miscreant

I was just reading an article <a href="http://www.discover.com/apr_02/featguth.html" target="_blank">here</a> on how the universe may have been come from nothing. (Guth's theory of inflation)

Do we have an physicists here who can explain this theory in more detail?

Miscreant

Late_Cretaceous

I am no physicist by any means.
Do not confuse vacuum with nothingness. In reality nothingness simply cannot exist. A vacuum may seem to be devoid of anything but in fact has properties which imply that alot is going on. A vacuum (and supposedly there are different types of vacuums including false vacuums) has symmetry, dimentions, possibly a Higgs field, temperature, even vacuum energy. Current theories suggest that somekind of fluctuation in a vaccum is really all the universe is.

eh

When are these guys going to stop calling a vacuum nothing? It just confuses people. But I guess if you replace the word nothing with bare minimum, God's act of creation becomes less impressive than what the traditional religions would have us believe.

boneyard bill

But a vacuum that is really a non-material plenum only explains how matter came into existence. It doesn't explain where the vacuum came from. We're always caught up in an infinite regress. You either live with that infinite regress or you say God is where the regress ends. That's pretty much what defines God in a philosophical sense though not, of course, in a religious sense.

The Game251976

I find that when a theist tells me something can't come from nothing,it is just best to say that your right,god can't come from nothing.And then tell them that the universe has always been here and that it is only chance that anything exists.It makes for a good days arguement if you have a good opponite.Most of the time the say they odds that it did it all on their own are just to great,then you just asl them where does that put the odds for god and all the descriptive words they use for him.

crocodile deathroll

<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/space/04/26/cosmos.cycle.reut/index.html" target="_blank">has anyone read this</a>
I this is true then I may have to rethink much of what I believed about the universe up to date.

crocodile deathroll

Ron Singh

Croc I read an article about Stephen Hawkings and there was a legnthy discussion about how the inflation theory can not be true. Anywhos, the theory is pretty much debunked now a days.
Also, The Big Crunch business, there's not enough matter in this universe for that to happen, or so I hear.

jj

Hmm. So, what's the entropy of a totally empty system?

Coragyps

The "Bouncing Universe" thread over on the E&C forum may be of interest...

eh

Again, it's our problem with english. A vacuum isn't really a vacuum either. There is energy everywhere, so I guess it's safe to say our visible universe came from the very low energy state of the so called vacuum. A god does not solve the infinite regress problem, as we then have a deity twiddling his thumbs in the void for an infinite amount of time before creating this universe.