What is Hawking's reasoning behind this?

robinhood · #1 by **robinhood** » Sep 03, 2010 4:22 am

Well, I didn't know if this belonged in the general science discussion area (seeing as I'm asking about a scientific concept) or creationsim seeing as it deals with god, however, I'm posting it here where I feel comfortable lol. Hawkins is coming out with a new book that explains his recent hardening from agnostic to atheist and he says that the laws of gravity predate the universe and that is what brought the universe out of nothing. Here is a link

http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2 ... 2_ST_N.htm

I would like to know how gravity started an expansion like the big bang (I thought that gravity was supposed to attract mass). I'm not very good at math so if someone could just keep it conceptual that would be great. Thanks :grin:

klazmon · #2 by **klazmon** » Sep 03, 2010 4:35 am

Well I don't know who Hawkins is but the Lambda value here

If lambda is positive then that would result in negative pressure, effectively opposing gravity.

BlackRogueDreams · #3 by **BlackRogueDreams** » Sep 03, 2010 4:36 am

Without having read the book I can't say much but the gist of it is that he has sufficient evidence to conclude that natural processes were enough to create the universe and thus god is once again unnecessary and superfluous to requirements.

robinhood · #4 by **robinhood** » Sep 03, 2010 4:48 am

klazmon wrote:Well I don't know who Hawkins is but the Lambda value here

If lambda is positive then that would result in negative pressure, effectively opposing gravity.

how can you not know who Hawkins is? He is THE leader in the field of black holes. The guy in the wheelchair who can't move a muscle yet is one of the smartest men alive in the field of physics and mathmatics? He is almost as popular as Einstein. Btw, what on earth is the Lambda value? I said I suck at math :waah:

robinhood · #5 by **robinhood** » Sep 03, 2010 4:50 am

BlackRogueDreams wrote:Without having read the book I can't say much but the gist of it is that he has sufficient evidence to conclude that natural processes were enough to create the universe and thus god is once again unnecessary and superfluous to requirements.

just assuming he is right because he is an authority figure is a fallacy. Also, that's not quite "skeptical" of you. I have great faith in the guy and I KNOW FOR A FACT he know far more than I ever will, however, I would like to know his reasoning behind this so I avoid using the fallacy.

orpheus · #6 by **orpheus** » Sep 03, 2010 4:51 am

robinhood wrote:
klazmon wrote:Well I don't know who Hawkins is but the Lambda value here

If lambda is positive then that would result in negative pressure, effectively opposing gravity.

how can you not know who Hawkins is? He is THE leader in the field of black holes. The guy in the wheelchair who can't move a muscle yet is one of the smartest men alive in the field of physics and mathmatics? He is almost as popular as Einstein. Btw, what on earth is the Lambda value? I said I suck at math

It's Stephen Hawking, not Hawkins.

robinhood · #7 by **robinhood** » Sep 03, 2010 4:56 am

I put an apostrophe after his name indicating that the idea is the Hawkin's. It's proper grammar. It's like if I said "my dad's truck" the apostrophe indicates that the truck is my dad's possession. Just like the idea is Hawkin's. At least, that is how we do it in America.

*edited title*

Mononoke · #8 by **Mononoke** » Sep 03, 2010 4:59 am

robinhood wrote:I put an apostrophe after his name indicating that the idea is the Hawkin's. It's proper grammar. It's like if I said "my dad's truck" the apostrophe indicates that the truck is my dad's possession. Just like the idea is Hawkin's. At least, that is how we do it in America.

his name is hawking not hawkin :thumbup:

Anyways lambda is the vacuum pressure

robinhood · #9 by **robinhood** » Sep 03, 2010 5:02 am

oh, now I see. alright then.

BlackRogueDreams · **#10** by **BlackRogueDreams** » Sep 03, 2010 5:03 am

robinhood wrote:
BlackRogueDreams wrote:Without having read the book I can't say much but the gist of it is that he has sufficient evidence to conclude that natural processes were enough to create the universe and thus god is once again unnecessary and superfluous to requirements.

just assuming he is right because he is an authority figure is a fallacy. Also, that's not quite "skeptical" of you. I have great faith in the guy and I KNOW FOR A FACT he know far more than I ever will, however, I would like to know his reasoning behind this so I avoid using the fallacy.

I'm basing it on everything I've read in the news. Note I did say I had not read the book, I merely summarized what I knew so far. Whether it's right or not I can't say yet, but given we are talking about a scientist who is preeminent in his field the likelihood of his being correct is much higher. If it was Richard Dawkins who came out with this I would have much more reason to doubt as this is not his field of expertise. Considering the source however I am willing to provisionally accept it for the time being but I will keep looking for new information. Which any good skeptic would do.

robinhood · **#11** by **robinhood** » Sep 03, 2010 5:06 am

BlackRogueDreams wrote:
robinhood wrote:
BlackRogueDreams wrote:Without having read the book I can't say much but the gist of it is that he has sufficient evidence to conclude that natural processes were enough to create the universe and thus god is once again unnecessary and superfluous to requirements.

just assuming he is right because he is an authority figure is a fallacy. Also, that's not quite "skeptical" of you. I have great faith in the guy and I KNOW FOR A FACT he know far more than I ever will, however, I would like to know his reasoning behind this so I avoid using the fallacy.

I'm basing it on everything I've read in the news. Note I did say I had not read the book, I merely summarized what I knew so far. Whether it's right or not I can't say yet, but given we are talking about a scientist who is preeminent in his field the likelihood of his being correct is much higher. If it was Richard Dawkins who came out with this I would have much more reason to doubt as this is not his field of expertise. Considering the source however I am willing to provisionally accept it for the time being but I will keep looking for new information. Which any good skeptic would do.

o.k then, it sounded from your post like you were claiming it as fact before reading it.

Mr P · **#12** by **Mr P** » Sep 03, 2010 5:08 am

There are a lot of conclusions being jumped to as a result of the usual hype from the media. Personally it's nice to see Hawking finally agrees with me in that the very concept of a creator is unnecessary.

BlackRogueDreams · **#13** by **BlackRogueDreams** » Sep 03, 2010 5:15 am

I have a bad habit of being rather laconic, as my posting history shows. I could never follow in the footsteps of the illustrious Blue Butterfly, but one thing I have learned is first of all things Consider the Source.

Mr P · **#14** by **Mr P** » Sep 03, 2010 5:29 am

Of course he's not saying anything new, Victor Stenger promotes the same idea (and goes one step further in the case of the Abrahamic god) that the universe can get along fine without a creator. Also a number of physicists are pushing the idea of a cyclic model with subsequent big bangs happening in succession i.e. Steinhardt and Turok, Lee Smolin and Roger Penrose. Penrose is about to release his new book Cycles Of Time later this month with his own take on the idea.

All of these rest on the theory that the (inherently) chaotic conditions present during the Planck era are unstable due to quantum fluctuations and it's this chaotic system that Stenger defines as nothingness. This arises from the fact that no meaningful information can be extracted from a system such as this and so rendering enquirey obsolete. This is opposed to the semantic skullduggery usually employed when people try to define nothingness.

Mononoke · **#15** by **Mononoke** » Sep 03, 2010 5:39 am

The nothing here is most like the vacuum state. There is good reason to beleive that the total energy of the universe is zero. So what he could be saying is that the initial symmetry is broken as a consequence of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and further expansion is propagate via a positive cosmological constant

klazmon · **#16** by **klazmon** » Sep 03, 2010 5:50 am

klazmon wrote:
robinhood wrote:
klazmon wrote:Well I don't know who Hawkins is but the Lambda value here

If lambda is positive then that would result in negative pressure, effectively opposing gravity.

how can you not know who Hawkins is? He is THE leader in the field of black holes. The guy in the wheelchair who can't move a muscle yet is one of the smartest men alive in the field of physics and mathmatics? He is almost as popular as Einstein. Btw, what on earth is the Lambda value? I said I suck at math

Stephen Hawking I guess. Lambda is the cosmological constant. An arbitrary scalar in the Einstein field equations. Einstein initially thought it must be zero but then astronomers told him the universe was static. A static universe is impossible if Lambda is zero, so Einstein decided it must have a positive value sufficient to stop the universe from collapsing. Then Edwin Hubble said hang on, I can see that the universe appears to be expanding. Einstein said whoops, Lambda is zero after all. Now astronomers say the expansion of the universe is accelerating now and went through an insane rate of expansion early in the big bang. This would imply that lambda is changing with time.

Mononoke · **#17** by **Mononoke** » Sep 03, 2010 6:08 am

klazmon wrote:This would imply that lambda is changing with time.

Wait a sec, that would imply different vacuum densities at different points in time.

robinhood · **#18** by **robinhood** » Sep 03, 2010 8:12 am

This is the main portion of the article that bugged me. How did he draw that conclusion? I notice he says "laws SUCH AS" gravity and not gravity itself as I have origninaly misinterpreted. However, I still don't get the steps he took to reach this conclusion. I'm going to have to give google a workout to see what you guys are talking about but I think I can manage.

"Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing,"

Mononoke · **#19** by **Mononoke** » Sep 03, 2010 8:18 am

robinhood wrote:This is the main portion of the article that bugged me. How did he draw that conclusion? I notice he says "laws SUCH AS" gravity and not gravity itself as I have origninaly misinterpreted. However, I still don't get the steps he took to reach this conclusion. I'm going to have to give google a workout to see what you guys are talking about but I think I can manage.

"Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing,"

Read my posts as well as klazmon's post. that should give you some idea of what he's talking about

robinhood · **#20** by **robinhood** » Sep 03, 2010 8:47 am

Mr P wrote:Of course he's not saying anything new, Victor Stenger promotes the same idea (and goes one step further in the case of the Abrahamic god) that the universe can get along fine without a creator. Also a number of physicists are pushing the idea of a cyclic model with subsequent big bangs happening in succession i.e. Steinhardt and Turok, Lee Smolin and Roger Penrose. Penrose is about to release his new book Cycles Of Time later this month with his own take on the idea.

All of these rest on the theory that the (inherently) chaotic conditions present during the Planck era are unstable due to quantum fluctuations and it's this chaotic system that Stenger defines as nothingness. This arises from the fact that no meaningful information can be extracted from a system such as this and so rendering enquirey obsolete. This is opposed to the semantic skullduggery usually employed when people try to define nothingness.

o.k, so let me double check

Your pretty much saying that the layman's version of the term "nothing" is inaccurate in the context it's being used. In the context of the very first few moments when the universe was only a few plank units old (I hope I am using his correct measurement of time) everything was so unpredictable due to the uncertainty principle that no useful data could be attained from this because everything was constantly shifting in an unpredictable manner. 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?