Is it possible that the sum total of everything is nothing?

  • Level: Graduate 
  • Thread starter Thread starter erickulcyk
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Sum
Join the discussion
Registration is free. Start your own thread to ask a follow-up.
7 replies · 5K views
erickulcyk
Messages
8
Reaction score
0
Hello all,

I was wondering if you think it's possible that our universe is just very complicated very of expressing nothing. That is, if you took the sum of all the matter, antimatter, energy, anything else that I'm forgetting to mention, and the laws that govern them, could you end up with everything canceling each other out and nothing left? I think the theory is know that everything there is was contained in the big bang and it just expanded to form the universe. For Instance, we could say there were x things at the time of the big bang, so if you summed everything together today there would still be x things. Is it possible that there was 0 things at the time the the big bang, and 0= x-x. We can then say x = z^2-y+x+y-z^2 and so on... So we build a universe from nothing, aided by the plus and minus (which I think would be universal expansion and gravity respectively). Does this make sense or am I missing something here?

Thanks for your input,

Eric
 
Astronomy news on Phys.org
I suppose it could be if matter and anti matter were created out of nothing it would balance.

I don't think I have seen anything made of anti matter yet though, so that's speculation on my part.
 
This question is more philosophical than scientific, as your second statement
"That is, if you took the sum of all the matter, antimatter, energy, anything else that I'm forgetting to mention, and the laws that govern them, could you end up with everything canceling each other out and nothing left?"
is inherently impossible to quantify.
 
Charlatanza said:
... for every proton there is a electron and a neutron...

That is not true at all. (Not hitting you, just saying facts)
 
Yeah but then who made the rule that x-x = 0?

You can't say that all the laws of the Universe sum up to zero, because "sum" is also a law. You can't escape it.
 
This thread is silly.