Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

Stephen Hawking Says Universe Created from Nothing

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wed Mar 14, 2007 02:25 PM
from the preparing-hell-for-people-who-ask-questions dept.
Science News
mr_3ntropy writes "Speaking to a sold out crowd at the Berkeley Physics Oppenheimer Lecture, Hawking said yesterday that he now believes the universe spontaneously popped into existence from nothing. He said more work is needed to prove this but we have time because 'Eternity is a very long time, especially towards the end.' There is also a Webcast available (Realplayer or Real Alternative required)."
+ -
story
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

Stephen Hawking Says Universe Created from Nothing 25 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.

  • Sounds like... (Score:5, Funny)

    by ArcherB (796902) * on Wednesday March 14 2007, @02:26PM (#18351049) Journal
    Sounds like his speech was Much Ado About Nothing

  • Pfft - yeah right. (Score:5, Funny)

    by charlesbakerharris (623282) on Wednesday March 14 2007, @02:28PM (#18351083) Homepage
    If that were true, how did the earth end up sitting on the back of a giant turtle? And where did all the other turtles that *they're* sitting on come from?

    Hawking is such a hack.

  • hmmm, sorta like God, eh? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by swschrad (312009) on Wednesday March 14 2007, @02:28PM (#18351091) Homepage Journal
    the interesting thing about theories is that they all attempt to explain something. why there are bumfights between bible thumpers and scientists three times a day over these things has always mystified me.

      • To be fair, this cuts both ways (liberal and conservative). I frequently see comments that people assume are antagonistic and feel that the antagonism is in the ears of the, um, belistener.

        As someone with a fairly good training in physics, I read this statement to be a commentary on Hawking's annoyance with the question of what came before "time" began. Many religious people have attempted to reconcile the Big Bang with Judeo-Christian beliefs by having God be responsible for the Big Bang. I think that such an allusion should not be taken as necessarily antagonistic.

      • Re:hmmm, sorta like God, eh? (Score:5, Informative)

        by meringuoid (568297) on Wednesday March 14 2007, @03:00PM (#18351807)
        "What was God doing before He made the world? Was He preparing hell for people who asked such questions?" Now, rediculous stuff comes from the other side as well; but when incredibly smart and esteemed scientists like Hawking make such statements that show an animosity toward and lack of understanding of religion, it might antagonize people.

        Lack of understanding? He was quoting St. Augustine [jsrsys.com].

        It's a quote he uses a lot. Read a lot of Hawking's speeches and you'll see that he rehashes old material endlessly; it's a hell of a job for him to actually go through the labour of typing out anything new, what with his condition, so he copies and pastes wherever possible from previous works and speeches. Whole paragraphs tend to get copied from Brief History to this day.

        The full quote from the book was:

        "As we shall see, the concept of time has no meaning before the beginning of the universe. This was first pointed out by St. Augustine. When asked: What did God do before he created the universe? Augustine didn't reply: He was preparing Hell for people who asked such questions. Instead, he said that time was a property of the universe that God created, and that time did not exist before the beginning of the universe. [Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam, 1988), p. 8]"

        Thus Augustine's idea of time is in full agreement with Hawking's: that time is a function of the universe, so 'before creation' is a meaningless phrase.

      • Not at all. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Kadin2048 (468275) <slashdot.kadin@noSpaM.xoxy.net> on Wednesday March 14 2007, @03:14PM (#18352085) Homepage Journal
        Because when it gets down to the highly theoretical stuff like this that no one will ever truly be able to prove, its not much different than religion.

        You would be right, if and only if Hawking was talking about things that couldn't ever be proven one way or another. At that point, he wouldn't be doing any sort of physics anymore, he'd be somewhere off in that grey area where it borders philosophy and religion. (I call this area "Wankersville", but that's just me.)

        However, there's a difference between something that cannot ever be proved, full stop, and something that can't be proved or disproved right now, due to the limitations of our understanding and our equipment.

        There was a time, as recently as a hundred years ago, when debates about whether light was a particle or a wave would have seemed like wanking. However, they were not -- because we now have an (well, at least a partial) answer to that question, it's just that the theoreticians exceeded the reach of the experimentalists for a few centuries. Debates such as those, which get answered eventually by experimental evidence, are wholly different from debates which can never be settled (and, IMO, are a pointless waste of time that humanity should just move the hell along from).

        It's pretty clear that Hawking realizes that what he's postulating can't be proven or disproven right now, but he's not putting it out there as an article of faith, either; he's saying that at some point in the future, between now and the heat death of the Universe, we'll probably be able to test it experimentally. That's a lot different than religion.

  • I hope it's true... (Score:5, Funny)

    by DoofusOfDeath (636671) on Wednesday March 14 2007, @02:29PM (#18351113)
    It would add some credibility when I tell my girlfriend that the porn in my browser history came ex nihilo.

  • God to Hawking: (Score:5, Funny)

    by guruevi (827432) <eviNO@SPAMsmokingcube.be> on Wednesday March 14 2007, @02:31PM (#18351149) Homepage
    In this house we obey the law of thermodynamics.

  • What Is Eternity? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Eradicator2k3 (670371) on Wednesday March 14 2007, @02:31PM (#18351151)
    What is eternity? You're on the checkout line at a supermarket. There are seven people in front of you. They are all old. They all have two carts and coupons for every item. They are all paying by check. None of them have ID. It's the checkout girl's first day on the job. She doesn't speak any English. Take away fifteen minutes from that, and you begin to get an idea of what eternity is.

    Thank you, Emo Philips.

  • so (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mastershake_phd (1050150) on Wednesday March 14 2007, @02:35PM (#18351279) Homepage
    universe spontaneously popped into existence from nothing.
     
    So how long till it pops out of existence?

  • In the beginning.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by PPH (736903) on Wednesday March 14 2007, @02:42PM (#18351415)
    ...there was nothing. Then, God said, "Let there be light".

    And there was still nothing, but at least you could see it.

    • Re:Where is the water these bubbles came from? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Guuge (719028) on Wednesday March 14 2007, @02:49PM (#18351557)
      So it's a bunch of bullshit. Who cares? In a theocracy, Stephen Hawking would be hauled off to jail for suggesting such blasphemy. Shouldn't we be celebrating the fact that he can openly speculate about origins? Hawking isn't telling you how to live your life, or what to think, or who to vote for, or what to teach your kids, or which supreme court justices deserve to die. He's just sharing his little vision.
    • He's making an analogy. A rigorous explanation is beyond the generalized audience he had there. Even those with proper background to understand it would probably have been bored -- they came there to see a scientist celebrity, and Hawkings did not disappoint.

      For your enlightenment, the 'water' in question is a series of multidimensional branes [wikipedia.org], according to one cosmological theory. The universe may have been created when two branes collided, creating turbulence that manifested as a big bang in our dimensional space. These collisions go on all the time, but like the 'bubbles in boiling water' analogy not all the turbulence creates new universes.

      Your next question is 'where did the branes come from'? Branes are mathematical concepts. If someone tells you 1+1=2, you can't really ask where '1' came from. If there is a multiverse it has to have some sort of brane structure, in much the same way as if humans exist they have to have skin.

      So the universe was 'created by nothing' in a pretty accurate sense, as a mathematical concept is as close to 'nothing' as anyone is likely to conceive. But in the end, Hawkings' words were chosen for showmanship, not precision.

    • It's Always Turtles, and Maybe Elephants (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Alaren (682568) on Wednesday March 14 2007, @02:59PM (#18351789) Homepage

      Asimov [multivax.com] had something to say about this.

      If, at any point it what can rationally be described as "time," any being or beings ever developed the capacity to create new universes, how many universes would said beings create?

      What are the odds that no being would ever create universes?

      If universes really do create themselves ex nihilo, what are the odds that we are the first beings in the first universe?

      Proving "God," as in, some force that set the Universe in motion, is in some sense quite easy. It's God's attributes that are up for grabs. Is that force rational? Is that force "Good?" Perhaps most importantly, does that force have a beard?

      This may be an inherent problem with our language, but when you're discussing "ultimate" causes you are always dealing with the turtles problem. This is because rational experience is inherently ordered (see Kant). There is no reason to insist, however, that something as big as the universe is within rational experience.

      The ancient Greeks talked about the universe as infinite in this way: throw a dart. If the dart hits something, then there is "something" there, so that's not the edge of the universe. If the dart keeps going then there is space there so that's not the edge of the universe, either. Those are the only rational options, so the universe must be infinite.

      New models of physics suggest that the dart might come back at you or turn up "somewhere else." As our capacity to discuss events grows, what constitutes "rational" also grows. As that grows, the line of turtles grows ever longer. The choices seem to be that the stack ends at "nothing," that the stack never ends at all, or that the stack loops back on itself...

      If there are other options we haven't figured them out yet. As it turns out, we aren't making great sense out of the options we have.

    • Re:preemptive question (Score:5, Informative)

      by JeanPaulBob (585149) on Wednesday March 14 2007, @03:25PM (#18352355)
      What on earth? Sorry, Lord Ender, but you not only don't quite understand what theists claim, you don't even accurately list the other possibilities. You left out the other two major possibilities, and your #2 isn't claimed by anyone I've ever read.

      1. The universe popped into existence from nothing, or
      2. A complex, intelligent, powerful creature (presumably with a beard) popped into existence from nothing, then one day decided to create the universe from nothing, or
      3. The universe has always existed, or
      4. God has always existed, and created the universe from nothing.


      Now, maybe you left out 3 because you're assuming the Big Bang. If so, that's fair enough.

      But the claim of every major theistic group I know is #4, not #2. You seem to be aping Dawkins' arguments, with a similar ignorance of the actual set of alternatives. No one claims that the order/complexity/whatever of God just popped into existence. People (Hawking, Dawkins, apparently you) do claim that the order of the physical universe & natural law just popped into existence. If you're going to compare your views to other people's, and if you care about honesty and intellectual integrity, please accurately represent them.

      And if you think the distinction I'm making between 2 and 4 is irrelevant or meaningless, keep this in mind: The Big Bang was resisted because people wanted to have a universe that always existed. They could accept an eternal universe; they did not want to have to explain a universe that started to exist. (Of course, we can also suppose an eternal chain of Big Bangs, universes spawning other universes, etc., so the Big Bang doesn't actually settle this question of eternality.) So, those philosophical naturalists thought 3 was more reasonable than 1 for precisely the reason that theists claim 4 is more reasonable than 2.

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.