On 1/1/13 1:59 PM, June G wrote:
> Science has pushed God into smaller and
> smaller gaps, but there is one gap that I doubt science will ever be able to
> answer: how did the singularity get there in the first place, and if the
> singularity can be explained, how did whatever was there before it get
> there? For this reason I can't say categorically that there is no God, but
> until I see some evidence for such a being, then I will continue to
> disbelieve.
Ref:
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/0603/CMB_Timeline300.jpg
Ref:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_fluctuation
> In quantum physics, a quantum vacuum fluctuation (or quantum fluctuation or vacuum fluctuation) is the temporary change in the amount of energy in a point in space,[1] arising from Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.
There’s More to Nothing Than We Knew
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/21/science/space/cosmologists-try-to-explain-a-universe-springing-from-nothing.html?_r=0
"Dr. Krauss is a pint-size spark plug of erudition and ambition, who
often seems to be jetting off in several directions at once on more
missions than can be listed on a business card. Among other things he is
Foundation Professor and director of the Origins Project at Arizona
State University".
"And he knows his universe. In 1995, he and Michael S. Turner of the
University of Chicago made waves by arguing that many of the paradoxes
regarding cosmology could be resolved if a large portion of the cosmos
resided in the form of a hitherto-undiscovered energy, known then as the
cosmological constant. Three years later astronomers discovered that the
expansion of the universe was being accelerated by some “dark energy”
that behaves exactly like the cosmological constant".
________________
The Universe: the ultimate free lunch
http://iopscience.iop.org/0143-0807/11/4/008
"It is commonly believed that the origin of the Universe must have
involved the violation of natural laws, particularly energy conservation
and the second law of thermodynamics. This need not have been the case,
the present author shows that the Universe could have begun from a state
of zero energy and maximum entropy, and then naturally evolved into what
we see today without violating any known principles of physics. The
fundamental particles and the force laws they obey then come about
through a series of random symmetry-breaking phase transitions during
the period of exponential expansion in the first fraction of a second
after the Universe appears as a quantum fluctuation".
_______________
A Universe from Nothing
http://www.astrosociety.org/pubs/mercury/31_02/nothing.html
"Adapted from The Cosmos: Astronomy in the New Millennium, 1st edition,
by Jay M. Pasachoff and Alex Filippenko, © 2001. Reprinted with
permission of Brooks/Cole, an imprint of the Wadsworth Group, a division
of Thomson Learning".
"In the inflationary theory, matter, antimatter, and photons were
produced by the energy of the false vacuum, which was released following
the phase transition. All of these particles consist of positive energy.
This energy, however, is exactly balanced by the negative gravitational
energy of everything pulling on everything else. In other words, the
total energy of the universe is zero! It is remarkable that the universe
consists of essentially nothing, but (fortunately for us) in positive
and negative parts. You can easily see that gravity is associated with
negative energy: If you drop a ball from rest (defined to be a state of
zero energy), it gains energy of motion (kinetic energy) as it falls.
But this gain is exactly balanced by a larger negative gravitational
energy as it comes closer to Earth’s center, so the sum of the two
energies remains zero".
"The idea of a zero-energy universe, together with inflation, suggests
that all one needs is just a tiny bit of energy to get the whole thing
started (that is, a tiny volume of energy in which inflation can begin).
The universe then experiences inflationary expansion, but without
creating net energy".
________________
Is Our Universe the Ultimate Free Lunch?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mario-livio/is-our-universe-the-ultim_b_2123732.html
"Two questions immediately arise: (1) What about conservation of energy?
(2) Why did the universe appear at all? As it turns out, conservation of
energy is not a problem. While all the mass in our universe has positive
energy, the gravitational attraction has a negative energy associated
with it, which precisely balances the positive one. The total energy of
our universe is precisely zero, so that there is no problem with the
universe materializing out of nothing. Why did the universe appear?
Because the laws of physics allowed it to. In quantum mechanics, any
process has a certain probability of occurring, and no cause is needed.
You will notice, however, that we do have to assume that the laws of
physics continue to apply even when there is nothing. I shall return to
this assumption in a future post".