Mr P wrote:

Teuton wrote:

robinhood wrote:
…So, the term "nothing" is really referring to the extreme chaos in the early universe which (might as well be) considered nothing meaningful seeing as no reliable laws can yet be applied to it. Is this correct?

A nothing is nothing, not even a chaos; for if there is a chaos, there exists something chaotic.

This is the semantic problem I was describing earlier, using "nothing" as an indefinite pronoun means you're using the word to both describe a concept and the absence of a concept. The contradiction is the fallacy of four terms as detailed in the link I provided above.

For all practical considerations a chaotic system is nothingness, we can never extract any information from such a system while it remains in this state which renders it both inherently meaningless and unstable.

This is an inherent problem with natural language. All of it is based on approximations that work pretty well most of the time, especially in a classical approximation that works pretty well when quantum numbers are large. Worse, most of these words were invented way before we had the sophistication to talk about this. To solve this problem, people have created new languages, such as mathematics. I'm pretty sure, however, that most of the audience here doesn't want to learn that language to the extent required to express concepts unambiguously, so people use natural language.

That having been said, it seems to me extremely discourteous to expect scientists to translate concepts into your language and then get pissed off at them for limitations of your language that they cannot control.

Back to the original question, as far as I can tell, what he's suggesting is that certain physical laws apply even in the absence of a universe. Even "before" the universe runs into problems, because the only thing we know from time is within this universe. As others have pointed out, a zero cosmological constant is unstable under the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. More precisely, the uncertainty principle suggests that it could not be both zero and unchanging, and if it changes, it isn't going to be zero any more. Fortunately, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle isn't really a statement about how things change in time in a classical sense, but a basic statement about uncertainty. This is hard to describe to an audience that does not know the math.

With the possibility that these basic laws exist even without a universe (possibly they are mathematical necessities, and there is some suggestive evidence that nothing would work without some), there are interesting possibilities. One is that the state, under these laws, of no universe is unstable, because there would either have to be a universe or a universe coming into being. Another is that a fluctuation in the cosmological constant (which would be required under the same laws) could involve a massive expansion of a small initial universe, with matter condensing out of the expanded spacetime to balance the negative energy of the fluctuation. Hence, a universe whose energy adds up to close enough to zero within the uncertainty principle but whose energy is distributed such that the positive-energy parts we care about are pretty big and enough to get, say, galaxies and solar systems and planets and life. Of course, it will be, literally, all for nothing, but in the mean time, we can have some fun.

It may seem that this universe is pretty damn big for that, but still, any size universe would have a finite amplitude. There may be other universes that don't, but basically, sucks to be them.

All of this requires the supposition that some laws apply even without a universe. This is, I think, what Hawking is trying to say. The idea has a certain elegance that is not provided by ideas about universes forming by colliding branes and such, which, not incidentally, require more suppositions about laws in the absence of a universe.

Well anyway, the discussion is futile because, according to Radio 4 this morning, Hawking says in his book that philosophy is dead, so you might as well go home !!

From the description on the radio, it sounds as though the book won't contain anything radically new, just a bit about M theory and multiverses, so I'm not too excited.

twistor59 wrote:Well anyway, the discussion is futile because, according to Radio 4 this morning, Hawking says in his book that philosophy is dead, so you might as well go home !!

From the description on the radio, it sounds as though the book won't contain anything radically new, just a bit about M theory and multiverses, so I'm not too excited.

I doubt you're going to learn anything much from these pop science books. Except maybe from that penrose book.

twistor59 wrote:Well anyway, the discussion is futile because, according to Radio 4 this morning, Hawking says in his book that philosophy is dead, so you might as well go home !!

If Hakwing really said that, it's a stupid statement. Those who declare philosophy dead keep on philosophizing—usually badly—without being aware of it.

"Opposition to metaphysics has come from both within philosophy and outside it. Logical Positivism, though now defunct, was particularly hostile to what its adherents saw as the meaningless, because unverifiable, claims of metaphysics. These objections foundered on the impossibility of providing an acceptable criterion of verifiability. But the deference to empirical science displayed by the Logical Positivists is still a feature of much Anglo-American analytic philosophy, creating an intellectual climate inimical to the pursuit of speculative metaphysics. This hostility is paralleled in the popular writings of many scientists, who seem to think that any legitimate issues once embraced by metaphysics now belong exclusively to the province of empirical science—issues such as the nature of space and time, and the mind-body problem. Such writers are often blithely unaware of the uncritical metaphysical assumptions pervading their works and the philosophical naivety of many of their arguments. But it is ironic that the deference shown by many philosophers to the latest scientific theories is not reciprocated by the popularizing scientists, who do not conceal their contempt for philosophy in general as well as metaphysics in particular."

("Opposition to Metaphysics," by E. J. Lowe. In The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, edited by Ted Honderich. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. p. 559)

"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars

epepke wrote:All of this requires the supposition that some laws apply even without a universe.

I fail to see how there could be laws of nature when there is no nature.

Stephen Hawking - Taliban Man....

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/stephen-hawking/7988785/Baroness-Greenfield-criticises-Taliban-like-Stephen-Hawking.html

epepke wrote:That having been said, it seems to me extremely discourteous to expect scientists to translate concepts into your language and then get pissed off at them for limitations of your language that they cannot control.

Teuton wrote:

epepke wrote:All of this requires the supposition that some laws apply even without a universe.

I fail to see how there could be laws of nature when there is no nature.

My own understanding of this is that the processes governing nature, which we interpret as laws, emerge as a result of the instability of the initial chaotic system. By definition this system can have no governing processes... that's why it's chaotic and the constants we observe are a result of symmetry breaking during the Planck era of "our" phase of existence.

It's hypothesised that during this era the four known forces of nature would have exercised equal influence over their environment, gravity, electromagnetism, strong and weak forces would have the same strength and have been unified into a single force. Then as spacetime expanded and cooled the symmetry of this initial condition broke thus leaving us with the forces as observed today. The big question is did this happen randomly or was there an underlying pattern that can be used to describe this process? If I could answer that I'd probably be sat here waving my Nobel prize at you

My pure speculation is this; if the universe is shown to be cyclic then the symmetry breaking during each phase is random. So there may be cycles where the fabric of spacetime expands for one Planck second and completely collapses during the next, alternatvely during another cycle spacetime may expand for a googlplex years but not have the correct conditions for complex chemistry. And then on some occasions the conditions are just right for complex chemistry to occur thus paving the way for life to evolve.

Please note there are some big 'ifs' in my version of the weak anthropic principle so I'm open to suggestions

twistor59 wrote:Stephen Hawking - Taliban Man....

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/stephen-hawking/7988785/Baroness-Greenfield-criticises-Taliban-like-Stephen-Hawking.html

Bit of an over-reaction from the baroness there; let's compare a world leading scientist who's advanced human understanding exonentially to a bunch of murderous religious fanatics bent on domination and oppression. Yeah that's good reasoning baroness.
[/sarcasm]

Mr P wrote:

twistor59 wrote:Stephen Hawking - Taliban Man....

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/stephen-hawking/7988785/Baroness-Greenfield-criticises-Taliban-like-Stephen-Hawking.html

Bit of an over-reaction from the baroness there; let's compare a world leading scientist who's advanced human understanding exonentially to a bunch of murderous religious fanatics bent on domination and oppression. Yeah that's good reasoning baroness.
[/sarcasm]

The Taliban crack aside, which I'm sure she regrets already, it remains an overreaction. What Hawking is saying is that God is not needed as an explanation. It still leaves theists with all sorts of unecessary functions to assign to their magic man.

Yes you'd really think that the former head of the Royal Institution would know better wouldn't you ?

Shrunk wrote:What Hawking is saying is that God is not needed as an explanation.

There's nothing new about that. Pierre-Simon Laplace said the same 200 years ago.

Mr P wrote:For all practical considerations a chaotic system is nothingness, we can never extract any information from such a system while it remains in this state which renders it both inherently meaningless and unstable.

I recall seeing notingness defined as zero dimensions in physics literature? Are these two definitions compatible? Does it even make sense to talk about causality in a zero dimensional reality (pre-big bang I assume)?

Krull wrote:

Mr P wrote:For all practical considerations a chaotic system is nothingness, we can never extract any information from such a system while it remains in this state which renders it both inherently meaningless and unstable.

I recall seeing notingness defined as zero dimensions in physics literature? Are these two definitions compatible? Does it even make sense to talk about causality in a zero dimensional reality (pre-big bang I assume)?

Empirically speaking the two would be indistiguishable, no measurement or information could could be gained from either and both would be unstable. Of course this ignores the hypothetical observer sat 'outside' this system... a bit tricky as I'm using the definition of universe in the all-that-there-is sense and so rendering the concept of outside meaningless. To be honest I'm not sure how to wrap my head round this problem... any help would be appreciated

In baby terms I understand that:
* The presence of mass means the presence of gravity, the force that makes objects be attracted over large distances.

* Gravity affects space and time by "warping" them. The effect is that space and time are curved; not sure what the significance of this is.

* I know that supposedly when under extreme gravitational forces, space-time can become so curved that it becomes virtually a single point called a singularity. Space and time break down as concepts here and pretty much cease to exist as we know them.

* Quantum theory says that particles come in and out of existence spontaneously, as has been observed.

* As time does not flow in this singularity, it is impossible for an explosive interaction to occur. However it could be that a particle coming into existence spontaneously causes the necessary interaction.

* If an interaction were allowed, it could create time and space as it occurs, making the universe we know today.


The real question is, what's going on in that singularity? If we get rid of time and space as we understand them, then in what manner do they exist?

Teuton wrote:

epepke wrote:All of this requires the supposition that some laws apply even without a universe.

I fail to see how there could be laws of nature when there is no nature.

I'm sure you do, and I'm sure that you can continue this failure by not reading much.

Have a nice life!

I have been finding this debate really amusing (not the one in this thread, I mean in the wider context). It is fun to see the news broadcasters fall over themselves trying to use the language to describe this stuff. I say one guy say that because quantum mechanics says anything that can happen does happen, all you have to do is "wait around long enough" and a universe will be created. Lol - the concept of "waiting around" seems pretty meaningless without time.

I think the most interesting question is, who is doing the misleading? Is the media deliberately misleading the public about what Hawking said, or are they just misunderstanding themselves? Did Hawking (or his publisher) deliberately set out to mislead with their language? I haven't read Hawking's book, so I am not very sure, but to me it looks a little of both. He never seems to say that he has "ruled out God" but I can understand why the media might have jumped to that conclusion.

Mr P wrote:Of course this ignores the hypothetical observer sat 'outside' this system... a bit tricky as I'm using the definition of universe in the all-that-there-is sense and so rendering the concept of outside meaningless. To be honest I'm not sure how to wrap my head round this problem... any help would be appreciated

Surely it makes more sense to think of objects shrinking over time, therefore increasing the 'size' of the universe relative to them, rather than the surface of spacetime expanding inside a larger universe...just my two cents anyway.

paul1 wrote:* Quantum theory says that particles come in and out of existence spontaneously, as has been observed.

* As time does not flow in this singularity, it is impossible for an explosive interaction to occur. However it could be that a particle coming into existence spontaneously causes the necessary interaction.

Doesn't this imply a time before the particle came into existence?

epepke wrote:

teuton wrote:

epepke wrote:All of this requires the supposition that some laws apply even without a universe.

I fail to see how there could be laws of nature when there is no nature.

I'm sure you do, and I'm sure that you can continue this failure by not reading much.

Have a nice life!

What? It was a valid question. You are endorsing Platonism.

On a related note I've just found this article: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100907171642.htm

Seven years ago Northwestern University physicist Adilson E. Motter conjectured that the expansion of the universe at the time of the big bang was highly chaotic. Now he and a colleague have proven it using rigorous mathematical arguments.

And cotinues later on:

A competing interpretation has been that chaos could be a property of the observer rather than a property of the system being observed," said Motter, an author of the paper and an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Northwestern's Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. "Our study shows that different physical observers will necessarily agree on the chaotic nature of the system.