one considers each Now to be distinctly separate with no link to the next, then there is no guarantee that the information in one is going to carry to the next. It might be possible for a person to exist in one Now, and suddenly not exist in another. How can we conceive of one Now closely resembling another Now with all the same information transferred but with no link between them or any sequence of them? Another peculiar element is the human consciousness that seems to retain information of past Nows, yet not of future ones. Is there something unique about human consciousness that enables us to have access to other Nows that we call a past? And why would we not be able to do the same with future Nows?

Fundamental ideas of reality such as the tangibility of matter, things being distinct from each other, time and space itself become mere appearances and less real than the foundation of existence… which could very well be nothing at all. We might end up with a nihilist or idealist position. For if space does not exist we cannot be occupying space, if time does not exist then we do no move or change, and if matter does not exist then we are not really here at all and fundamentally our reality is based on nothing and really is nothing. We might begin to understand Rene Descartes and his radical doubt method. For if we can doubt all these things, what then can we not doubt? Ourselves? Our consciousness? Or do we see that nothingness has a structure to it, there is something that makes spacetime bubbles possible? Some real state of affairs that would be fundamental. Therefore we can at least still say nothing comes from nothing.

Physics is grounded in the laws that it finds to structure the universe. Ultimately cosmologists want to find a unifying law that explains everything. The reason Barbour wants to prove time really does not exist is that if times does not exist then they can unify the “subatomic atomic world of quantum mechanics with the vast cosmic one of general relativity.” (p. 57, Folger), which use two different versions of time. They assume “that all you need are the laws- the universe can take care of itself, including its own creation.” (p. 217, Davies). Before the anomaly that created the spacetime bubble, besides nothing, “Quantum physics has to exist (in some sense) so that a quantum transition can generate the cosmos in the first place.” (p. 217, Davies). Therefore, nothing is a structured nothing, which enables the possibility of creation to be possible. They believe there is a Superlaw that would explain the rules of why there are protons, neutrons and so forth and why things happen the way they do. Yet how can nothing be structured and have laws? Nothing in this sense, is not the privation of everything either. There are the laws of physics that mean that there was the possibility of creation or other anomalies and thus not absolutely nothing. Therefore, “an ultimate law ‘has a mathematical structure which is uniquely defined as the only logically consistent physical principle. That is to say, physics is proclaimed ‘necessary’ in the same way that God is proclaimed necessary by theologians.” (p. 55, Davies).

We can take some comfort that nothing comes from nothing. That there was a state of affairs that lead up to creation. Yet in the end we find that creation and reality is more based on appearances than what is fundamental. So it is not that everything came from nothing, but that reality itself is less real than we think. The reality that we perceive is but a fragile illusion, which lead us to believe that time, space, matter and difference actually exist.