Stephen Hawking Says Universe Created from Nothing

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)."

Sounds like...

[ArcherB]

Sounds like his speech was Much Ado About Nothing

Eternity

[Lev13than]

"Eternity is a very long time, especially towards the end."

Sure, it may feel like an eternity, but that's what it takes to get a decent table at Milliways.

Re:Eternity

[Anne_Nonymous]

"Eternity is a very long time, especially towards the end."

I think we've all sat through a few lectures like that.

REAL AUDIO?

[BillGod]

couldnt they just give you the text and let windows text to speech engine say it? It would almost be like if you were there!

Re:REAL AUDIO?

[shipbrick]

use Dr. Sbaitso

Re:REAL AUDIO?

[TheoMurpse]

couldnt they just give you the text and let windows text to speech engine say it?

In related news, Stephen Hawking has written a letter to his relative discussing the future of the universe: "Dear Aunt, Kill Delete Select All".

You sure about that?

[jdbartlett]

Sounds pretty monumental to me:

"Stephen Hawking Says Universe Created"

Sounds like he's starting to believe

[paranode]

May he be touched by His noodly appendage. Ramen.

Much Ado...

[Draconnery]

Actually, it reads like TFSummary was much ado about something wrong. I went to a lot of trouble and such and RTFA'ed, but I don't see anything from the summary in the article.

I see a mention of "inflation," and a poke at the God Team, but I don't see any mention of "nothing." (If somebody has a transcript, I might be bothered to look for the promised proclamation, but I certainly couldn't find it in the article.) Mr. Hawking has apparently just pretended to have an understanding of the un-understandable problem that sits at the beginning of anyone's understanding of everything: something exists, where nothing used to.

Sure, the idea of an abrupt Creation, or "Design," of the universe lets us joke about what God was doing before he got around to Creation, but the metaphor of water (or, let's suppose, some kind of cosmic stew) boiling into steam/universes leaves us with the same problem that we had in the first place: where in the [space larger than a universe] did the water/stew come from?

As I read it, the exact same problem has been reached again - and Religion and Science both require a leap of perfect faith over the gap that is The Beginning of It All.

Pfft - yeah right.

[charlesbakerharris]

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.

Re:Pfft - yeah right.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's turtles all the way down my friend!

Re:Pfft - yeah right.

[rayde]

for those of you out there who are missing the funny [wikipedia.org]..

A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the Earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the centre of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy.

At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise."

The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?"

"You're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down!"

Re:Pfft - yeah right.

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

The turtle isn't sitting on anything else. It's swimming through space. And don't forget the four elephants on its back whose backs the world is sitting on.

Re:Pfft - yeah right.

[rubycodez]

slight correction, after all these years and years of eternity, no doubt the turtle is swimming through elephant poop

Re:Pfft - yeah right.

[kalirion]

"There was, for example, the theory that A'Tuin had come from nowhere and would continue at a uniform crawl, or steady gait, into nowhere, for all time. This theory was popular among academics. An alternative, favoured by those of a religious persuasion, was that A'Tuin was crawling from the Birthplace to the Time of Mating, as were all the stars in the sky which were, obviously, also carried by giant turtles. When they arrived they would briefly and passionately mate, for the first and only time, and from that fiery union new turtles would be born to carry a new pattern of worlds. This was known as the Big Bang hypothesis."

- Terry Pratchett, The Color of Magic

hmmm, sorta like God, eh?

[swschrad]

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.

Re:

[MindStalker]

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. And religions being what they are.. like to fight amongst themselves.

Not at all.

[Kadin2048]

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.

Re:

[kalirion]

You would be right, if and only if Hawking was talking about things that couldn't ever be proven one way or another.

That's right. All we need is the technology that would allow us to go back in time to just before the Universe was created, and observe what happens.

What? You say there was no "time" before the Universe, so no "before"? That could cause problems....

Re:

[jotok]

Please, use the correct language.

This guy "Science" does not attempt to prove anything. However, observations can be used to support theories against being disproved.

The issue here is that we cannot yet conceive of a way to test these ideas...so there are no empirically valid observations (as is the case with religion), nor does the history of science in any way guarantee that we'll ever see them. I have faith that we will, and it is that optimistic hope that keeps me interested in science.

Disputing that

Re:Try again.

[smallfries]

No it doesn't. Reread his comment and try again. He says that we will "probably" be able to prove it. So it's not in the pile of things that definitely can't be proven, or in the pile that definitely can be proven. It's in the third pile - todo. The comparison was with religion which is squarely in the first pile.

Re:Try again.

[808140]

It's important to note that when a scientist says "This will be provable someday", what he means is, "It will be testable someday" which in turn means "It will be falsifiable someday." This means, in particular, that he is allowing for the distinct possibility that it will be disproved. Therein lies the difference.

The Bible contains all sorts of statements that we now know to be false, in the sense that they contradict all available evidence. The religious respond by going into elaborate contortions to maintain their beliefs (see, for example, "God put the dinosaur fossils there to test us"). Scientists change their opinions. For example, before the wave-particle duality of light was understood, it was widely believed that light was a wave -- and because waves travel through a medium (like ripples in a pond, for example) it was widely believed that light also traveled through a medium -- a medium scientists called the "luminiferous aether". Its existance was widely believed in. And yet, experiments showed that this "aether" did not exist. What did scientists do? They changed their minds.

Religious people never change their minds. Or rather, those that do are called heretics, and up until recently were frequently burned at the stake.

Re:Try again.

[MaXimillion]

Religious people never change their minds. Or rather, those that do are called heretics, and up until recently were frequently burned at the stake.

How very american statement...

What you're referring to is known as Fundamentalism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalist_Chris tianity [wikipedia.org]). While it is quite profilic opposition to scientific views in the USA, it is by no means the only way of thought for religious people.

Religion and Science aren't opposites, and don't nullify each other.

Re:Try again.

[Skeezix]

The Bible contains all sorts of statements that we now know to be false, in the sense that they contradict all available evidence. The religious respond by going into elaborate contortions to maintain their beliefs (see, for example, "God put the dinosaur fossils there to test us").

No, the religious nut-cases do that. They are the ones you always hear about in the media. You don't hear about the millions of reasonable, open-minded religious people who are capable of realizing that the Bible doesn't actually say how old the earth is and Genesis 1 was meant to be poetic rather than a scientific account of how God created the universe.

Re:Try again.

[electrosoccertux]

The Bible contains all sorts of statements that we now know to be false, in the sense that they contradict all available evidence. The religious respond by going into elaborate contortions to maintain their beliefs (see, for example, "God put the dinosaur fossils there to test us").

No, the religious nut-cases do that. They are the ones you always hear about in the media. You don't hear about the millions of reasonable, open-minded religious people who are capable of realizing that the Bible doesn't actually say how old the earth is and Genesis 1 was meant to be poetic rather than a scientific account of how God created the universe.

On top of that, and I should mention I am not a...biblical/religious/whatever Christian expert, all of the "statments known to be false" that I've heard referenced here on Slashdot and in other discussions about similar topics, have all been verses taken anywhere from slightly to grossly out of context from what any unbiased reader simply reading along would come to understand as the meaning. In all the cases, though, however small the contextual misunderstanding, it's been one large enough that anyone who knew much about the bible would be able to point out the misunderstanding and debunk the argument.

From what I've seen so far, there are dangerously few people who actually bring a solid argument to the table that takes more than 10 seconds to deal with. Most of them are just something they heard their friend say, who got it from some webpage that was so grossly biased it was laughable to say the least. There's one I can think of right now that is something like "1000 & 1 fallacies in the bible" that I saw someone on /. link. I took a few minutes or so to glance through a random assortment of 20-ish of these so called fallacious statements in the bible and none of them were anywhere close in interpretation. I'm not saying any sort of divine knowledge is required to understand the verses' meanings, but if you're not going to even quote the surrounding sentences, let alone more than a half sentence, you can't expect to come away with more than a half truth.

This reminds me of a joke I heard about a man who didn't care about context. He prayed to the Lord, "Father, please give me a message", dropped his bible on the floor, and placed his finger on a random verse on the page. It read "Judas went and hanged himself". He dropped his bible again, placing his finger on some point in the page. This verse said "Go and do the same." He was sweating by now, afraid of what was next. So one last time he read a random verse from a random page and it said "What you do, do quickly." Point is, you can come away with some pretty crazy ideas about the bible if you don't take more than five seconds to figure out the context.

Re:Try again.

[JonathanBoyd]

Please explain to me how you manage to deal with the omnipotent-benevolent problem

God defeated evil on the cross and Jesus will return.

10 words, not even 10 seconds.

Re:It's much worse than that...

[Tony Hoyle]

One is Joseph's line, and one is Mary's line.

FFS you could have worked that one out in 10 seconds.

Re:Try again.

[Sunburnt]

Technically he's right. There is only one thing that can absolutely be proven. Cogito ergo sum. I exist. You might not though...

Not true: mathematical theorems are true (capable of absolute proof) within their own axioms, and mathematics requires a priori axioms. As Wittgenstein might say, this means they convey no information, but simply recapitulate their axioms in increasingly complex forms.

The same condition does not apply to experience, thus leaving room for the skepticism that puzzled the mathematically-inclined Descartes. Yet the "cogito" has a notorious problem, along the same vein as Wittgenstein's analysis of mathematical truth: "I exist" is necessarily true in grammar, because of the assumptions made by "I." It conveys no information in language, and is a phenomenological report, no more provably true or false as a condition of existence than numerous competing phenomenological or grammatical analyses that posit the non-existence of a "I" (Buddhism is a ready example.)

The cogito sure does "make sense," though, and this is because experience suggests it.

Re:hmmm, sorta like God, eh?

[east coast]

And religions being what they are.. like to fight amongst themselves.

Considering that the atheist crowd likes to throw their hat in the ring too, my guess is that people like to fight in general. Religion is big just because there is so much on the line, not unlike politics.

Debate and struggle is human nature. Without some new lands to conquest over humanity will likely die out. Boredom will be the cause.

Re:hmmm, sorta like God, eh?

[hazem]

To quote Don Hirschberg, "Calling Atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair color."

Then Asimov had some nice ideas:

        * I prefer rationalism to atheism. The question of God and other objects-of-faith are outside reason and play no part in rationalism, thus you don't have to waste your time in either attacking or defending.

        * If I am right, then (religious fundamentalists) will not go to Heaven, because there is no Heaven. If they are right, then they will not go to Heaven, because they are hypocrites.

        * There is no belief, however foolish, that will not gather its faithful adherents who will defend it to the death.

Why is it, I wonder, that people who believe in God, and particularly Christians, insist that anyone who does not is still religious? Are they so insecure in their beliefs that they must force some kind of belief system onto other people - even if only in their own minds? Why is it they insist that asking, "where is the proof?" formulates a religious belief?

Re:hmmm, sorta like God, eh?

[SpinyNorman]

I have to strongly disagree. The difference between science and religion is that science is based on falsifiable theories. If a theory makes predictions that don't fit experiment/facts, then it is rejected. Religion is instead based on faith, not proof, and faith that is usually maintained even in the face of direct disproof!(e.g. young earth fundamentalists).

As a well known example of a highly theoretical theory in this general area, there's the Big Bang theory which correctly predicted the cosmic background radiation (as later measured by the COBE satellite).

Re:hmmm, sorta like God, eh?

[richie2000]

Bah. You can't even prove to me that I exist. Philosophical empiricists, help me out here.

Hell no, you're on your own.

Re:hmmm, sorta like God, eh?

[Red Flayer]

He thinks, therefore he am.

And what the hell is a philosophical empiricist? How would one test a philosophical theory?

Philosopher: I think, therefore I am.
Empiricist clocks philosopher upside the head and knocks him out cold
Empiricist: Nope. Still there.

Since empirical and philosophical are mutually exclusive, one would think that if an philosophical empiricist existed, we would enter some kind of twilight zone where military intelligence would make sense...

Re:

[quasius]

To be fair, a lot of the fighting comes from stuff like this:

"If one believed that the universe had a beginning, the obvious question was, what happened before the beginning," Hawking said. "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 migh

Not sure why that's antagonistic

[benhocking]

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?

[meringuoid]

"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.

Re:hmmm, sorta like God, eh?

[cowscows]

Along similar lines to this, for anyone who thinks that the idea of some eternal life beyond this one sounds boring or silly, as it's generally used to relate to God and religion, Eternity does not mean infinite time, it's more like an existing outside of time. It's pretty hard to say for any of us to say what that experience might be like, but in the sense often used in religious discussions, it's not helpful to imagine eternity as a really really long time.

Re:hmmm, sorta like God, eh?

[meringuoid]

Richard Swinburne, the foremost living philosopher of religion and an orthodox Christian, is one of a number of theist philosophers who hold that God is everlasting, that is, existing yesterday, today, and tomorrow, as opposed to timeless, that is, existing outside of time and being knowing for sure the future deeds of agents with free will.

That seems... tricky. If God exists in time like the rest of us, and cannot for instance accurately see the future, then we have a God subject to physics, subject to general relativity and the lightspeed limit. A God who sits within the universe in an inertial reference frame and who is just one more observer within the relativistic framework.

I'm far more comfortable with the idea of God as an entity wholly outside spacetime, subject to totally different laws if indeed subject to any at all, and free to inspect and perhaps to amend the whole four (or more) dimensional extent of the Universe at will. Put him in time and either you elevate time beyond the Universe of relativistic spacetime into God's domain, or you confine God within the Universe with the rest of us.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Not really

[jazman_777]

Real scientists...

Right, Maxwell, Newton, Pascal, Kepler, Faraday, etc. I'm sure you wouldn't descend from your lofty perch to talk to such as these.

Re:

[hobo sapiens]

Not sure about the rest, but Newton and Kepler were most certainly not athiests.

Re:Many "real" scientists are religious

[norton_I]

The last number I saw, which I don't have an authoritative reference for, said 20-25% of physicists believe in God, compared to ~90% of the general population. The percentage is higher when you consider all scientists, but still, science is not a very religious occupation.

A Notable Exception

[Khomar]

Most of the ones that are religious don't deal with the stuff that gets close to religious questions. For instance, those who deal with biology and evolution and such tend to be far less religious, than, say, those who do metalurgy or whatnot.

There is a very notable exception which also makes me wonder if the entire assertion is based on a false premise. Francis Collins [nationalgeographic.com], the leader of the Human Genome Project, is a professing Christian and involved in a field that most would not expect a Christian to be i

Outcast by friends and family

[kayakun]

Also, keep in mind that a lot of them don't like to rock the boat of their personal lives. Saying you don't believe in god is a good way to distance yourself from your family and or spouse -- so many either lie, or, more likely, just avoid thinking down that path a lot because it has no positive benefit.

I strongly agree with your statement. Many of my classmates don't like to speak with me, or even "look down" on me for my un-Christian views. In addition, I've had multiple girls refuse to date me simply because I'm not Christian. Although one could argue that the girls are using that as an excuse to just not date me, I'm talking about the cases when I've become very close to the girl, and the next logical step would be to date.

Whatever the case may be, I certainly have heard people at least claim that they don't want to spend time/go out/talk with me because I'm not Christian. People think it's wrong to discriminate based on race, but when discrimination occurs based on religion (on a small scale, I'm not talking about the holocaust), it's suddenly justified because that's part of the religious doctrine?

I used to be Christian, and at my church, we were told as kids to only have close friends with people within the church. Having friends with anyone else would supposedly cause us to turn away from the "truth" and fall into temptation.

Re:

[DogDude]

The only even remotely rational way that an intelligent person can believe in any kind of "god" is to understand science, and see some of the freaky stuff that we can't understand (ie: "if all matter is made up of sub-atomic particles, and those particles appear to move randomly, then is there such a thing as free will?"). I could see how a particle physicist or astrophysicist with a good understanding of science could say, "Shit, I guess maybe there could be something else out there pushing around these p

Bell's Theorem

[benhocking]

I expect that the only "random" things in nature are the ones we don't understand, and much of what appears to be random anyways isn't - even discounting chaotic systems. Wolfram's "New kind of science" metions simple finite automata that generate output that passes all tests of randomess.

You should read up on Bell's theorem [wikipedia.org] - assuming you haven't already. IIRC, Wolfram's book completely ignores it. I'm disappointed that 't Hooft didn't address it, as he is surely aware that would be the first complaint against any deterministic theory. Note: Bell's theorem doesn't completely rule out deterministic theories, but it does impose some rather harsh constraints on their existence. Anyone who posits a deterministic theory without addressing Bell's theorem is ignoring the elephant in the room.

Re:

[rucs_hack]

it depends what you mean by religious.

Many scientists believe in some form of god, but don't believe in the traditional sense, in religions themselves.

Catholicism and the many other flavours of Christianity have always been intolerant of scientific advance, even when many of the people behind those advances were themselves ordained priests or at least in service of the church.
In the middle ages the catholic church took a backward step from more moderate views and fell back on an Aristotelian descriptions fo

Re:

[rucs_hack]

religion, to my understanding, means literally to gather together. Therefore it implies involvement in an organised religion.

I toyed with organised religion in my youth, but encountered too many people who wished me to accept their world view 'on faith' and be happy as a result and, most importantly, to stop asking awkward questions. This didn't suit me one bit.

I wasn't a scientist then, and didn't become one till this dislike of organised religion was well in place, and yet I encounter people now who take

Re:Many "real" scientists are religious

[wrook]

To a good scientist, it shouldn't matter what they believe in. You could believe in the FSM. Doesn't matter. Science is about what works, not "truth". I observe something. Is it repeatable? Can I construct a model that predicts other things? Is it the simplest model that predicts the things I want to use?

That's science. Is light a wave or a particle? Yes. It depends on how I want to use it. Maybe light *is* a wave and a particle at the same time (in a way that I can't visualize). But basically, it doesn't matter what light *really* is. What matters is can I use my model to predict things that I can observe?

Truth is in the realm of religion. Since I can't prove that anything other than I exist (and I can't even understand the nature of my own existance), everything else is just faith. Maybe you believe there are *actually* particles called electrons circling particles in a nucleus. But that's just faith -- a religion. I personally believe that it's probably something a lot different than that. But the electron thing is a handy way for my human brain to visualize it in a useful way. It doesn't matter what it *actually* is (from a science perspective). I doubt we even have the capacity to understand what the Universe *actually* is.

If you allow your religious beliefs (even your religious beliefs in science) to get in the way of usefully predicting phenomena, you have left the realm of science. Even the best scientist does this occasionally. It's human nature. But a good scientist should be aware of this and continually strive to discover what's useful over what they believe to be true.

Not to go too far down the rabbit hole

[benhocking]

But, you do have to make some axioms before you can make any theorems. At some level, we all have things we believe in. Whether or not those faiths are "blind" is a matter of argument. Feel free to disagree, but I most likely won't respond as I've got a shockingly large number of replies to respond to for what I thought was a fairly benign statement. Additionally, I've had this argument enough to have a pretty good idea where it's going... ;)

Re:Many "real" scientists are religious

[AKAImBatman]

The issue is that they believe something which is not indicated by empirical testing. So again, it seems to me that claiming to be a scientist when you believe something unprovable is, if not hypocritical, at least inconsistent.

As long as one recognizes that their religious beliefs are not supportable by empirical evidence (which is a no-brainer) and do not attempt to force those beliefs into their scientific work, there is no conflict.

You seem to think that the scientific process should consume those who use it. I couldn't disagree with you more. It is just a tool, not a religion in of itself. A tool, I might add, that was developed by the very "hypocrites" you decry.

Pfft

[voice_of_all_reason]

That's not how it really happened... But when they were come into the Void, Ilúvatarr said to them: 'Behold your Music!' And he showed them a vision, giving to them sight where before was only hearing; and they saw a new World made visible before them, and it was globed amid the Void, and it was sustained therein, but was not of it.

Re:

[sarathmenon]

Ah, so you are the guy who sends me all that literature spam.

I hope it's true...

[DoofusOfDeath]

It would add some credibility when I tell my girlfriend that the porn in my browser history came ex nihilo.

Re:I hope it's true...

[chanrobi]

... my girlfriend ...

Your credibility just went to zero :)

Re:I hope it's true...

[kalirion]

Your credibility just went to zero :)

Please, his girlfriend obviously spontaneously appeared out of nothing.

God to Hawking:

[guruevi]

In this house we obey the law of thermodynamics.

Re:

[Stone Rhino]

Anthropic Principle. It doesn't matter how many untold near-infinities of other permutations existed, because this happens to be the one where we survived. This could have been the first random set of physical laws to come up or the quintillionth, and it'd make no perceptible difference to us.

Re:

[Rei]

Apparently you're not familiar with the Anthropic Principle [wikipedia.org]. Basically, you experience this universe because this is a universe suitable for life. In any universe not suitable for life, you would not be around to observe it. Therefore, no matter what universe you were born in, if you observe your universe, you will find that it is one that is nicely balanced for the creation of life.

A criticism I've heard levied against this principle goes along these lines:

Picture that you're abducted by a madman. He s

What Is Eternity?

[Eradicator2k3]

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.

Re:

[tempestdata]

To which you could add, "and you have to pee real bad"

Re:What Is Eternity? (relative)

[gosand]

The extremely attractive girl in line behind you strikes up a conversation with you. You notice that she is buying a 12 pack of really good micro-brew, has some motorcycle and tattoo magazines, and Computer Shopper. She tells you that she is in for a long night, because her computer has been acting up, and she really needs to make updates to her website where she is a tattoo/motorcycle model. She was planning on sitting at home all alone with some good beer and a computer shopper to try to find a new computer. Just as she asks if you could help her out, the checkout girl says "SIR!" and you realize it is your turn to check out. Where did the time go?

That is the theory of relativity in action. :)

Worthless link

[JesseL]

The linked article at The Daily Californian barely touches on any of the stuff mentioned in the /. summary. Do we have to listen to the webcast to get any of the good stuff?

Re:Worthless link

[lbmouse]

"Do we have to listen to the webcast to get any of the good stuff?"

Why don't you listen to it and let us know.

what the....

[Lxy]

The article points to his overall speech to be filled with satire. It's hard to say what he was trying to get at, and is he serious? "The universe was built from nothing, but we can't prove it because that would take too long".

Is he joking or is he serious? I have a bolder conclusion:

"The universe was built from SOMETHING. Since time is seemingly infinite in both directions, I'll never be able to prove it, but I know I'm right".

The paradox of Faith

[Original Replica]

" I'll never be able to prove it, but I know I'm right".

There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda

It would seem you have backed yourself into a corner here.

Re:

[GoodbyeBlueSky1]

Is he joking or is he serious?

Good question. It's quite difficult to tell when Hawking is being sarcastic. Maybe he should start using <sarcasm> tags during speeches like this.

Re:

[wurp]

I didn't RTFM, but I'm sure he was seriously suggesting that the universe came from nothing. There has been semi-serious argument for some time that the universe is a 'vacuum bubble'.

Per quantum mechanics, things can appear from nothing as long as they vanish within a maximum time dictated by the total energy content (including mass) of the thing. (E*T = h, where E is the energy and T is the time the thing hangs around, and h is Planck's constant).

There has been argument that the negative gravitational en

so

[mastershake_phd]

universe spontaneously popped into existence from nothing.
 
So how long till it pops out of existence?

Re:so

[Kaenneth]

universe spontaneously popped into existence from nothing.
So how long till it pops out of existence?
In about 2 secon

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Where is the water these bubbles came from?

[Guuge]

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.

Hawking is Not Like a Priest

[Guuge]

You don't seem to have understood my post, so I'll try to explain what I mean a little more carefully.

You claim hypocrisy on the part of atheists for not accepting religious beliefs but accepting Hawking's unsupported word. But Hawking coming up with some wild-sounding speculation is not the same as a religious figure preaching centuries-old articles of faith.

First, consider a hypothetical Church of Science (or whatever) where Hawking is a priest. How could Hawking come up with his far-out models of uni

Re:

[chrisbro]

Important difference: He said more work is needed to prove this...

Though it boggles my mind to think of the research he could be proposing...science with facts to back it up is automatically more trustworthy then religion with no testable hypotheses.

Re:Where is the water these bubbles came from?

[Remus Shepherd]

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.

Re:

[Ambitwistor]

Actually, I think he was describing Linde's eternal inflation [wikipedia.org], not braneworld scenarios.

preemptive question

[Lord Ender]

Which is more likely?

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.
   

If you chose #2, it's turtles all the way down... ... ...

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Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[burndive]

Which is more likely?

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.

If you chose #2, it's turtles all the way down... ... ...

I don't know of anyone who believes in a God who "popped into existence." That would imply that he exists in some sort of time continuum. I agree that your definition of #2 dictates turtles all the

Re:preemptive question

[JeanPaulBob]

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.

Re:preemptive question

[spun]

Even so, using Occam's razor, the set containing option 1 and 3 is more likely than the set containing option 2 and 4, because the latter set is actually a more complex extension of the first, and given two possibilities with no other way to judge, the least complex option is more likely.

Re:preemptive question

[Guy Harris]

I know #2 has some evidence

Cite some.

Re:preemptive question

[Guuge]

I think the idea is that #2 subsumes #1, and goes further. Therefore, the probability of #1 is at least as high as the probability of #2. In my opinion, it's pretty silly to take "created from nothing" at face value, as it is not even close to a scientific description.

But for laughs, let's hear the evidence for #2, especially the part about the beard.

Not in TFA

[bill_mcgonigle]

I guess you have to watch the webcast because TFA doesn't say that. If anybody wants to summarize here that would be great.

IIRC from A Brief History of Time, Hawking theorized that time, a dimension, didn't exist 'before the universe' because it doesn't make sense to ask about time any more than the other three dimensions of spacetime before TFU existed. He had some maths explanation about how the time dimension approached 0 and curved back on itself (somebody more fresh elaborate...), and I think he got the Pope to concede time after time-0 to nature.

Maybe he's proposing a new theory here, reflected in the webcast?

Celebrity view

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe we could ask Paris Hilton, too.
Among celebrity experts she is most definitely the biggest authority on the science of creating something from nothing.

In the beginning....

[PPH]

...there was nothing. Then, God said, "Let there be light".

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

Re:In the beginning....

[oGMo]

Did you ever notice that the Creation story in Genesis gets the order wrong? God creates light and dark, day and night, and then waits until the next day to create the sun, moon, and stars. Oops.

Eh only if you're looking at it from a literalist's perspective. Which is silly. Think of it as a story for those who aren't astrophysicists; it's not a textbook, but it's not meant to be. From this perspective, it's actually suprisingly what you'd expect: we get basic physics (space, time, light) in the first eon of the universe ("day-night" sequence). Plus, I believe that physicists currently theorize that there was quite a bit of light (and radiation) and quite a lack of stars and planetary bodies for quite awhile after "the beginning".

I think the story would actually be more suspect if God first created the sun, moon, stars, and earth. Compare this to other mythologies where that is what happened.

Timothy Ferris said it best

[nsayer]

Some years ago there was a documentary series called "The Creation of the Universe," with Timothy Ferris. They talked about this theory that the universe could have sprung into existence from out of nowhere. He said of the idea, "It sounds incredibly unlikely, but then it only ever had to happen once."

One line proof

[Lord Bitman]

"Causality is an aspect of the universe" therefore: "The universe itself (or whatever caused it, ad infiniwhatever) requires no cause"
gee, that was tough. And only figured out several thousand years ago...

Interestingly: even if causality exists within our universe, it does not exist in any universe which does not exist. Draw your own conclusion, so long as it's the same as mine. ;)

hasn't been said yet

[Eccles]

the universe spontaneously popped into existence from nothing

This made a lot of people very angry, and has been widely regarded as a bad idea.--Douglas Adams

Hawking's conversation with George Costanza

[mcwop]

HAWKING: Well, they want me to come up with an idea. On the creation of the Universe, I don't have any ideas.

GEORGE: Come on, how hard is that? Look at all the junk science these days. You want an idea? Here's an idea. A higher being, of incomprehensible power created it.

Hawking: Scientists don't like the idea of higher beings.

GEORGE: But it is a being of incomprehensible power.

HAWKING: That is not for everybody.

GEORGE: I know, but it's incomprehensible

HAWKING: That would make me look like such a schmuck.

GEORGE: All right, forget that idea, it's not for you....Okay, okay, I got it. How about the Universe is created from nothing? Every scientist tries to make it about something, how about making this about nothing?

HAWKING: Yeah and...?

GEORGE: And people say hey it's about nothing, they look at their meaningless lives, and sort of just agree.

I guess the Hindus were right then

[athloi]

About the universe waking up from nothingness, and creating itself. This means we could have skipped 2,000 years of religious wars, standardized on Hinduism, made it Open Source and still had the New Age movement with its interesting drugs.

That's not what he meant...

[7Prime]

Many are assuming that Hawking is proposing that the universe came into existance from complete nothingness. This isn't what he was saying at all:

From the article:

According to Hawking, the origin of the universe can be depicted as bubbles in a steam in boiling water. Small bubbles that appear and then collapse represent mini universes that expand only to disintegrate.

All this is is a simple analogy to represent the way in which the universe came into existance, it says nothing about what caused it to do so. In fact, even in his analogy, the bubbles are caused by extreme heat through a medium in a transitional state. This most definitely is "something".

In a discussion with one of the more thoughtful news anchors at my work, I was caught making the following statement, "everything must have an origin", but in actuality, we have no proof of that. Traditionally, when we talk of creation, we are really refering to a transformation of something into something else. We've never actually seen creation, in the purist sense of the word, so we have no way of proving that anything ever was created.

I have come to believe that there never has been nothing. Some form of SOMETHING (be it matter, energy, time, or what-have-you, since we're talking multi-dimensional proporties outside of our existing concept of reality) has always existed. Time could very well simply be a property unique to our universe, so "eternity" may have no real meaning whatsoever. But in any case, something has always existed in some form or another. It is impossible to come to any conclusion otherwise. Even if you take into account that physics, reality, space, and time, as we know it, may very-well only exist inside our universe, there must be some form of physical properties, be they very different, outside our universe, and changes in those properties were the cause of our universe.

Simply because one is busy concentrating on the creation of a bubble in boiling water doesn't mean that you can completely disregard the existance of the boiling water, or the energy coming off the stove, as part of what went into creating the bubble.

Re:Out of Nothing Nothing Comes

[lawpoop]

There is nothing now. It is everywhere, it is nowhere. It permeates the whole universe. The thing is, nothing is *nothing*. It doesn't look like anything, it doesn't have any gravitational pull, it doesn't radiate, it doesn't reflect light, it doesn't affect the universe in any way. It doesn't interfere with us *at all*. It has no effects or consequences whatsoever. It has no physical existence, no thing can come from it, therefore it cannot produce anything. It's just nothing -- timeless, spaceless, pure nothingness. The universe and nothing are not opposites; they do not cancel each other out or annihilate each other. They have no effect on each other. There is no difference between nothing 'being' here or not 'being' here. It's exactly the same.

It's confusing to say that the universe 'came from' nothing. The universe wasn't produced by nothing. Currently, the universe exists, and also there is nothing. At some point in the past, the past didn't exist. When the universe didn't exist, there was only nothing.

Re:

[i_should_be_working]

To add to what meriguoid said above about the uncertainty principle:
Stuff comes out of nothingness all the time. Literally all the time. A particle and it's anti-particle will pop out of nothing for no apparent reason. Physical law allows this through the uncertainty principle. That stuff usually exists for an extremely short amount of time and then ceases to exist again. But some stuff that comes from nothing can be made to stay.

Before recent evidence showed that the expansion of the universe is ac

Ve believe in nossing!

[Rob T Firefly]

Ve are nihilists, Lebowski!

Re:

[7Prime]

If there is absolutely nothing, then that means you're certain of both how much energy is present (zero), and the rate of change of energy (also zero). That violates the uncertainty principle. So absolute nothing is unstable, because if you're totally certain there's nothing there then you have absolutely no idea of how rapidly that state of affairs is changing.

Well put. The end result is that the "beginning of something" is a paradox unto itself. It is theoretically impossible to argue that there was no

Re:

[ArcherB]

But that is what makes Hawking who he is. For a guy in a wheelchair who can not talk on his own, this guy has mastered the art of communication. You got to admit, the guy is charming. A Brief History of Time was by no means a physics textbook, but a dumbed down version of "Discovery Channel science". It was pure entertainment meant to make the reader feel smart.

Still, that doesn't mean to knock Hawking at all. What he has done is become the spokesperson for scientists. He has sparked a public interest

Re:

[Dunbal]

Hawking is just a little late jumping on the bandwagon

      I doubt very much that Dr. Hawking is jumping ANYWHERE, you insensitive clod! :P

Re:

[Control Group]

You're making an assumption: that the rules which obtain in the observed universe also obtain in the absence of that universe. If we make a different - equally valid - assumption that physical law is a feature of the universe, then there's no reason to think that causality itself, much less conservation of energy, apply "before" the universe existed. In that case, there's no reason to think that it's any less likely for stuff to spontaneously appear than it is for it to not.

Basically, you can't think of the