"One creates from nothing. If you try to create from something you're just changing something. So in order to create something you first have to be able to create nothing." -Werner ErhardOne of the oldest adages in existence is you can't get something for nothing, as over a million websites will tell you, including not-so-subtly, cartoonstock.
And, most often when people bring this up to me, it's in an attempt to prove the existence of God -- and the insufficiency of the Big Bang -- by pointing to the Universe.
(Image credit: chaospet.)
Well, let's take this question as seriously as our knowledge allows us to. (And by that, I mean physically, rather than philosophically or theologically.) In physics, can you get something for nothing? And if so, what can you and can't you get?
In many ways, yes, you can. In fact, in many ways, getting something when you have nothing is unavoidable! (Although you can't necessarily get anything you want.)
For example, take a box and empty it, so that all you've got is some totally empty space, like above. An ideal, perfect, empty vacuum. Now, what's in that box?
Did you guess nothing? Well, it turns out that empty space isn't so empty.
One of the consequences of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle -- that you can't know a quantum state's energy exactly for a finite duration of time -- means that when you're talking about very short time intervals, there are large uncertainties in the energy of a system. Over short enough timescales, the energies are large enough that particle-antiparticle pairs wink in-and-out of existence all the time!
"That's crazy talk," you say. Prove it!
And they did.
Take two identical, uncharged, parallel metal plates, and put them close to one another. The vacuum fluctuations in between the plates cause there to be a pressure pushing the plates together. This isn't the gravitational force or an electromagnetic force, but a force due to empty space itself.
This experiment -- first done in 1948 but repeated many times (under many conditions) -- was a rousing success, and has many immediate, far-reaching and fantastic consequences.
Black holes decay! (Image credit: thinkquest.)
The space near a black hole is, of course, filled with these particle-antiparticle pairs, just like space everywhere else. But create a pair close to the event horizon, and one of the two can fall in! The other one, being outside the event horizon, can escape, carrying energy away, and becoming real. These particles that escape are known as Hawking radiation.
They provide the seeds for all the structure in our Universe!
When the Universe inflates, or expands exponentially (before the Big Bang), these quantum fluctuations also expand, and get stretched across the Universe faster than they can annihilate one another. These fluctuations show up as regions with slightly more (for positive fluctuations) or less (for negative ones) energy, which then grow into structure (like clusters, galaxies, and stars) and voids as the Universe ages.
(Image credit: CLEF-SSH.)
And if you start with enough energy, you can take all of the real matter and antimatter pairs that exist, and create more matter than antimatter, giving us a Universe where we have something, today, rather than nothing.
Now, that's what we know we can get, even from nothing. But there are many things we can't do, either practically or theoretically: violate charge or energy conservation, decrease the total entropy of the Universe, or figure out where our initially inflating Universe came from. (Yet!) But we definitely can get something for nothing; quantum field theory not only allows it, it demands it. But it remains to be seen whether we can get everything for nothing. If we ever figure it out, I'll make sure you're among the first to know!
Comments
Posted by: Randy Owens | February 2, 2011 10:18 PM
Is there any reason why the antimatter particle of the pair should form preferentially on the near side to the event horizon? If not, then wouldn't matter and antimatter be added at roughly equal rates both to the black hole and to the rest of the universe? Wouldn't they be more or less stable systems?
Posted by: Kym | February 2, 2011 10:56 PM
The obvious difference between the experiment showing the Casimir effect and the universe at the time of the Big Bang is that those metal plates are in an existing space-time framework. In what sort of a space-time framework did the Big Bang take place, and how did that come to exist?
Posted by: Scott Brickner | February 2, 2011 11:09 PM
Kind of like Scott's asking, the described effect requires "space" to initiate which is technically not the same thing as "nothing" since "space" is and has energy while "nothing" is not and has not. A supposed pre-universe condition of nothing at all has no space and perhaps not even a singularity (which is something). "Nothing" has no energy and by definition does not exist at all. Perhaps this is why our current physics become as yet insufficient at "zero".
Call this comment a something for nothing if you wish.
Posted by: Lloyd Hargrove | February 3, 2011 12:10 AM
Ethan:
Getting something from nothing makes me think about the cold fusion experiments by Fleishmann and Pons. How they claimed to get more energy out then put in along with an excess of tritium. I would love it if you would do a write up on the topic. I am wondering what you think about the experiment. After all it kinda goes against everything we think we know about physics and the Universe we live in.
Posted by: crd2 | February 3, 2011 1:18 AM
@2: sure, Hawking radiation would be a mix of matter and antimatter, but both would carry energy away from the black hole and cause it to evaporate. Antimatter doesn't have negative energy.
Posted by: Morgan | February 3, 2011 5:18 AM
OK, still don't get this. If both matter and antimatter particles have mass then why doesn't the black hole expand rather than dissolve?
Why doesn't Hawking radiation lead to the universe having one extra particle and the black hole having one extra particle?
Posted by: Yossarian | February 3, 2011 6:05 AM
OK, still don't get this. If both matter and antimatter particles have mass then why doesn't the black hole expand rather than dissolve?
Why doesn't Hawking radiation lead to the universe having one extra particle and the black hole having one extra particle?
Posted by: Yossarian | February 3, 2011 6:05 AM
@6. But doesn't each antimatter particle that radiates away from the black hole have, on average, a corresponding matter particle radiating away elsewhere. Whether they annihilate together or separately the net energy when they do annihilate (on each side of the event horizon) is zero, isn't it?
Posted by: Kym | February 3, 2011 8:28 AM
your usual level of fantastic. thanks for a great post.
Posted by: David | February 3, 2011 8:39 AM
@Yossarian: Remember that mass is a form of energy: E = mc^2. So if one of the virtual particles escapes and becomes a real particle, that much energy is lost to the black hole. The process is not that important for stellar mass black holes: it would take several orders of magnitude longer than the lifetime of the universe for such a black hole to dissolve by Hawking radiation. However, certain cosmological theories over the years have predicted the existence of microscopic black holes, for which Hawking radiation is a significant effect.
@Kym: Although the particles being radiated away from the black hole are a mixture of matter and antimatter, they are also being radiated in different directions at different times, so there is no guarantee that the escaping particles will annihilate each other (remember, they have to have an initial radial velocity close to c to get out). Even if they do, the resulting photons will generally not be directed toward the black hole (momentum as well as energy must be conserved; yes, photons have momentum, but that's a different post).
Posted by: Eric Lund | February 3, 2011 9:28 AM
I was totally thinking the same thing as #7/8. I'm certainly no physicist, but the black hole swallowing one of the pair of spontaneously created particle/anti-particle should add mass to the black hole, right? Right? I know much of this stuff is counter-intuitive by nature, but this seems... I don't know. Entanglement and all the other weird quantum things I've ever heard of are weird enough, but I can somehow accept them. That added mass = dissipation, is infinitely more perplexing to me.
Posted by: cgauthier | February 3, 2011 9:39 AM
"That added mass = dissipation, is infinitely more perplexing to me."
The black hole didn't gain mass, a particle escaped -- antimatter is just matter traveling backward in time. You see it as falling in, but the particle sees itself escaping. :)
(Don't ask me what happens when normal half of the pair falls in and the anti escapes -- I don't have a smart-ass answer for that one...yet).
The problem with QM is epistemological – our standard language describes events common to our experience; it’s entirely inadequate to explain things beyond our experience like QM or heaven or anything else outside The Matrix we live in…
Posted by: Doug | February 3, 2011 10:11 AM
To be fair, I notice you link to Wikipedia, but, again, non-physicist here. Numbers, letters and squiggly lines, arranged in some esoteric code, are no explanation for the layman.
The article does mention something about the black hole losing energy when the escaping particle/anti-particle escapes, but I don't see how that counteracts the addition of the other particle/anti-particle's mass.
And if it happens to be the anti-particle which is taken into the black hole, the energy from the annihilation w/ the black hole's matter should still remain in the black hole, right? And either way, particles and anti-particles should be entering and escaping the hole at proportions that are roughly 50/50, right? I mean, it's either heads or tails.
I don't know. I just don't think the understanding of Hawking Radiation should be taken for granted. And I don't think the Wikipedia article does a great job at explaining it to the laymen*.
*Or, I could be much denser than your typical laymen. Perhaps so dense, that, as virtual particle/anti-particle pairs are separated at my event horizon and I absorb one of each said pair, I lose mass and will eventually dissipate.
Posted by: cgauthier | February 3, 2011 10:17 AM
I've never, ever, ever ever heard that explanation for antimatter ever ever. Sorry, and not to call you a crank or liar, but I need a bit more confirmation on that idea. Wikipedia says nothing about antimatter being "matter traveling backward in time".
When matter/antimatter annihilate, are the gamma rays created travelling forward, or backward in time? Or both? That sounds even more ridiculous than what I was originally questioning.
Any second opinions?
Posted by: cgauthier | February 3, 2011 10:29 AM
Also, Doug, I know that language is a poor substitute for the math, regarding QM, but I'm pretty sure language is all there is to descibe Heaven. You know, seeing as how QM has math and real experimental results and heaven was invented as an idea, using language, and has no phenomena to see or math to measure it by.
Posted by: cgauthier | February 3, 2011 10:36 AM
My understanding of how the black hole is dissipating energy is that the energy to create the particle/antiparticle pair comes from the black hole's gravitational energy. Normally they'd annihilate and return the energy but when one is captured by the black hole and the other escapes, the black hole only gets half the energy back.
This is probably a grossly simplified explanation as I'm not a physicist.
Posted by: Ciaran | February 3, 2011 10:48 AM
If I understand this, mathematically, a positron can be modeled as an electron moving backwards in time, and the equations work out. Richard Feynman worked on this. At one point, he suggested that all the matter in the universe might be a single electron moving backward and forward; later he said he had proven to his own satisfaction that there had to be at least two particles.
However, I am not a physicist, and I hope one of the physicists here will give more detail.
Meta: Wikipedia can be a good starting place, but it's far from complete (even if it aspires to that). The absence of something from Wikipedia doesn't mean it's invalid.
Posted by: Vicki | February 3, 2011 10:56 AM
Since the Casimir force arises from the exclusion of electromagnetic modes from the space in between the conducting plates (they have to be conducting), I think it's fair to say that the Casimir force is an electromagnetic force.
Posted by: Tom | February 3, 2011 4:19 PM
Great comments and further inquiry. I am in the camp of using the ideas, metaphors and the thinking process of physicist to help regular people in the real world make better decisions. The big point I take away from this is that is never a state of "nothing."
Energy exist everywhere in the universe (even down to the strings of string theory) and so something is always possible to create by tranforming the energy that is always there. This has parallels in life from the inventiveness of the entrepreneur to "reinventing" ourselves when it appears all was lost.
Scientist, like Brian Greene, who was recently in our area are also advocating that science become more a part of our everyday lives in improving the quality of our thinking.
My book, The Art of Quantum Planning, attempts to break this ground for businesses and organizations. We can't all be physicist, but we can think like them a lot more than we
give ourselves credit for. This kind of thinking will help us continue to create a new and better world, right here on Earth.
Posted by: Gerald | February 3, 2011 5:05 PM
Of course, you can't get more out of a black hole via Hawking radiation than fell into it in the first place (the black hole evaporates as soon as the two quantities become equal) so it's not really something for nothing is it? More like a capacitor or a battery.
Posted by: Ian Kemmish | February 3, 2011 5:30 PM
There is in fact about a 1% probability-preference for matter over anti-matter, it is NOT in fact 50/50. Scientists are just beginning to understand how that comes to be: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=muons-mesons
Posted by: Calliopejane | February 3, 2011 7:01 PM
Great!. The pictures are excellent; I teach physics in HS, and I can use the pix with the story very nicely when I get to QM. I already tell them about virtual particles and Casimir effect, but I always need better illustrations to go with the talk and better talk to go with the pix (I'll cite your site, when I get there)
Posted by: Gary Allan | February 3, 2011 7:05 PM
About the more general particle/anti-particle formation, does that require energy to be present, or can it happen in a case with no background energy? I originally thought that it required energy, but the bit you mentioned about Heisenberg seems to imply that it can happen even without energy (since even if there is no energy on average the uncertainty means there still can be some locally). Is that correct or am I missing something?
Posted by: TheBlackCat | February 3, 2011 7:15 PM
When the Universe inflates, or expands exponentially (before the Big Bang)...
Uh, wut?
Last I heard, "before the Big Bang" is either nonsense (time itself being one product of the BB) or unknowable (BB considered as a cosmic Reset erasing all prior information).
And is there, as another science blogger recently stated, something in common between vacuum energy and "dark" energy causing the universe to expand?
Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | February 3, 2011 10:58 PM
It is very simple, nothing interacting with nothing produces nothing, not something. It is impossible for something to come from nothing. That is the law of logic. Defy logic and you have entered never never land.
Posted by: Chuck Nance | February 3, 2011 11:04 PM
It is not possible to produce something from nothing. Based on logic is won't work. Nothing interacting with nothing equals nothing.
Posted by: Chuck Nance | February 3, 2011 11:06 PM
Hey Chuck, did you miss the part where the Casimir effect was demonstrated experimentally? The real, actual world really, actually works this way.
In the face of disconfirming evidence, don't you think you should reassess your position?
Posted by: Marc | February 3, 2011 11:23 PM
The problem is that you are conflating two conceptually different things: "Nothing at all -- no space, time, energy, or physical laws", and "a vacuum in which the laws of quantum mechanics operate".
Or in other words, you are committing the logical fallacy of equivocation. You may be doing so inadvertently, but you are doing it nonetheless. Science has both evidence and correct logic.
In order to make your argument work, you have to show that there really was "nothing at all" before the big bang -- no space, time, energy, or physical laws whatsoever.
Good luck with that!
Posted by: Owlmirror | February 4, 2011 12:24 AM
"Hey Chuck, did you miss the part where the Casimir effect was demonstrated experimentally? The real, actual world really, actually works this way.
In the face of disconfirming evidence, don't you think you should reassess your position?"
I think physicians should be more careful in their explanations. This whole idea that something can come from nothing doesn't just defy god, but it defies science. Something coming from nothing should be an observation we're still trying to untangle and explain. It's a fact that it seems as though something comes from nothing, but if you have any appreciation for logic and reason, you should open your mind to a possible explanation. I don't see why hidden(from us) dimensions can't account for the possible interaction that leads to the "spontaneous" creation of antimatter/matter particles. Doesn't dark matter alone open you up to a possible explanation for the effect in question? I know it seems far fetched, but isn't it more far fetched to say something comes from nothing? I hate when people try to draw attention to science with counterintuitive facts about reality, because those aren't realities...they're the next deep questions we need to answer. It's great when the idea that something comes from nothing is presented as a question to be answered...which implies it isn't really nothing. Something comes from something. Open your mind up to an explanation, otherwise you chose faith over wonder.
Posted by: Marc A | February 4, 2011 12:41 AM
John Baez explains a little more about Hawking radiation here, and says that the usual particle/antiparticle explanation is not so great, or at least not obviously connected to the actual theory. To summarize (if I've understood it correctly) the curvature of spacetime near the black hole means that the lowest energy state near the hole is different than the lowest energy state far away -- what we normally call "vacuum". From far away the area near the black hole appears to be at a higher energy state, and is thus emitting energy.
Posted by: wisnij
| February 4, 2011 12:44 AM
Hey the Casimir Force!
I've got a question about that one. I was reading about this one crazy magnetar thing and it said that magnetars have such strong magnetic fields that they polarize the vacuum...huh? Is that related to the Casimir Force? I mean, since the plates have to be conductive, I thought it might be what the article was referring to, somehow. Is it?
Posted by: Thomas M | February 4, 2011 1:33 AM
Non-physicist here. Do vacuum fluctuations have what might be described as a wavelength? Does the distance between the two plates matter and could they be pushed together faster than gravity could account for?
Posted by: Steve | February 4, 2011 1:46 AM
It's misleading to conclude that we get something from nothing when the conclusion is based on a misconception about "empty" space being nothing.
A vaccuum is in reality never empty but necessarily has a minimum level of energy, which is what is manifesting as virtual particle pairs. So we're not getting something from nothing but something from something.
Posted by: troels.jakobsen
| February 4, 2011 1:47 AM
"Law of logic?" What the hell? Are we talking about inference rules for grammatical statements, or are we talking about the ontology of the universe here? Because "laws of logic" refer to inference rules, not stuff about it being "impossible for something to come from nothing."
Or are you suggesting that your claim that it is impossible for something to come from nothing is some sort of tautology (based perhaps on simply defining nothing to mean "that from which something cannot come")? If so, hopefully you understand why arguments from tautology are vacuous -- a tautology is the nothing from which no inference of substance comes.
Posted by: AL | February 4, 2011 2:00 AM
Thanks Ethan just the answer I needed. Are we any closer to understanding the state of affairs before the planck time? Do you think string theory or loop quantum gravity have any future as explanations?
Posted by: Shane Norman | February 4, 2011 3:52 AM
Frankly, I'm not convinced that the vacuum has particles popping in and out of existance. Even in the Casimir effect, you have to introduce plates or something else to even measure it. How's that for a vacuum? Come on!
Posted by: Raskolnikov | February 4, 2011 4:52 AM
about hawking radiation :
It makes no difference if the matter particle escapes and the ant-matter particle falls in or otherwise. The black hole loses energy.
Imagine 2 electron-positron( anti-electron) pairs being created through quantum fluctuations at the edge of the event horizon. In one pair the electron falls into the black hole and the positron escapes.
In the other pair it's the reverse. The net result is that now there is an extra electron and a positron with each a mass of about 0.5 MeV/c² (antiparticles don't have anti-mass). Schould those two particles ever meet eachother they will anihilate producing a pair of gamma rays with a combined energy of about 1MeV. Conservation of energy tells you this energy has to come from somewhere : the black hole.
Since mass and energy are equivalent the black hole lost mass.
Posted by: Frank Van Bragt | February 4, 2011 5:32 AM
There is an alternative explanation to the Hawkins radiation, seen as quantum tunneling effect through the event horizon of the black hole. As a particle approaches the e.h. from the "inside" the possibility of that particle being in the "outside" increases. The particle-antiparticle explanation is just complementary to this.
Posted by: claschx | February 4, 2011 6:24 AM
I confess this struck me as amusing:
@14
Learning is like a baby drinking milk; it requires at least a tiny bit of participation on the part of the baby.
It only takes a few seconds of time to notice that the section linked carries the heading "Calculations" and is by necessity likely to contain the mathematical details. Another second or two of scrolling down the page would have led you to the section titled "Analogies" which includes the math-free, layman-friendly bits you were (ostensibly) looking for.
Mathematics is the natural language of our universe, and it's quite often not hubris, arrogance, or an attempt to obfuscate when physicists use it while trying to explain physical concepts. In fact, almost anyone willing to try can actually learn quite a lot of the math basics from wikipedia by clicking on some of the words they aren't familiar with until they reach their comfort level, and working back up from there. You might even find the experience nourishing!
Posted by: melior | February 4, 2011 8:24 AM
As we continue down the statistical side of physics, I continue to have a nagging question that rattles around in the back of my head.
Are we really sure that this stuff is random? In the Casimir plate described above, we can measure some force between the plates. But the plates are isolated to the best of our ability and understanding of that isolation. Are we certain that the plates are isolated from all possible outside effects?
A few hundred years ago, noone understood light outside of the wavelengths we can see. It seemed like magic (or randomness) that some animals could see things when there was no light (that we could see), or easily see things that looked to be near-perfect camouflage to us.
I understand we are able to use the principles of quantum mechanics to do work today, but ancient peoples were able to figure out how to make bronze and other combined metals without understanding the atom too.
Root of the question is this: Are things at the quantum level truly as random as we think, or are there additional forces at work that we have yet to perceive and account for?
Posted by: unbound | February 4, 2011 8:41 AM
Marc A: Something coming from nothing should be an observation we're still trying to untangle and explain.
Dr. Siegel DID explain it to you. The universe does not make a distinction between "nothing" and "equal and opposite virtual particles." The two states are equivalent, and on a the scale of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle a "piece" of the universe can flip back and forth between the nothnig state and the something state. Get it out of your head right now that the nothing state is the baseline and the something state is a deviation from this baseline; they are quantum mechanically equivalent.
The Casimir plates do not create this effect, they simply measure the pressure from it. Take away the plates and it still happens: you just have no way of measuring it any more.
The bit about QM demanding that we get something from nothing is obvious once you grok that the two states (vacuum, equal and opposite virtual partices) are equivalent. For a microscopic space to remain "nothing" for all time and never produce virtual particles would be like flipping a (fair) coin every nanosecond for the entire age of the universe and always getting heads. That ain't going to happen.
Now for something completely different...
crd2 @5: Getting something from nothing makes me think about the cold fusion experiments by Fleishmann and Pons...After all it kinda goes against everything we think we know about physics and the Universe we live in.
Pons and Fleishman claimed to have produced fusion. Fusion (and fission) does not create something from nothing, it merely converts mass into energy. The sun does that all the time, as do physicists using particle accelerators.
What makes the P&F claim extroadinary was that they claimed to have produced fusion using a benchtop electrochemical setup, and without the emission of gamma rays. The first claim was extroadinary from an engineering perspective, while the second contradicts the quite extensive understanding we have of tritium fusion. Both claims proved to be irreproducible.
Posted by: eric | February 4, 2011 9:26 AM
"Dr. Siegel DID explain it to you. The universe does not make a distinction between "nothing" and "equal and opposite virtual particles." The two states are equivalent, and on a the scale of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle a "piece" of the universe can flip back and forth between the nothnig state and the something state. Get it out of your head right now that the nothing state is the baseline and the something state is a deviation from this baseline; they are quantum mechanically equivalent.
The Casimir plates do not create this effect, they simply measure the pressure from it. Take away the plates and it still happens: you just have no way of measuring it any more.
The bit about QM demanding that we get something from nothing is obvious once you grok that the two states (vacuum, equal and opposite virtual partices) are equivalent. For a microscopic space to remain "nothing" for all time and never produce virtual particles would be like flipping a (fair) coin every nanosecond for the entire age of the universe and always getting heads. That ain't going to happen."
I'm afraid you're not getting the point. I understand how these two things can be considered one in the same in the framework of a theory, but the fact that you're able to distinguish the two things you say are equivalent makes them unequivalent in "some regard". I know that's vague, but I think I'm being intellectually honest. By the way, the uncertainty principle is based on reality, not the other way around.
Posted by: Marc A | February 4, 2011 10:34 AM
The reason mass is only lost to a blackhole in hawking radiation, never gained (for the quantum mechanics version of never that has some infinitesimal caveat) is that above the limits of heisenberg uncertainty the conservation laws apply. A photon is welcome to turn into a shower of electrons, but it's going to have to collapse back into the equivalent of a photon pretty fast. If a virtual particle is pulled into some neighboring system (in this case, a black hole), then all of its virtual partners are going to have to do something to keep the ledger balanced: this may mean reforming into a particle with less energy than they began with, or "stealing" energy from some other system. It's like musical chairs: while the music is playing the particles dance around, but once the time is up, you've got to find a seat.
Normally when a particle and an antiparticle meet, you get a flash of energy. This doesn't happen in the vacuum, because the energy produced is just offsetting the energy used to create the pair. So when the blackhole pulls one of a vacuum pair in, the pair has a fixed amount of time to account for the energy that created them. The easiest way for this to happen is for one of the pair to find an instance of its antiparticle to collide with. Again, normally this would create a tiny explosion of energy and no mass would be lost, but because this interaction is "balancing the ledger", it occurs with a blip, some particle inside the blackhole no longer exists, and the previously virtual particle that escaped from the black hole has enough energy to continue existing.
Now, either particle is welcome to sacrifice itself for the other. But there particle escaping is heading out towards empty space, and the particle being pulled into the black hole is headed at high speed for a very dense grouping of matter. So the one inside the blackhole is far more likely to find a partner, so hawking radiation will tend to leak from a blackhole for thermodynamic type reasons.
If an action can't be balanced within the limits set by Heisenberg, it just doesn't occur. So if you had a blackhole full of only antimatter, more antimatter would never fall in. Virtual particle pairs on the edge would always fall matter end in, or else re-annihilate. It's a bit odd that the actions of the particle are dictated by events in the future, that you can pay the energy cost after the event has occurred, but that's QM for you.
Posted by: Paul | February 4, 2011 10:46 AM
Marc A: I'm afraid you're not getting the point.
I think you got my goat up with your "something from nothing defies science" comment in @30. This is not the case. It does not defy sience at all; it is perfectly explained by scientific theory.
QM without extra dimensions is perfectly adequate for explaining what's going on. You are right that the two states are detectably different, but this does not prevent the flip from happening. And in fact QM allows all sorts of other equivalent-but-detectably-different flips, too. A >1.022 MeV xray can spontaneously convert into a positron and electron. Solar neutrinos can oscillate (i.e., flip) their flavor. Weird? Yes. Counterintuitive? Yes. Unscientific and defying explanation? Not at all.
Posted by: eric | February 4, 2011 11:11 AM
Posted by: TheBlackCat | February 4, 2011 11:19 AM
As Hobbes would say, the "something can't come from nothing" is an arbitrary decision. Until we have proof of this statement it cannot be taken as fact.
The real problem with this Casimir effect is that it takes vacuum (zero energy) and converts it into energy. When anti-matter and matter collide they create an explosion which releases energy. This would violate the conservation of energy and matter as "empty space" would quickly fill up with excess energy from the explosions.
So this effect must be understood in a different way. For instance, why does it happen between two plates? Is it possible that the Casimir effect is due to the uncertainty principle acting on the matter within the plates?
The other option is that we discover the law of conservation of matter and energy is wrong. This true is an arbitrary definition rather than a statement of empirically proven reality. It is possible that Newton was wrong about this, in the same way that he was wrong about the universality of stable space-time.
Of course if the law is incorrect, and the big bang was created from this effect, then each point of "space" in the universe is a potential new big bang waiting to happen (which would likely be very dangerous). This doesn't make the theory (that the law is incorrect) false, but it does question it.
Posted by: D'n | February 4, 2011 11:22 AM
@ Vicki:
AFAIU some of the early particle descriptions (Dirac's equations) could be interpreted such. Not generally, no, since CP violation and what not appears in actual physics.
@ Pierce R. Butler:
If you follow the link labeled "inflation", Ethan walks you through all that, and IIRC the vacuum/dark energy relation (or look it up in Wikipedia, it's there IIRC), in a series of posts.
Money quote:
"But when inflation came along, all of that changed. No longer could we extrapolate all the way back to a singularity. If we wound the clock of the Universe backwards, we would discover something remarkable. At some point, about 10-30 seconds before we would anticipate running into that singularity, the Universe instead would undergo inflation (in reverse, if we're looking backwards), and we have no evidence for anything that came before it.
The Big Bang, instead of being a singularity, is the set of initial conditions of an extremely hot, dense, expanding Universe that exists immediately after the end of inflation."
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson, OM | February 4, 2011 11:30 AM
The answer is that things at the quantum level are entirely random. If there were any "forces at work" beyond statistical randomness, recognized or not, hypothesized or not, the results would be non-random. Unknown forces would produce unknown results, not random results. "Random" does not mean some particular pattern we don't recognize or understand. Mathematically, it means no pattern at all. And the results of empirical experiments confirm that it is random, not simply "unpredicted" but "unpredictable".
Such is my understanding.
Posted by: tmaxPA | February 4, 2011 11:45 AM
@ Thomas M:
Indirectly.
Vacuum polarization in QED is virtual particle pairs that the field creates and annihilates, which shows up in the theory and is AFAU called self energy of the photon. (Disclaimer: have not studied quantum field theory.)
Vacuum energy is the zero point (lowest state) energy of all particle fields self energy (so not only photons but all other bosons _and_ fermions).
@ Steve:
Yes, those fluctuations are the virtual particle-antiparticle pairs, and particles have all sorts of wavelengths associated to them.
The distance of the plates matter which can be realized by asking what happens if you separate the plates to infinity (no effect). I'm sorry but the gravitation question makes no sense to me, this is a non-gravitational effect.
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson, OM | February 4, 2011 11:45 AM
that's not a problem, that's a solution. the problem is the notion that vacuum has zero energy, because zero is a certainty and Heisenberg rules certainties out. randomly created then rapidly uncreated energy blips fuzzies the edges of that zero so that it'll fit into the uncertainties demanded by quantum mech; this solves a problem.
it only seems to create a problem because we're trying to grok a quantum-scale phenomenon with macroscale intuitions. that doesn't work. the very small just doesn't make that kind of sense, and trying to make it so will only give you a headache while misleading you to the wrong conclusions.
Posted by: Nomen Nescio | February 4, 2011 11:48 AM
@ Raskolnikov:
That is what is observed, and so that is how we nowadays understand vacuum, filled with fields and so particles. How else could it be? :-D
@ unbound, tmaxPA:
"Random" is meaningless without context, I believe you mean stochastic.
But quantum mechanics is deterministic as well (takes states deterministically to states) so truly stochastic but not "truly random" or "unpredictable".
Quantum mechanics denies hidden variables, and besides testing for a LUCA in biology this is among the best tested facts we have. (Bell test experiments at something like 10^-20 uncertainty; I haven't checked though. Universal common ancestor test is ~ 10^-2000 uncertainty ... Evolution rocks!)
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson, OM | February 4, 2011 11:59 AM
When you get life from non-life, then we'll talk, Ethan. M'kay?
Posted by: Laughing Man | February 4, 2011 12:01 PM
Delightful!
And since I think I understand it I presume I don't?
Posted by: Jonn Mero | February 4, 2011 12:08 PM
Is the Werner Erhard you cite at the beginning of the article the same Werner Erhard who created EST? And who said this about L. Ron Hubbard: "I have a lot of respect for L. Ron Hubbard and I consider him to be a genius and perhaps less acknowledged than he ought to be?" If so, what strange bedfellows you keep.
Posted by: Michieux | February 4, 2011 12:24 PM
@ Marc A:
You have got that backwards. We currently observe something, and the idea that when we go back in time we suddenly "get nothing from something" is _the_ counter-intuitive but at times correct statement. But as Siegel explains here, or Vic Stenger in his books, those states are the same type of physics, just observationally different, so no problem.
Oh, and that "defy god" doesn't happen, since we have no evidence for gods.
This is trivial but non-consequential here. Colors can be distinguished by wavelengths so they are nonequivalent (not the same). But equivalently they are equivalent (photons with wavelengths).
@ Chuck Nance, Marc A:
You are both wrong. Science has nothing in common with common sense and philosophical logic.
Common sense is formed by evolution and observation of some phenomena at mesoscales, while science handles all phenomena at all scales (in principle). The first thing you learn at university, at least in physics, is to dump the old bad mindset and learn actual physics. (Well, ideally, some never learn...)
Philosophical-religious logic (aka "truth", or worse, "Truth", in the vernacular) is contingent on context (say, either plane geometry or hyperbolic geometry, either christian gods or hindu gods), while results of science method (facts and theory) are observed to be universal.
Facts and theories, while having quantifiable uncertainty, beats common sense and/or truths hands down.
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson, OM | February 4, 2011 12:33 PM
Billy Preston can teach you all you need to know about nothing from nothing.
Posted by: rob | February 4, 2011 12:47 PM
@ Laughing Man:
Ludicrous, because a) this is spontaneous generation not spontaneous creation, so biology not physics b) spontaneous generation was rejected hundreds of years ago, replaced by evolution at the time of Darwin and Wallace.
Not that it pertain to the subject, m'kay. But we currently know _too much_ about chemical evolution and how it gets systems to biological evolution. The number of potential pathways is too large to zero in on any one specific, it is an embarrassment of riches akin to the recent Kepler results pointing to many paths to planetary systems.
[In fact, I'm looking forward to the constraining of chemical evolution pathways that will take place when we first get to know habitable exoplanets and their environments, later no doubt now (since we found other habitable planets, yay!) inhabited planets and _their_ environments. If we are lucky we can zoom in to how it happened on Earth. If not we will get to know the large number of ways life gets started.]
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson, OM | February 4, 2011 12:48 PM
@Laughing Man
Here is one promising hypothesis. (That video really took the wind out of what I thought might be the unanswerable question of abiogenesis.)Posted by: Cody | February 4, 2011 12:57 PM
@LaughingMan...funny...every time I talk to theists about abiogenesis, they move the goalposts to "you can't get something from nothing."
Take your goal post shifting and place it where the sun don't shine.
Chemistry. Life from non-life is chemistry. That's ALL it is. A chemical reaction that took place about 300 million years after the Earth formed. You don't need scientists with beakers to have chemical reactions, you know. They happen all the time. Organic AND inorganic. In nature.
Just because we haven't teased out the precise equation, that does not then allow you to insert "god did it" there.
And please don't start about "odds". The odds of life arising from non-life on Earth is 100%. A dead-shot certainty. Because we are evidence that it happened.
Just chemistry. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Posted by: Kevin | February 4, 2011 1:50 PM
The Bible is the Word of God. It says so in the Bible, so it's 100% true. (Same argument, different topic.)
So tell me, why isn't it that we are the evidence that alien life seeded this planet as many evolutionists claim?
Posted by: Laughing Man | February 4, 2011 2:03 PM
BTW, if "we're the evidence" that abiogenesis happened, could you please recreate that in a lab for me? Thanks. I'd appreciate it.
Posted by: Laughing Man | February 4, 2011 2:06 PM
shuffling abiogenesis off onto some other planet doesn't make abiogenesis not happen, y'know. (and who are these "many" who hew to panspermia, anyway? i'd like to ask them for their evidence. seems to me that unless they have some, the notion is subject to Occam's razor.)
Posted by: Nomen Nescio | February 4, 2011 2:08 PM
"If I understand this, mathematically, a positron can be modeled as an electron moving backwards in time, and the equations work out."
It makes more sense on the Feynman diagram (where time direction arrows are reversed for anti-matter), for example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Beta_Negative_Decay.svg
Posted by: Doug | February 4, 2011 3:38 PM
Their evidence is as follows:
*ahem*
"we are evidence that it happened"
Posted by: Laughing Man | February 4, 2011 3:54 PM
@ Marc A
The Casimir plates do create the effect. Because they conduct, that places a restriction on the electromagnetic modes that can appear between them (so yes, Steve, the separation matters). QM tells us that an unoccupied mode has a nonzero energy, and a nonexistent mode has no energy. The difference gives us the Casimir force. You need the plates to get rid of the EM modes.
Another really neat thing is that if you put an excited atom in such a cavity, you can affect its relaxation rate. If the emitted photon isn't supported, the atom won't decay.
Defying god (or not) just doesn't enter into the discussion. At all.
Posted by: Tom | February 4, 2011 4:03 PM
For those still kinda confused about the whole black hole/radiation/virtual particles deal, I'll suggest "The Black Hole War" by Leonard Susskind. He does a great job of explaining a lot of these ideas in terms a layman can understand. It does take a bit of patience to get your head wrapped around it. And even after reading it twice, I can't say I have my head fully wrapped around it, as I couldn't really explain it myself. But I'm understand a lot more of it now then I did a year ago before reading it. His other book "The Cosmic Landscape" is a great one too. His theory on "where our universe lies in existance".
Fantastic post btw! Saw this one through Pharyngula. I'll have to visit here more often, Ethan.
Posted by: greame | February 4, 2011 4:45 PM
@15
"I've never, ever, ever ever heard that explanation for antimatter ever ever. Sorry, and not to call you a crank or liar, but I need a bit more confirmation on that idea. "
This is actually correct, I think. Again, check out Black Hole War by Susskind, it does go into a bit of detail on this. And you have to remember that "backwards in time" doesn't really mean you know, the particles traveling back to the 1800's. You have to take into consideration the whole four-dimensional spacetime. In "forward" time, particles spin a specific direction, and like particles always spin in like direction. When it's spinning in the opposite direction, its "going back in time". Imagine a video tape of a person walking. Playing it one way, you can easily see that the tape is going forward, as the person is making recognisable movements. Play that tape backwards, and you can again easily tell the tape is running backwards, because the person on the screen is walking backwards. But if you "watch a video tape" of particles, there's not really any way to tell if the recording is going forwards and backwards, unless you know before hand. Either way.. I don't recall all the specifics, but I'll see if I can look them up tonight and we can get some clarification on it.
Posted by: greame | February 4, 2011 5:26 PM
Laughing Man is a troll you sillies :)
(hence, the name)
Posted by: ng | February 4, 2011 5:33 PM
Thanks for the replies. I think our disagreement is simply my intuition (possibly false) telling me God doesn't play dice. The evidence seems to bear that reality, but I have a hard time believing that's the end of the story. You guys seem to have a better grasp of the actual science in question(I jumped to this board from Pharyngula), but I think you're underestimating my appreciation for the "realities" imposed by QM.
"Oh, and that "defy god" doesn't happen, since we have no evidence for gods.
the fact that you're able to distinguish the two things you say are equivalent makes them unequivalent in "some regard".
This is trivial but non-consequential here. Colors can be distinguished by wavelengths so they are nonequivalent (not the same). But equivalently they are equivalent (photons with wavelengths)."
Ok...I was using the example of God to get under your skin and make you think about what you're saying. I believe it still holds. Einstein didn't disprove Newton, and whoever comes up with a better explanation for why an anti-particle/particle "appears" at a certain(but not that certain, I know, Heisenberg) time and space wouldn't disprove QM. It would be a refinement. I think it's a legitimate question. It might never be answered, but we'll probably never detect other universes(wtv that means)...it doesn't mean there aren't any.
Yes...we perceive different wavelenghts of light as different colors, but those different wavelengths of light being emitted are different for particular reasons. We can explain why this is so...so that's not a very good example.
I guess I should make one thing clear before we go on. I don't believe in anything being actually random. I believe everything that seems random is simply pseudo-random(has an explanation).
I seem to be overstepping according to you. I'd love to know why. Should I just take a QM class and shut up?
Posted by: Marc A | February 4, 2011 5:37 PM
Those who insist on treating the problem as unsolved because space and physical laws are involved here are missing a deeper point about the spontaneity of existence. We have no reason to believe a state of (absolute) nothing is privileged--it's not even clear if such a condition is possible. By contrast the existence of actual things does show that the existence of something is possible. People interested in a serious take on these questions should have a look at Adolf Grunbaum's exchange with Richard Swinburne over his article, "The Poverty of Theistic Cosmology" in the British Journal for Philosophy of Science: Grunbaum, BJPS
Posted by: Bryson Brown | February 4, 2011 6:16 PM
I see the link got stripped. Here it is in plain text:
http://bjps.oxfordjournals.org/content/55/4/561.abstract
Posted by: Bryson Brown | February 4, 2011 6:19 PM
Chuck Nance (No 26) is, of course, correct when he says, 'It is impossible for something to come from nothing.' And there is no observational or experimental evidence to contradict this. These 'particle-antiparticle pairs' have never ever been detected, and they certainly have never been shown to 'wink in-and-out of existence'. (Or perhaps you can tell us which experiment detected a single particle coming into existence from nowhere.) These particles are pure fiction - they are a wholly mathematical invention. I thought that physicists are supposed to rely on facts, not mathematics, to tell them what is possible.
If physicists cannot explain the Casimir effect without resorting to unsubstantiated creationism (which is exactly what asserting 'particle-antiparticle pairs wink in-and-out of existence all the time' is) then physics is in a very sorry state.
Tom (No 19) is most probably correct when he says, 'I think it's fair to say that the Casimir force is an electromagnetic force.'
I have a fundamental question: can the Casimir effect be (re)produced with plates of different materials ? As it seems that only metal plates are mentioned - what about plastic, glass, wood etc ? Because if there was some real vacuum force there it would certainly act on two wooden plates. And if you can't produce the effect with wooden plates - only metal ones - then it suggests that the force is indeed electro (and/or) magnetic in nature.
Posted by: Mark Robson | February 4, 2011 6:26 PM
Mark Robson @ 73:
Ah, another non-scientist here to explain science to us. Gee, too bad we went to all that trouble to get degrees in our fields, when all we had to do was ask Mark!
From Wikipedia:
So, there was an actual reason to use metal plates. And if they are uncharged and non-magnetic, then there go the "electro (and/or) magnetic" rationales.
And as the description notes, the vacuum is not nothing; there are neutrinos in there, there are photons in there, etc. I'm not trained in the details enough to step through the math, but it is certain that all of these objections have been addressed in the literature.
Your problem, Mark, is that you are fixated on the idea that reality conforms to your personal feelings, as a sort of argumentum ad definition, to coin a phrase. It's like people saying Pluto has always been a planet, so if astronomers redefine the term 'planet' to exclude Pluto, then they don't understand the topic.
Posted by: NJ | February 4, 2011 7:01 PM
that only sounds right because it's in English, not mathemathics. try proving it formally.
it seems to us to be right because we're using macroscopic-scale experience to intuitively grasp the world. but the world does not, fundamentally, cater to our intuitions; we know that quantum mechanics works in a number of ways that stand such intuitions thoroughly on their head before kicking them out the window --- without either opening it first or breaking the pane in the process. (tunneling FTW.)
why should we assume that a quantum-scale "vacuum" works and operates the way a macro-scale "vacuum" intuitively seems to? nothing else on those scales does. photons pass through two slits at once, electrons escape potential traps they simply don't have the energy to climb out of, nothing can be said with certainty to be specifically there and moving precisely thattaway at exactly this speed because those basic properties do not simultaneously exist, and things have "spin" even when they lack a spatial dimension in which to be "turning"... how is particle-antiparticle pair creation and annihilation any stranger, really?
we know quantum mech works. we've proven it, to the point that everyday technology now relies on it. the fact that it makes no sense to macroscopic intuition is one of which the universe seems supremely heedless. just give up trying to force it all to make sense on that level, because it won't.
Posted by: Nomen Nescio | February 4, 2011 8:06 PM
Technically, he's committing a logical fallacy. And so are you.
Well, we have never seen any "nothing at all", and there is no observational or experimental evidence to suggest that "nothing at all" can exist, let alone has ever existed.
Ah. When you don't like the observation or the experiment, you assert that it didn't happen.
Because you, of course, are God, and magically know everything?
What part of "particle-antiparticle pairs" -- as in, not single particles -- did you fail to understand?
Because mathematical inventions can have real effects?
Because mathematics is not factual? 2+3=5 is not fact?
Since they did indeed rely on facts about the real world, they are indeed describing what is possible about the real world.
Posted by: Owlmirror | February 4, 2011 8:39 PM
I have a slight disagreement here, Ethan…
I see what you did there.
.
.
.
"Now, that's what we know we can get, even from nothing. But there are many things we can't do, either practically or theoretically: violate charge or energy conservation, decrease the total entropy of the Universe, or figure out where our initially inflating Universe came from. (Yet!) But we definitely can get something for nothing; quantum field theory not only allows it, it demands it. But it remains to be seen whether we can get everything for nothing."
.
.
.
You can not get something FOR nothing.
You can however, get something FROM nothing.
There is a cost, there is always cost, and that cost is change.
While the differentiation is slight it does bare a significant relevance in the direction of a mindset.
Rush is right.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=096LhjGNNCk
"Nothing" can be described as 100% identical in totality as its only quality.
If all that exist is the same , all broken down to the minutest ingredient, then it is impossible to distinguish anything, a subset of nothing can not be distinguished from the whole of nothing.
There is nothing to compare, there is nothing.
From a Universal viewpoint “Nothing” was abundant.
Total “Nothing” can not be defined. There is no gauge to measure to acquire information or provide constraints from within "nothing".
The word nothing, CAN be defined: State of nonexistence; a condition of nonexistence, or the absence of any perceptible qualities.
All the gold in the Universe can't buy you "nothing".
And if I may add conjecture,
Space is created by mass, whether this be real or virtual.
“Nothing” induces virtual particles, Virtual particles create virtual space, Virtual space allows for the creation of real particles, Real particles allows for the creation of real space.
From a geometric viewpoint, Interaction is inevitable.
"God does not play dice" Einstein said, and if he had the anonymity of the Internet, he might have concluded (because he has no roll/role).
Posted by: Sphere Coupler | February 4, 2011 8:56 PM
This may have already have been answered. The question arose that if a particle escaped a black hole through the hawking effect then doesn't the black hole gain the mass of the particle that did not escape? A: the black hole consists of both mass and energy . For the virtual particle-antiparticle to turn real and for one to escape the event horizon enough energy must come from within the black hole and approach the event horizon where the particle-antiparticle are forming to 1. Form the mass for both particle and antiparticle. 2. Give the particle or antiparticle escaping enough energy to escape just outside the event horizon. Since mass and energy can interchange due to e=mc^2 subject to various constraints (momentum, various particle physics rules,etc) the equilibrium between mass and energy will fluctuate to Allow for the smaller mass/energy of the black hole.
Posted by: Mike peralta | February 5, 2011 9:58 AM
Space is replete with structure that supports all the physics we know about and the physics we don't know about. The question remains: Who created that structure and all the physical laws and structure in our physical universe?( And the big bang too.) I believe it is God. There is no logical contradiction in believing in God and believing in the laws of physics. We must just allow for God to intervene as needed for those things outside the realm of science such as the initial creation of space, mass/energy, and everything else we see in this physical universe.
Posted by: Mike peralta | February 5, 2011 10:10 AM
Mike peralta;
If you need a God of the gaps to give you that warm fuzzy feeling to soothe your intellect, then that is fine for you, it just isn't using your intellect to the highest degree, it is a cop out, you choose not to investigate and if there is, was or will be a god, I think it would be very disappointed with your reasoning.
If we allowed for a god to intervene for those things we do not understand then we would never, ever make any progress.
Posted by: Sphere Coupler | February 5, 2011 11:05 AM
Let me clarify. Belief in God and in the laws of physics or science are not logically mutually exclusive. I myself firmly believe in God and make substantial progress as a semiconductor modeling engineer. Creating many physical models using physics and math and the scientific method. I believe in science to describe the physical realm. I believe in God to explain the spirit realm and the creation of the physical realm -- since among other things science has no answers on how space, mass/energy came into existence in the first place. In fact science opposes creation of space/mass/energy due to conservation rules. My personal belief is seek truth no mater where it takes you -- if genuinely done it will lead to both God and scientific discovery --and that is true progress. Btw In case you are wondering i have a Ph D in physics from the univ of Arizona, BSEE , and a BS Applied Math. I love science. And I love God. But I love God more.
Posted by: Mike peralta | February 5, 2011 11:51 AM
Well Mike, if it works for you then more power to ya.I was not wondering about your credentials, I can tell from your written speech that you have attained a certain level of accumulated education, though a Ph D, a BSEE and a BS is in no way an indicator of superior intellect.
You have your beliefs and if they are not harmful to others then I see no pressing reason for you to change,
Personally, I find it more acceptable to me and conducive to discovery to remain neutral in this matter of relying on a god for answers to the mysteries of life, so perhaps we could agree to disagree.
Posted by: Sphere Coupler | February 5, 2011 12:40 PM
I am glad I don't believe in god, because then I don't have to look like I am talking out of my ass about shit I have no clue about to "disprove" theories that contradict my worldview. It just seems easier to just say, "You know what? I trust the science."
Posted by: Knative07 | February 5, 2011 12:50 PM
The coupling of Diversity in thought is the key.
While some choose to take the established Academic route, their are others that excel didactically, just as there are those who can compartmentalise exploratory procedures, there are those who take neither a theistic nor an atheistic point of view.
The Maverick comes in many flavors.
Knative07;
Yes it's easy to say "I trust the science" and perhaps even easier to state one's belief in a god, however, the easiest route is a standard, it is the disturbance of the standard that leads to discovery.
I remain skeptical, yet work within protracted, fruitful models derived from the scientific method.
I trust that science is ever changing as time progresses.
Posted by: Sphere Coupler | February 5, 2011 1:32 PM
I meant autodidactically,(my bad ;?) derived from,
(...link in buffer)
Posted by: Sphere Coupler | February 5, 2011 2:00 PM
I am a Black Hole, but I do not eat - because I don't have to. I simply create my own lunch outside.
In my diary:
Looking back into my past I can see the creation of nothing from something.
If I look further back into the past there is more of nothing.
Therefore I must be the Creator of everything in the future.
Posted by: Hannes | February 5, 2011 2:28 PM
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1102.0570:
Dust in the early Universe: Evidence for non-stellar dust production or observational errors?
Lars Mattsson
Observations have revealed unexpectedly large amounts of dust in high-redshift galaxies and its origin is still much debated. Valiante et al. (2009, MNRAS, 397, 1661) suggested the net stellar dust production of the quasar host galaxy SDSS J1148+5251 may be sufficient to explain the large dust mass detected in this galaxy, albeit under some very special assumptions (e.g., 'closed box' evolution and a rather high gas mass). Here it is shown that since accretion of essentially pristine material may lower the efficiency of dust formation significantly, and the observationally derived dust-to-gas ratios for these high-redshift galaxies are remarkably high, stellar dust production is likely insufficient. A model including metallicity-dependent, non-stellar dust formation ('secondary dust') is presented. The required contribution from this non-stellar dust component appears too large, however. If all observational constraints are to be met, the resultant dust-to-metals ratio is close to unity, which means that almost all interstellar metals exist in the form dust. This is a very unlikely situation and suggests the large dust-to-gas ratios at high-redshifts may be due to observational uncertainties and/or or incorrect calibration of conversion factors for gas and dust tracers.
Posted by: Hannes | February 5, 2011 3:56 PM
Awakening article!
Imagine a gravity cannon made of an arrangement of blackholes creating a one-way tunnel of lagrangian points.
Particles and antiparticles pairs would be ejected (not captured) in a single direction, so we would have a sequential random output of particles or antiparticles that could be harnessed to the left or the right according to their nature and this way create a generator of matter and antimatter: unlimited matter and energy.
Also, during the casimir effect, why matter and antimatter pairs are not created and then desintegrate, liberating energy?
Also, yhere does the energy to transform energy of the void into matter comes?
could it be that occasional rays disturb the nothing like water surface divided by a advancing ship, and if the perturbation reaches a threshold, it can reach the energy levels required to forme matter?
Also, why the creation of antipairs would be short lived during the casimir effect? can't there be long lived antipairs that should accumulate?
@36: "Conservation of energy tells you this energy has to come from somewhere : the black hole."
First of all I find it misleading to state that the whole event is happening "into" the black hole; by definition, half the event is outside, otherwise no half of the pair could be emitted. If each half consume 0.5 MeV/c² to exist, the black hole provides only the energy for its captured half, and the outside provides for the other half. So precisely speaking, both the black hole and the surrounding space are loosing energy (but gaining matter), which means that everything is slightly more matterish-centripetous and less energetic-centrifuge. But that's just modes of the same "existence" thing, mass remains the same, only its distribution changes.
@39: are you saying that some sort of symmetry principle make a particle near the e.h. attracts its reflect, making it realer until it is really?
@44: "If an action can't be balanced within the limits set by Heisenberg, it just doesn't occur."
Why? What's the concrete mechanism? Which forces are acting and reacting to forbide this event?
Are you saying because all the parallel universes are all occupied with antimatter, there is no easy room for more existence of antimatter, as easy and thus probable than existence of the opposite: entry of matter.
Thus, when an unavoidable future of some particle has in every possibility the same outcome, it becomes real and calls a simultaneous exactly similar quantum of reality that becomes anti-real. There is a mysterious symmetry. Why stable things would emerge from chaos? Become stability and chaos are the same? Things happening because of this or its exact contrary, it's the same result. Every thing has two possible roots. Branching pasts, branching futures...
Symmetry of yes and no, good and bad, nothing and something, matter and antimatter.
@45: you could as well be describing the concept of avatars of a single bigger entity, like a toolkit "particles + energy" with several isotropes. Why do the fundamental states of matter (particles) have several appearances?
@46: are you saying that it is possible to distinguish things through the mind that aren't really there? Like a strange illusion, impossible but neverendingly convincing?
@47: not Newton but Anaxagore.
@56: are you saying that common sense and philosophical logic aren't dealing about the same reality than science? While I agree that they not equivalent, some subsets can have common grounds with science.
@75: «things have "spin" even when they lack a spatial dimension in which to be "turning"»
how do you know they lack spatial dimensions? what about tiny looping dimensions created by their own mass?
«just give up trying to force it all to make sense on that level, because it won't.»
I don't understand the rationale leading to this conclusion.
Posted by: Pronoein | February 5, 2011 4:38 PM
Confirming that Mr. Physicist dude doesn't believe in any conservation laws.
That, or he's just playing specious semantics games.
Posted by: sherifffruitfly | February 5, 2011 7:35 PM
From Dr. RC Sproul:
"Scientists are fallible and may occasionally make arrogant statements that go far beyond the realm of their own expertise.
Recently I read an essay by a well-known Nobel Prize winning physicist (whose name will remain unstated so as not to embarrass him) who argued that the idea of “spontaneous generation” be abandoned in science once and for all. Spontaneous generation means that something comes into being with no cause. It comes from nothing. So far, so good. I was pleased to see a scientist debunk the myth of all myths, that something can come from nothing. This myth is still pervasive in the scientific community with respect to “chance.” Chance is given credit for creating the universe. However, such a prodigious feat is beyond the capabilities of chance. Why? Chance can do nothing because it is nothing. Chance is merely a word we use to explain mathematical possibilities. It is no thing. It has no power. It cannot produce, manage, or cause anything because it is nothing. It is spontaneous generation by another name.
I was glad the physicist repudiated spontaneous generation. My gladness abruptly turned to astonishment when the scientist said, “We must have a new model. We must speak in terms of gradual spontaneous generation.” I couldn’t believe what I was reading. “Gradual spontaneous generation”? How can something gradual be spontaneous? How can something spontaneous be gradual?
Our scientist wanted to debunk the myth that something can come suddenly from nothing and replace it with a better myth that something can come gradually from nothing.
I use this illustration only to show that even the most astute scientists can nod. They can fall asleep at the switch and be suddenly very unscientific in their pronouncements. To believe in gradual spontaneous generation of anything is to leap not by faith but below faith to credulity. Such a concept defies both aspects of the scientific method: rational deduction and empirical observation. Not only is the idea in violation of reason (breaking the Law of Contradiction), but it is impossible to observe empirically. What microscope or telescope is strong enough to observe anything doing something gradually spontaneously?"
Don't know if this is exactly what you are discussing, but it's good truth and logic.
Posted by: donsands | February 5, 2011 8:13 PM
I was glad the physicist repudiated spontaneous generation. My gladness abruptly turned to astonishment when the scientist said, “We must have a new model. We must speak in terms of gradual spontaneous generation.” I couldn’t believe what I was reading. “Gradual spontaneous generation”? How can something gradual be spontaneous? How can something spontaneous be gradual?
Posted by: adsense hack | February 5, 2011 8:17 PM
Mike, I thought you were a pantheist/deist, but the website that your name links to is a weird collection of mp3s about Jesus, Hell, and the Rapture. I think you're kinda misrepresenting yourself, because the claims that Jesus was more than human, Hell exists, and that a Rapture will occur are all unsupported by what we currently know about reality.
Please don't respond to this with a dump of verses from your preferred translation of the Christian Bible, tia
Posted by: ng | February 5, 2011 8:22 PM
I'm not expert in physics, but I have studied logic, and I hate, hate, hate, hate it when people use 'logic' to insist that the cosmos must be one way or the other. I hate it.
Logic, real logic, alone cannot tell us whether something can come from nothing or not, just like it couldn't tell us if the orbits of the planets are perfect spheres or if the sun orbits the earth. That's not what logic is. When people run around acting like it can, like we can sit in a room in our house and reason out the laws of nature without actually looking at reality, we end up with incorrect conclusions that cloud our understanding for centuries or more.
Posted by: Lyra | February 5, 2011 9:12 PM
@53 Laughing Man
Life is made out of atoms, which are not alive in any way. There you go.
Posted by: Citizen of the Cosmos
| February 5, 2011 9:32 PM
adsense hack @ 91 - you've got a definition mismatch.
Not 'spontaneous' in the sense of 'sudden', but rather in the sense of 'happening without an external cause'.
Posted by: dsichel
| February 6, 2011 9:45 AM
asdasd
Posted by: mua semiyun d00ktor | February 7, 2011 8:15 AM
I will ask more clearly this time: can someone direct me to a reference - book, article or website even - in which a scientifically valid, verifiable and repeatable experiment demonstrated ''particle-antiparticle pairs wink[ing] in-and-out of existence . . .''
My 'personal feelings' on this are that, as I was told decades ago, matter (and energy) cannot be created or destroyed - so I didn't think that it was possible for ''particle-antiparticle pairs [to] wink in-and-out of existence all the time.'' So I'm glad that Dr Siegel, NJ (No 74), Owlmirror (No76) and others have seen verifiable proof of this - or else why would they believe such a thing - and so I would like to see this proof for myself. I also have related questions:
1) is there a minimum density of vacuum you need for the particle-antiparticle pairs to appear ?
2) given that in any time interval there will be more shorter time periods, both sequentially and concurrently, is it more likely that you get more heavier (greater mass) particle-antiparticle pairs ?
3) are there any plots of the mass/charge/speed distributions of the particle-antiparticle pairs ?
4) are there any differences of mass/charge/speed of the particle-antiparticle pairs in Hawking radiation compared with the lab measurements ?
5) is there an increased rate of particle-antiparticle pair production the less dense a vacuum becomes ?
6) surely some particle-antiparticle pairs must appear in the vacuum of particle accelerators - does this cause many problems, and if so: how are they overcome ?
@NJ (No 74): Yes, I did read that the metal plates were uncharged and non-magnetic (so that there were no electro (and/or) magnetic forces acting) but if Casimir had used an insulating material for the plates he would also calculate the magnetic field on the surface to be zero. There is no magnetic field on a glass plate - is there ? I was simply asking (again): can the Casimir effect be (re)produced with plates of different materials ? My thinking was that if the Casimir force only acts on metal plates then a further explanation is needed to explain how the particle-antiparticle pairs only act on metals and not on anything else. Wouldn't that be an entirely new type of force - a force that only acts on uncharged and non-magnetic metals ?
@Owlmirror (No76): Yes you're right - I should have said 'particle-antiparticle pairs' and not 'single particle'.
However you clearly don't understand maths. Your equation: 2 + 3 = 5 is, of course, fact - mathematically and in the real world, but the equation 2 - 3 = -1 is only a fact mathematically. You simply can't do that in the real world - try it: start with any 2 identical objects, then take 3 of those objects away to leave you with minus 1 of the objects. Therefore the perfectly accurate mathematical equation cannot be applied to the real world - the maths has failed and you can't use that mathematical rule to tell you what the real world is like.
Next try 2a x 3a = 6a^2. Let 'a' stand for apples: take 2 apples and multiply them by 3 apples - not only will you not get 6 apples squared, you will not even get 6 apples, you will only ever get the 5 apples you started with. The maths has failed again and you can't use the mathematical multiplication rule to tell you what the real world is like.
What about imaginary numbers ? e(exp)[ i x theta ]: take the number 'e', raise it to the power of 'i' (the imaginary number) x (the angle) theta. What do you get, and what does that represent in the real world ?
Maths is a very valuable tool that can be used to confirm that a theory is correct, but mathematical rules alone are never proof that something can, does or will happen in the real world.
Posted by: Mark Robson | February 7, 2011 11:38 PM
#94
Fine. Then you're not alive, either. Give me all your stuff since you don't need it not being alive and all.
Posted by: Laughing Man | February 8, 2011 12:55 AM
What if I posit that the Cashmir effect and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle apply to physical things. Therefore, something coming from nothing means that it doesn't have a physical cause. However, that doesn't mean that it can't have a non-physical cause (such as mind, or something else).
Posted by: Brian Dean | February 8, 2011 7:02 AM
Ethan says, "This isn't the gravitational force or an electromagnetic force, but a force due to empty space itself." Hmm, these words are not precise enough.
Of course his meaning depends on your definition of "empty space"; but quibbling about the meaning of "nothing" is not my point.
Wiki says, "When this field is.. studied using quantum electrodynamics, it is seen that the plates do affect the virtual photons which constitute the field, and generate a net force... The Casimir effect can be understood by the idea that the presence of conducting metals and dielectrics alters the vacuum expectation value of the energy of the second quantized electromagnetic field."
So is the Casimir field a QED field, the second quantized electromagnetic field?
Thus, does Ethan more precisely mean that the Casimir field "isn't the (classical)gravitational force (of Einstein) or an (classical) electromagnetic force (of Maxwell), but a (quantum mechanical) force due to empty space itself (which can be expressed by QED (alone), or perhaps also with QCG and some future Quantum Gravity)"?
Ethan or someone, please further clarify, the meaning is unclear. Thanks.
Posted by: OKThen | February 8, 2011 3:38 PM
Chuck Nance, Marc A, Nomen Nescio, Mark Robson, please please please listen to Lyra@93:
You can't tell you anything about the world that you didn't put in. A priori reasoning is by definition tautological. You can get something for nothing in a vacuum, but not in logic.
You simply can't reason the universe into "behaving properly." The universe will do what it does and all you can try to do is keep up. And that's why this sentiment from Marc A is very unscientific:
WHY don't you believe in randomness? It seems to me that this is an ontological presupposition -- something you believe to be true of the universe purely because it makes more sense in light of the framework you use to make sense of the universe. But why are you so sure of your framework? Why make assumptions when it's so much more fun to be surprised? (OK, so it takes a little more work to consider multiple possibilities than to decide that one MUST be true...the solution is to just not be lazy.)
laughingman@53:
I think we can agree dried fruit is non-living. Eat some dried fruit. Your body will use the material from the dried fruit for cellular growth and division. Living human cells from non-living organic matter. Easy as pie and almost as delicious.
Posted by: Dan L. | February 8, 2011 7:08 PM
Mark Robson @ 97:
In your preferred search engine, type "Google Scholar".
In the search box, type "Casimir effect dielectrics".
Examine references.
The topic is waaaaaaaaaaay out of my field, but the references shown appear to support my contention back in #74:
It seems clear from your reply to Owlmirror's post @ 76 that you are stuck at the level of concrete thinking, which explains a lot. Any adult who would use "2 apples times 3 apples doesn't give you 6 apples" as an argument is pretty much beyond hope of serious thought.
Posted by: NJ | February 8, 2011 9:49 PM
NJ@102:
I was about to make an apples^2 joke, then I went and looked at Mark's post and realized he had already talked about apples^2 and wasn't joking.
That's pretty scary.
Mark, if I have 3 groups of 2 apples, how many apples do I have? How did you get the answer? Multiplication makes perfect physical sense if you don't try to force it not to (as you did in your example).
On the subject of
imaginarycomplex numbers, the complex plane is basically the same as R^2. Every complex number corresponds to a point on the coordinate plane.I can't tell you what e^i*theta is if you don't tell me what theta is. e^i=-1 makes perfect physical sense: it's (-1,0) on the coordinate plane. The derivation of interpretation of the term "e^(i*theta)" is actually quite beautiful.
But besides simply being points on the coordinate plane, complex numbers can be used to quite accurately model the flow of heat through a material or the transmission of vibrations through a medium. Try doing that by adding integers.
Posted by: Dan L. | February 9, 2011 11:29 AM
OKThen@100:
Imagine a tub full of plastic balls of different sizes. In it is a box with holes on all sides -- the holes are big enough for the smaller plastic balls to get in, but not the larger ones. We'd expect the pressure on the outside of the box to be greater than the pressure inside the box because the box can only let a particular fraction of the nearby balls inside.
The balls are virtual particles and the box is the Casimir plates. The net inward pressure on the box is the Casimir effect. The big difference is that with the real Casimir effect it's not the "size" of the virtual particle (it doesn't have a size in any straight-forward sense) but the wavelength -- only certain wavelengths can "fit in the box." Obviously, this is a really rough analogy, but does it help at all?
Posted by: Dan L. | February 9, 2011 11:41 AM
Follow up:
The trick works fine if you just consider virtual photons. Imagine a universe that looks like this:
::::::::|...|::::::::
Where dots are virtual photons (they'll act just like regular photons) and the pipes are the Casimir plates. The virtual photons have essentially random velocities relative to the plates. There's fewer photons between the plates because only certain frequencies of photons can exist between the plates (similar to why a guitar string makes a particular note).
The virtual photons that hit the plates are absorbed by the electrons in the plates, and when that happens the plate also picks up the photon's momentum -- basically, it gets bumped. The photons get re-emitted in a random direction. This means the plate gets bumped again, but this time in a random direction. Since the direction is random for every bump from an emission, the emission bumps cancel each other out. But the bumps from the absorptions aren't random -- there are two bumps from outside the plates for every one bump inside the plates. This effect provides a net force pushing the plates together.
Looking at it this way, the force pushing the plates together is basically electrostatic repulsion, the same reason you can't walk through walls.
I'm a bit of a dilettante, real physicists please correct anything I flubbed.
Posted by: Dan L. | February 9, 2011 12:18 PM
Thanks Dan L. and yes yes.
But my question remains, which type of phenomenon is Casimir effect:
-- QED (involving photons real or virtual)
-- QCD (gluons real or virtual)
-- Quantum Gravity (gravitons real or virtual)
-- Quantum Weak (W, Z real or virtual)
-- some new (force) quantum phenomenon
Silence of Ethan and the experts suggest that Casimir effect is a QED phenomenon.
Posted by: OKThen | February 9, 2011 4:18 PM
OKThen;
I wrote a couple of pages of explanation, then realised that someone reading what I wrote would be more confused than if I just said;
In the Casimir Effect it is realized that it is a coupling effect of QED to QFT by the difference in quantum amplitude/probability amplitude(density) of zero point energy.
Yet, even that is general and far from complete.
Posted by: Sphere Coupler | February 9, 2011 10:04 PM
And then there's this...
Posted by: Sphere Coupler | February 10, 2011 12:20 AM
Sphere Coupler
107 and 108 do help.
Though I don't quite understand how QFT is different than QED but I'm researching QFT online, starting with wiki.
Thanks.
Posted by: OKThen | February 10, 2011 10:35 AM
Might I suggest Manifestations
Posted by: Sphere Coupler | February 10, 2011 6:55 PM
I'm a laymen. Ahhh! My field of choice is computer programming. We use pseudo-random numbers. Real world turbulence can produce 'true' randomness. I've always not trusted this idea that it's 'true'. Maybe it's because when I first started with computers I thought that the pseudo-random numbers were truly random. Hey, I was a new student and can you blame me that I thought rand() gave random numbers? Anyway, if everything in the universe is connected, how can something be random unless it's isolated from everything else? If you had access to the entire universe and could monitor all of it then nothing would be random unless there were elements of it completely isolated from everything else in the universe. How is that possible? Anyway, the complexity of turbulence prevents us from predicting it, but if that's our only reason for claiming it's truly random, then that's a lacking explanation. If we were god or had perfect knowledge then we could understand the exact positions of all particles and forces and nothing in turbulence would be random to us since we could perfectly predict the position of every existing thing.
Posted by: Jon | February 12, 2011 4:06 AM
And one more thing. In my physics 101 class we were taught nothing can be created or destroyed. If this is true, then how can particles appear and disappear at quantum scales? How can something appear from nothing or become nothing without being created or destroyed? How am I confusing this?
Posted by: Jon | February 12, 2011 4:11 AM
Lastly (my final comment before I leave), why do the even replies have a selection background and the odd replies do not? This confused me when I was reading the replies because I kept thinking that the odd replies were responses to the even replies. I don't know why it's this way, but I just thought I'd leave this (somewhat critical) comment about it.
Posted by: Jon | February 12, 2011 4:28 AM
I'll take a crack at a couple of these, Jon...
I've always assumed it was for readability. The comment threads are linear, instead of the branching types found elsewhere, which means they can get long. It also explains the common use of posters handles and comment numbers in replies.
You kinda answered this in the prior comment:
Things tend to get simplified in lower-level classes. One of the things that makes QM so hard to learn is that it is often counter to our macro-scale intuitive sense of how the world works. But the results speak for themselves.
Posted by: NJ | February 12, 2011 9:03 AM
You can't create something from nothing because "nothing" can't exist.
Posted by: A | February 15, 2011 4:29 PM
Sphere Coupler # 110
The Wiki manifestation link is very helpful. Not just the manifestation section; but the whole entry.
Halfway through my read, I came to the conclusion that all particles are virtual, then in the Feynman diagram section it says, "It is sometimes said that all photons are virtual photons."
As well I suppose, it can be said that only virtual gravitons have been observed and maybe real ones can never be observed.
Thanks again for all the links.
Posted by: OKThen | February 17, 2011 10:49 AM
In my physics 101 class we were taught nothing can be created or destroyed. If this is true, then how can particles appear and disappear at quantum scales? How can something appear from nothing or become nothing without being created or destroyed?
Simple: they do not appear from "nothing"; they appear from the zero-point energy, the quantum vacuum. This is not a true vacuum because it is "stuffed" with energy, and this energy occasionally realizes as virtual particle-antiparticle pairs. That is, they are not "appearing" or "disappearing," but simply changing form. Heisenberg, who actually did know something of philosophy, thought this might be the hule prote of Aristotle.
Posted by: YOS | February 21, 2011 10:15 PM
Commeht 117 said:
"Simple: they do not appear from "nothing"; they appear from the zero-point energy, the quantum vacuum. This is not a true vacuum because it is "stuffed" with energy, and this energy occasionally realizes as virtual particle-antiparticle pairs. That is, they are not "appearing" or "disappearing," but simply changing form. Heisenberg, who actually did know something of philosophy, thought this might be the hule prote of Aristotle."
Then we're not getting something for nothing. This would undermine the whole premise of this article - the idea that things are created from nothing. If things are in fact being created from something then there's no instance of getting something from nothing and therefore I don't see the point to this blog post.
Posted by: Jon | February 23, 2011 7:13 AM
And another point. At the end of the blog it's stated that having more matter than anti-matter means they haven't combined to result in ZERO and therefore we have something rather than nothing. But the problem with this is that in order to have 'created' the matter and anti-matter particles you had to have something, right? So before all of these matter and anti-matter particles were created we had SOMETHING. So ZERO is SOMETHING. It's only when they recombine that you get ZERO, but ZERO is not NOTHING! If NOTHING is ZERO and ZERO is something, then what we have no is somethig then what we have now is also NOTHING!
Posted by: Jon | February 23, 2011 7:20 AM
Sorry I mistyped. If what we have now is SOMETHING and ZERO is SOMETHING (because you can't create the matter and anti-matter particles without something) and NOTHING is ZERO then what we have now is also NOTHING!
Posted by: Jon | February 23, 2011 7:23 AM
OKThen
If I may point out a slight but critical correction...
You said;
"As well I suppose, it can be said that only virtual gravitons have been observed and maybe real ones can never be observed."
Truth of the matter is, virtual gravitons have been calculated...not observed.
conjecture;
Slightly off topic, It may be realised that SUSY is not a companion sparticle as the community has come to distinguish the theory, though it may very well be a precursor value of the virtual field from which a virtual particle arises, inducing real space, from which real space enables real particles.
But at this point that evaluation may be meta-physics, though I somehow *feel* and think SUSY is valid in some respect.
If the above has any merit then it will take a great deal more initial collision of the center of mass-energy to produce such a field.
Posted by: Sphere Coupler | February 28, 2011 10:30 PM
Then we're not getting something for nothing. This would undermine the whole premise of this article - the idea that things are created from nothing. If things are in fact being created from something then there's no instance of getting something from nothing and therefore I don't see the point to this blog post.
Posted by: altın çilek | March 1, 2011 1:12 PM
I agree with comments 34 and 122. A pre-existing vacuum consists of space and time, both of which can be measured and, per Einstein, warped, slowed down, shrunken, expanded, etc.
This is not nothing, in the sense that people mean when they state "out of nothing, nothing comes."
So it seems like this blog post is essentially saying: "You CAN get something from nothing. Just start with a little something, see, and then..."
Posted by: Martin | March 20, 2011 10:26 AM
You may want to re-word that as getting something from something. In all the theory's like martin says you just need a little something. So something from nothing is impossible, in science in math, which neither can exist apart from each other, if so you negate the basis of both. The "components" themselves are something, i think the venture involves the aspect of how our system came about and what the universe is actually doing and what it may do is the basis of the theory's no one has ever suggested that everything started as nothing, that would be ludicrous.
Posted by: Mark | June 5, 2011 3:26 PM
To me there is a flaw in the logic resting on the Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle stated above as paraphrased here: that you can't know a quantum state's energy exactly for a finite duration of time, therefore at short time intervals, there are large uncertainties in the energy of a system. So, the energies are large enough that particle-antiparticle pairs wink in-and-out of existence all the time.
If we are trying to answer the question "can we get something from nothing," isn't energy, a presupposed entity, something? Is energy not just a book keeping system about how things tend to relate to one another? What is time? It is the interval between events. What "events" if there is nothing? Therefore it is nonsensical to apply HUP to this situation. You are presuming that the area of "nothing" is surrounded by something. This does not answer our question about the origin of matter or energy.
Posted by: Curtis | June 11, 2011 11:19 AM
To me there is a flaw in the logic resting on the Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle stated above as paraphrased here: that you can't know a quantum state's energy exactly for a finite duration of time, therefore at short time intervals, there are large uncertainties in the energy of a system. So, the energies are large enough that particle-antiparticle pairs wink in-and-out of existence all the time.
If we are trying to answer the question "can we get something from nothing," isn't energy, a presupposed entity, something? Is energy not just a book keeping system about how things tend to relate to one another? What is time? It is the interval between events. What "events" if there is nothing? Therefore it is nonsensical to apply HUP to this situation. You are presuming that the area of "nothing" is surrounded by something. This does not answer our question about the origin of matter or energy.
Posted by: Curtis | June 11, 2011 11:19 AM
No. But that "vacuum", with laws, 3 + 1 dimensions and possible curvature, laws etc, isn't really "nothing" and shouldn't be called that in the first place. It is "something", real nothing is the absence of all being, no laws or propensities, or even geometric properties like number of dimensions etc.
Indeed, given the implicit formability and existence - even if we call it "virtual" - of the particles we find, it's really the same existence question anyway as for the tangible universe. So that so-called-vacuum and its existence, especially as existential selectivity (the old "why the universe like this instead of some other way" - not just "why is there something instead of nothing" overall), stands in need of justification, of explanation.
Note also, that this "vacuum" needs "time" to define things like "chance that creation of a universe will occur per time unit per cubic volume of this space" etc. Hawking's celebrated analogy of a sphere with a north pole and "no further north" is misleading, since causal connection and not being able to graph continued past history is the real question. And again, the real issue is the existence of that "entity" even taken as a whole, not just whether it needs to have all causal chains resolved within itself. (Science writers, just FYI: a lot of what you write is philosophically challenged. And BTW this means "philosophy the conceptual framing process" not the popular red herring of a speculative subject matter per se. Not an insult, OK, just tighten up.)
Posted by: Neil Bates | June 11, 2011 4:37 PM
And how did you do this? You had to set up an experiment using your brain, provided you have one, and try to show that it all came about with no help from you (intelligent life). Plus there is something. There's air. Something coming from nothing? Good job. Good job
Posted by: Lena | August 31, 2011 10:30 AM
As per the linked article: "Empty space is not really empty".
From that, this dishonest blogger infers something coming from nothing. Hahahaaaa
I find it rather comical of how blind and desperate the faith of the militant atheist is. This particular case is one where he distorts scientific theory to further a political - albeit futile - cause.
You're an embarrassment. Stop tarnishing science with your stupidity.
I would like to see you debate Craig. Put your money where you mouth is.
Posted by: John Smith | September 4, 2011 2:43 PM
JS@129:
And a quick scan of the original post finds no reference to either atheism or politics.
So how on Earth did Johnny get these ideas? From the voices in his head, of course! I am led to believe that there are efficacious meds for this.
FIFY.
Posted by: NJ | September 4, 2011 3:19 PM
I can follow the discussion for the most part, have some opinions, can in no way offer logic to argument...but thoroughly enjoyed it! Thank you. :)
Posted by: Tamara | October 13, 2011 7:36 PM
"(because you can't create the matter and anti-matter particles without something)"
It's not creating matter and anti-matter particles. It's creating virtual particles that, as far as the universe is concerned, doesn't exist.
It's easy to create something that doesn't exist from nothing.
Posted by: Wow | October 14, 2011 5:33 AM
"For example, take a box and empty it, so that all you've got is some totally empty space, like above. An ideal, perfect, empty vacuum. Now, what's in that box?
Did you guess nothing? Well, it turns out that empty space isn't so empty."
Doh! That is not nothing. There was box and little minute "things" that u cannot see. There is always something there ...
... as are ur later examples.
Posted by: Amin | October 18, 2011 6:27 PM
"It's not creating matter and anti-matter particles. It's creating virtual particles that, as far as the universe is concerned, doesn't exist.
It's easy to create something that doesn't exist from nothing."
This comment from "Wow" - is plain silly. Something already exists to create what you termed as "virtual" particles. It is not from nothing.
And it is impossible to create something from nothing.
Posted by: Amin | October 18, 2011 6:37 PM
Ok, I will admit that most of the language spoken here is waaaaaaay above me and I have no experience or education with any of this. So, allow me to make my comment from a very "average Joe" perspective. I am intrigued by the idea of actually being able to get something from nothing, even that nothing is in itself "something". My issue with the cardboard box idea or two metal plates is that you still used something to get something. I cannot and may never believe that if there was at one time complete zero, nothing, not a vacuum or particle or force or microscopic thing or ANYTHING...then nothing would ever come out of that. I would love to hear someone sometime explain how complete and utter nothingness can create anything without something external causing a vacuum or implosion or matter/antimatter etc. I may be an idiot but I can with all my heart say that if you put nothing into a time capsule and bury it for a gazillion years then unbury it, there will be nothing. If you find something then SOMETHING had to be inside that time capsule whether seen or not. The trick might be the time capsule itself causing something to happen but you get my point. No matter how much time passes you simply cannot get something from nothing and if you do, something made it happen. Again, Im an average joe so I cannot debate this intelligently, and I hate to beat a dead horse, but no matter how you slice it, absolute nothingness produces...absolutely nothing.
Posted by: Robert Harvey | November 4, 2011 9:44 PM
So in other words, vaccuum fluctuation models made no advance over the arguments put forward by those who believe in God. The "something out of nothing" is really just fancy language but not literally something out of nothing. The origin of the universe still seems to be best explained through a metaphysical route. I'm just saying, let's be honest with ourselves. If it's not a fact indicating something from nothing, then don't call it that; no doubt there will be those who will be mislead into believing the wrong thing.
Posted by: Josh | November 10, 2011 6:39 AM
> So in other words, vaccuum fluctuation models made no advance over the arguments put forward by those who believe in God
If by "other words" you mean "wrong words", then yes.
Casmiir effect. It's been measured.
That's more than any God botherer has managed with god, miracles or JC.
Posted by: Wow | November 10, 2011 7:48 AM
"This comment from "Wow" - is plain silly."
Nope, that comment from me was accurate.
You just think it's silly.
"Something already exists to create what you termed as "virtual" particles."
Space with nothing in it existed.
But space with nothing in it is the nothing you're creating virtual particles IN, not WITH.
Posted by: Wow | November 10, 2011 7:51 AM
> I cannot and may never believe that if there was at one time complete zero, nothing, not a vacuum or particle or force or microscopic thing or ANYTHING...then nothing would ever come out of that.
That's fine. You're not required to. The Universe will continue to exist.
"I would love to hear someone sometime explain how complete and utter nothingness can create anything without something external causing a vacuum or implosion "
I would love to hear someone sometime explain how something external existing can create something from complete and utter nothingness.
To hear the explanation, you'll need some serious postgrad work on theoretical physics.
It's possible to do so.
Feel free.
But lets hear you explain your alternative theory: how does something exist when there's complete and utter nothingness? How could it create something when there's complete and utter nothingness?
Posted by: Wow | November 10, 2011 7:55 AM
"Doh! That is not nothing. There was box and little minute "things" that u cannot see."
No, there's a lot of air that you can't see and nobody calls it "nothing".
That nothing in there contains nothing that it is possible EVER to see, since it doesn't exist for long enough to change the universe one iota.
Posted by: Wow | November 10, 2011 7:57 AM
Wow, I think peoples points are that it's very possible that our current understand of "nothing" is just wrong. Or at most, misleading. Saying that we can, in absolute certainty, observe a perfect void of all reality is like a person back in 1532 that humans will never fly.
The problem with saying the math proves that Physics allows something to come from nothing is that math & physics are something. Especially when we know that our current Physics model breaks down in things like Black Holes & the Big Bang. We understand that there must be larger laws we are unaware of to explain those events. The problem is that that simply takes us another step back. How did those laws form? I think that trying to say we can demonstrate that reality came from (true) nothingness, ie: no physical reality, no laws, no physics, no math, is just as ludicrous as saying God just made it. The only difference between the two is that people who believe in metaphysical reality are willing to admit that there is no FINAL physical explanation, It doesn't make then disagree with science. It may , however, make them disagree with people who say "I can explain it all".
Posted by: DSG | November 12, 2011 7:57 PM
We don't know the true nature of "nothing". We don't even know if it really "exists". Likewise, we don't the true nature of "god", or even if he really "exists". Therefore, we can't absolutely prove, or absolutely disprove, anything, we have no place to start. The above so called proof requires the prior existence of quantum effects, and forgets that there is no absolute proof that the quantum effects existed before the big bang. Yes, there is also no absolute proof they did not exist, but that's the problem, there is no absolute proof. Anything less than absolute proof may be highly suggestive of an answer, but it will never be able to settle the question once and for all due to the holes left in it by not being absolute.
Both points require belief and faith because they don't yet have enough facts to become absolute truth, and are therefore much more philosophical/theological positions, than they are scientific ones. This endless foolishness of using science to try and prove or disprove theology or atheology is doomed to failure because science cannot and will not disprove god's existence until we know everything about everything (because as long as there is one thing we don't know he will have a place to hide).
And of course, once we do know everything, we will BE god...
Posted by: Amused observer | November 19, 2011 4:04 AM
We DO know the true nature of Nothing.
The simple equation Nothing + nothing = nothing is understood by any 1st grader.
Space is not nothing and that is clear to any physicist. Principles are also not nothing as one principle merged with another principle can make a new principle.
This isnt semantics..its bafoonery and completely transparent when used by atheists because the driving force behind all their articles are to eliminate God.
Somehow physicists have proclaimed themselves priests of the universe---yeah, like Im gonna learn the meaning of life from a bunch of nerds who spent high school lunch period with a grilled cheese mushed into the head and apple sauce in their hair.
These guys have officially left the building with the multiverse theory. At least they finally admit the odds of our universe. But now their odds include universes where 10 million suns are all lined up to spell "This is the awesome multiverse I created to avoid worshiping God"--because like it or not-- thats what an infinite amount of universes will produce...including one with a God.
If people thought logically and without bias, no one would ever listen to these guys again. They are the freakin OJ jury on steroids. Whats next elephants on unicycles? The Mind of God has always the simplest explanation for reality..you have to be a drug addict, murderer, fool, hyper arrogant, severe daddy issues, or a physicist to deny what is plain to everyone else in history.
Someone once said they know that something created the universe and that something was nothing. Now, it seems they want to redefine what Nothing is so its not actually nothing
Posted by: John | November 26, 2011 10:55 PM
ok im trying to understand this stuff but i have a question: can u posibly email me a list of all posible things u can make from nothing and maybe how to make each of these things if ANYONE can do this it would be great i hope u all get jobs as the best phisisists in the world and find out if its posible to make everything from nothing
Posted by: Elijah Adams | December 19, 2011 6:07 PM
It doesn't last very long, Elijah.
Posted by: Wow | December 20, 2011 6:32 AM
Yeah, how can ANYTHING come from nothing?
Posted by: Matt | December 29, 2011 5:13 PM
A relevant article:
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/02/why-are-some-physicists-so-bad-at.html
Posted by: Dom | January 13, 2012 10:40 AM
If there are actually minute particles and anti-particles popping in and out of existance at a nearly unmeasurable time scale, does the box really ever have nothing in it? In reality, it sounds like "nothing" has been redefined to mean "lots of immensely small particiles that hop in and out of existance in our time and space."
Posted by: SimpleSkeptic | January 13, 2012 3:29 PM