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StateOfTheEqn
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I have been following Quantum Cosmology since Hawking's A Brief history of Time first appeared. That inspired me to attempt to drill down to the technical papers involved. I also made use of the book by Hawking and Penrose, The Nature of Space and Time.
Very broadly speaking there seems to be two approaches: quantum tunneling from nothing (Vilenkin and others) and the no boundary proposal (Hawking and others).
About a year ago, there appeared a paper On 'Nothing' by Brown and Dahlen where they discuss what we mean by 'nothing' in Quantum Cosmology. Link . That paper has exposed difficulties with both 'tunneling from nothing' and the 'no boundary' approach.
To quote from the abstract:
Very broadly speaking there seems to be two approaches: quantum tunneling from nothing (Vilenkin and others) and the no boundary proposal (Hawking and others).
About a year ago, there appeared a paper On 'Nothing' by Brown and Dahlen where they discuss what we mean by 'nothing' in Quantum Cosmology. Link . That paper has exposed difficulties with both 'tunneling from nothing' and the 'no boundary' approach.
To quote from the abstract:
the Hawking-Turok instanton does not mediate the quantum creation of a universe.