The Ultimate Question: What Created the Universe?

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the philosophical and scientific inquiries into the origins of the universe, particularly questioning what preceded the Big Bang and the nature of existence and non-existence. Participants explore various theories, historical perspectives, and conceptual arguments related to creation, existence, and the implications of nothingness.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Debate/contested
  • Conceptual clarification

Main Points Raised

  • Some participants question how existence can arise from nothing, referencing a lineage of creation from parents to ancestors.
  • Historical perspectives are introduced, such as Aristotle's Unmoved Mover and Kant's critique of infinite regress and the concept of a first cause.
  • Modern theories like quantum gravity are mentioned, with Martin Bojowald proposing a "mirror world" and Lee Smolin suggesting an evolutionary model of universe creation through black holes.
  • Several participants assert that nothing does not exist, arguing that existence is a fundamental state, while others challenge this by discussing the conceptual validity of nothingness.
  • There is a debate over the logical implications of measuring nothingness, with some asserting that if nothing cannot be measured, it cannot be said to exist.
  • Participants express differing definitions of nothingness, with some claiming it cannot exist while others argue that the concept of nothingness must exist to be coherent.
  • Arguments are made regarding the existence of non-existence, with some asserting that non-existence can be conceptualized while others refute this idea.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants do not reach a consensus, with multiple competing views on the nature of existence, the validity of nothingness, and the implications of various philosophical arguments. The discussion remains unresolved, with ongoing debates about the definitions and implications of existence and non-existence.

Contextual Notes

Limitations include differing interpretations of philosophical concepts, unresolved definitions of nothingness, and the speculative nature of proposed theories regarding the universe's origins.

  • #31
unscientific said:
Any opinion would be greatly appreciated.

Our Universe is massively non-linear. Some non-linear systems have "critical points" which qualitatively change the behavior of the system when it's pushed pass this critical point. Look up "Catastrophe Theory" on the web. Think of water changing to ice at zero C. Know the talk about Global Warming and the "tipping point"? Tons more all around us. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to suppose the Universe itself was created by such a "nudge" of some "pre-existence" pass it's critical point: The Universe, from such a perspective, then precipitates out of a critical point transition of a pre-existence.
 
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  • #32
A question that requires thinking. What is the " original temperature " of an object? Most people would reply with a vague answer stating the current room temperature. Have u ever wondered what is the " original " temperature of an object? And does water turn to ice at 0 degrees or melt at 0 degrees?:biggrin:
 
  • #33
The original temperature is what ever you want it to be. Just like in special rel. you set the frame you want to be looking from. And with gravitational potential energy you choose the most logical 0-point.
 
  • #34
Sorry to come to the conversation so late. I was bored and googled for philosophy and found this cool site.

What created the big bang? I have been reading a lot on string theory and found a great site with no reading required to get started:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/program.html

(I like videos) :smile:

Ok - so let's say string theory is real and strings in the 10th dimension caused the 4 dimensions we know of to come into existence. It still doesn't really answer the essence of the question. Where did the strings come from?

The question will just get deeper and deeper, but its the same question. What created the first thing?

Even the God answer doesn't solve it... Ok - let's say God created the first thing. Then God becomes the first thing, so what created God?

Its a great question and one that I don't think we will ever be able to answer unless we can accept that something has always been there.
 
  • #35
What created the first thing?

From my deep look into this - The answer would be nothing.
 
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  • #36
unscientific said:
I have come to believe that most adults, take the world just as it is. They never dare to explore beyond the limits, the study of how " everything " began. They just sit in their sofa, be a couch potato, and take everything as it seems!

I agree with the feeling you convey. I believe everybody comprehends this topic though, and they also agree with you and think that most people don't think about it.
 
  • #37
the way I look at it is this: There must be some sort of notion of something existing forever, something that had no beginning. Ya, sounds odd, but I think it is necessary. If the universe was created by two colliding branes, then how did the branes get there but from previous brane collisions ad infinitum? If LQG concludes that the universe existed in a "negative" form leading up to the big bang, don't negative numbers also go off to infinity? If there is a finite timespan of the universe in both directions in time, then the universe oscillates back and forth forever. If the universe had a definite beginning out of nothing at all, then you can say that God created it out of nothing because he has the power to do so by definition, and also by definition, God had no biginning either. So whether you believe in God or not, the way I see it, you must believe that something (God or the universe<--not what happened from the BB, but pre BB theories) had no beginning.

Although I have my own theory. The universe has existed forever, but God put it there. The big bang is continuously occurring, and it is the only "white hole"--meaning the opposite of a black hole--in the universe. The singularity of the BB is multiply connected to all other singularities in the universe (which are black holes), and all particles are singularities with even horizons. General relativity is a statistical distribution theory which averages out all the singularities in a given frame. Black holes as we know them today are thought of as copiously massive things, but I think it's all relative when you change your frame to look at a single particle on a small scale, it would look pretty much the same. The Einstein-Rosen bridge was an attempt to apply GR to an electron, and the solution was a multiply connected singularity, my only change is that all particles are multiply connected to the same thing, the BB. Therefore space-time flows into all particles and flows out of the BB. You may notice that I say it "flows", well that's because I've given space-time the same property as the Higgs field, and that means we deal with vector fields rather than scalar fields, so we can speak of gravity as an accelerating flow of space-time toward a singularity. We are in a part of the universe that has been coasting away from the BB for some time now, but we're traveling along in our local space-time frame that was emmitted from the BB, so it seems as though the BB happened a long time and distance ago, but it is still occurring, and we are closer to the BB than we think, in fact, we are made of particles, so we are "touching" it. of course, at the event horizon, light could orbit forever, and on the quantum scale, that's how I see things. An electron is a space-time singularity, and there is a single stable configuration for an electric field to orbit, and due to Maxwell's induced current, a balled up electric field is essentially a stationary charge, and since it is "orbiting" it has a magnetic moment in the form of spin. So, there are stable field configurations which don't get sucked into the singularities and give the properties of all the elementary particles, and that's why we aren't sucked into the BB. Somehow, mass is quantized too... and the strong and weak forces, well ahh... I still got to think about that one.
 
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  • #38
cornernote said:
Sorry to come to the conversation so late. I was bored and googled for philosophy and found this cool site.

What created the big bang? I have been reading a lot on string theory and found a great site with no reading required to get started:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/program.html

(I like videos) :smile:

Ok - so let's say string theory is real and strings in the 10th dimension caused the 4 dimensions we know of to come into existence. It still doesn't really answer the essence of the question. Where did the strings come from?

The question will just get deeper and deeper, but its the same question. What created the first thing?

Even the God answer doesn't solve it... Ok - let's say God created the first thing. Then God becomes the first thing, so what created God?

Its a great question and one that I don't think we will ever be able to answer unless we can accept that something has always been there.

After asking the question "what created whatever" over and over you would evetually come to something which is eternal, is and forever will be. Strings themselfs could be eternal.
 
  • #39
Gelsamel Epsilon said:
After asking the question "what created whatever" over and over you would evetually come to something which is eternal, is and forever will be. Strings themselfs could be eternal.


This is self contradictory. Why can't we ask "what created.." questions about strings (physicists do, but don't get any accepted answers), and then reach, by your unsupported assertion, an unstrung stringer?

Generally reason fails us in these questions. We can't rule out either the first cause or the infinite regress.
 
  • #40
selfAdjoint said:
Generally reason fails us in these questions. We can't rule out either the first cause or the infinite regress.

yes, well put.

1. God has existed forever
2. The universe has existed forever
3. both 1 and 2 combined

those three are the only possible answers.
 
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  • #41
Nope there is one more possibility. Greek philosophers thought that there must be a basic, a funfamental substance in all things.
 
  • #42
What universe?
 
  • #43
We can't rule out either the first cause or the infinite regress.
This is quite true at this time. Many will choose and just run with it, and see where it takes them. I for one picked first cause and came up with nothing literally. Yep ... Nothing is the first cause. Don't make any sense? Of course not. That's because the universe is a contradiction.
 
  • #44
Jonny_trigonometry said:
yes, well put.

1. God has existed forever
2. The universe has existed forever
3. both 1 and 2 combined

those three are the only possible answers.
There is at least one other :

4. Time is finite but unbounded

Best Regards
 

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