|
Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?
VICTOR STENGER
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Shared by April from panentheism: with commentary of Tony B. in brackets {}.
Reality Check
Why is there something rather than nothing? This question is often the last resort of the theist who seeks to argue for the
existence of God from science and finds all his other arguments fail. In his 2004 book Why There Is Something Rather than
Nothing, philosopher Bede Rundle calls it "philosophy's central, and most perplexing, question." His simple (but book-length)
answer: "There has to be something."
Clearly, many conceptual problems are associated with this question. How do we define nothing? What are its properties? If
it has properties, doesn't that make it something? The theist claims that God is the answer. But, then, why is there God rather
than nothing? Assuming we can define nothing, why should nothing be a more natural state of affairs than something?
In fact, we can give a plausible scientific reason based on our best current knowledge of physics that something is more natural
than nothing! Of course, that requires providing a physical definition of nothing. Can I imagine a physical system that has
no properties? Yes, as long as you do not insist on playing word games with me by calling the lack of properties a property.
Suppose we remove all the particles and any possible non-particulate energy from some unbounded region of space. Then we have
no mass, no energy, or any other physical property. This includes space and time, if you accept that these are relational
properties that depend on the presence of matter to be meaningful.
While we can never produce this physical nothing in practice, we have the theoretical tools to describe a system with no particles.
The methods of quantum field theory provide the means to move mathematically from a state with n particles to a state of more
or fewer particles, including zero particles. If an n-particle state can be described, then so can a state with n = 0.
Let us start with a monochromatic electromagnetic field, which is described quantum mechanically as system of n photons of
equal energy E. The mathematical description of the field is equivalent to a harmonic oscillator whose quantum solution is
a series of energy levels equally spaced like the rungs of a ladder by an amount E, each rung representing a field with one
more photon than the field represented by the rung below. Stepping down the ladder you find that the bottom rung corresponding
to a field of zero photons is not zero energy but rather E/2. This is called the zero-point energy.
{Indeed and this defines the Planck-Boson or Planck-String as the minimum 'harmonic oscillator' with a seeming paradox.
E=kT/2=mc2/2=hf/2 implies a mass-energy equivalent (or photon mass) at an absolute minimum temperature
T=2E/k=hf/k=mc2/k=0.
Clearly, all of the above holds true IFF both frequency eigenstate f and mass eigenstate m are 0 for T=0. But this seems to
contradict the eigenstate of the Planck-String for the Planck parameters, i.e. the Planck-Length of so 10-33cm
and a Planck-Mass of so 1.7x10-5 grams at a Planck-Temperature of so 1032Kelvin.
The solution is the 'particle' which defines the n=0 eigenstate. But read on.}
This result is true for all bosons, particles that have zero or integral spin. On the other hand, fermions that have half-integral
spin, such as the electron and quark, have a zero-point energy of -E/2 (negative energy is no problem in relativistic quantum
mechanics; in fact, it is required by the simple mathematical fact that a square root has two possible signs).
In the current universe, bosons outnumber fermions by a factor of a billion. This has led people to conclude that the vacuum
energy of the universe, identified with the zero point energy remaining after all matter is removed, is very large. A simple
calculation indicates that the energy density of the vacuum is 120 orders of magnitude greater than its experimental upper
limit. Clearly this estimate is wrong. This calculation must be one of the worst in scientific history! Since a non-particulate
vacuum's energy density is proportional to Einstein's cosmological constant, this is called the cosmological constant problem.
Instead of using numbers from the current universe, we can visualize a vacuum with equal numbers of bosons and fermions. Such
a vacuum might have existed at the very beginning of the big bang. Indeed this is exactly what is to be expected if the vacuum
out of which the universe emerged was supersymmetric-that is made no distinction between bosons and fermions.
This suggests a more precise definition of nothing. Nothing is a state that is the simplest of all conceivable states. It
has no mass, no energy, no space, no time, no spin, no bosons, no fermions-nothing.
{Now Stenger is getting there. The correct cosmology is the eigenstate of a 0-Selfstate bifurcating into opposites,
say plus and minus SELFSTATES, which as yet have nothing to do with energy definitions as in the above commentary.
The key is ANTIMATTER as the minus selfstate EMERGING from ANTIRADIATION as a precursive minus selfstate. This is profound,
as it shows from first principles why no observable 'naturally preexistent' antimatter is observed in the universe. The observed
antimatter, say positron jets, are always associated with pairproduction, which requires the presence of MASS to allow the
RADIATION (say gamma photon) to decay into opposite mass/inertia carriers.
Now ANTIRADIATION DOES NOT EXIST, as the photon (and other massless gauge ' virtual particles' ) is said to be its own ANTIPARTICLE.
Introducing mass then defines the antiparticular eigenstate as a consequence, say matter and antimatter 'particles'. There
are no Antiphotons - or are there?
So the observed and measured universe containing matter and antimatter in apparently unequal proportions was not always so.
We know that radiation can produce matter-antimatter pairings of equal energies, but opposite charges.
The postulate of Quantum Relativity is, that ANTIRADIATION BECAME the energy known and measured as MASS and precisely at the
beginning of the universe as a MATERIAL and physical first cause.
Antiradiation still exists as a SUPPRESSED template at the core of all mass carrying aka inertial 'particles'. It is the reason
for the Higgs Scalar symmetry breaking of the gauge-particles. And because the template exists, antimatter can be produced
under the necessary and sufficient boundary conditions engaging ALL FOUR elementary interactions: electromagnetic, gravitational
and nuclear.
BUT BECAUSE ANTIRADIATION is suppressed, NO ANTIMATTER exists in its natural eigenstate. The symmetry describing this, is
the manifestation or BIRTH of MASS in conjunction with the Graviton-Gauge AFTER an 'earlier' cosmos of pure Radiation+Antiradiation
HAD in fact existed for a very specific TIMEINTERVAL - namely the time of t=T=m=f=0 to the Planck-Parameters given before.
Technically, this is the 'time' before the superstrings manifested in a de Broglie Inflation, the latter ending so 3.33x10-31
seconds after NullTime to manifest the Big Bang of Einstein and the Quantum Physics of Heisenberg, Bohr, Schroedinger, Dirac
and co. But read on.}
Then why is there something rather than nothing? Because something is the more natural state of affairs and is thus more likely
than nothing-more than twice as likely according to one calculation. We can infer this from the processes of nature where
simple systems tend to be unstable and often spontaneously transform into more complex ones. Theoretical models such as the
inflationary model of the early universe bear this out.
{Beautifully comprehended. The universe is doubled in its template of the Planck-String aka the size of the universe
as its 'singularity. Because it is doubled, the Moebian connectivity can manifest using the dimensional hierarchies and particularly
the surface topologies. The doubling of a 0 energy state still PRESERVES the 0-eigenstate BUT in ENERGY (as defined by the
dimensionless Planck-Stoney-Parameters in collectivity, say the Alpha finestructures) the 0+0=0 becomes mathematically inductive
as 1+1=2 and the additive identity x+(-x)=0 as well as the binary definition for 01 transforming into 10=2decimal
- simplicity indeed and hence the MATERIAL UNIVERSE EMERGES from its own 'singularity'.}
Consider the example of the snowflake. Our experience tells us that a snowflake is very ephemeral, melting quickly to drops
of liquid water that exhibit far less structure. But that is only because we live in a relatively high temperature environment,
where collisions with molecules in thermal motion reduce the fragile arrangement of crystals to a simpler liquid. Energy is
required to destroy the structure of a snowflake.
But consider an environment where the ambient temperature is well below the melting point of ice, as it is in most of the
universe far from the highly localized effects of stellar heating. In such an environment, any water vapor would readily crystallize
into complex structures. Snowflakes would be eternal, or at least will remain intact until cosmic rays tear them apart.
What this example illustrates is that many simple systems are unstable, that is, have limited lifetimes as they undergo spontaneous
phase transitions to more complex structures of lower energy. Since "nothing" is as simple as it gets, we would not expect
it to be completely stable. In some models of the origin of the universe, the vacuum undergoes a spontaneous phase transition
to something more complicated, like a universe containing matter. The transition nothing-to-something is a natural one, not
requiring any external agent.
As Nobel Laureate physicist Frank Wilczek has put it, "The answer to the ancient question 'Why is there something rather than
nothing?' would then be that 'nothing' is unstable."
{Indeed and the technical elaborations of this will one day be universally known as the 'Breaking of the Primordial
Symmetry' between a Gauge (read Virtual) Radiation template and ITS own Moebian Mirror Image (read Virtual) Antiradiation
blueprint. This today engages the global 'hunt' for the Higgs Boson and other such open questions in contemporary theoretical
physics. Tony B.}
PS.: There is a very important difference between radiation, say a photon produced by accelerating Coulombic Charges - and
'gauge' radiation, known as the 'virtual photons' of Werner Heisenberg. The Heisenberg photons are COLOURCHARGED and require
the acceleration of such Colour-Charges in analogy to the 'natural - and massproduced' photons (say from the sun in fusion
processes). Then, as all gauges are colourcharged (as are all inertial particles with mass) - the colourcharges can be exchanged
and the quantum physics of QED and QCD emerges from this premise.
Reference: Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing? (Reality Check, Skeptical Briefs July 2006)
|
