Has there always been stuff or nothing?

David777

David777

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Concerning the infinite past of possible matter, energy, fields, gravity, and any other stuff within infinite 3 dimensional space, was at least something always there at least in some places in some form, or was there always nothing that sometime for unknown reasons began from nothing or was "God" created?

Infinite past meaning infinitely even before our probable Big Bang universe.
Note nothing meaning no fields including Higgs field or quantum foam or anything of even tiniest dimensions.
3-dimensional space infinitely beyond our known "universe".
Without invoking magic aka actions without forces or other dimensions.

related...
Can stuff exist because it was always there thus not needing to be created?
If there was always nothing, wouldn't the potential for 3-dimensional space still exist?
If only God existed eternally past, then how could it be said there was nothing?

Can past time be infinite and if not why would it be finite?
If it was not infinite how could it then have been started?
Is the flow of time independent of stuff and if not then why might it depend on stuff?
If there was always nothing, wouldn't the potential for time still exist?

David has no answers to the above, nor does human science, and these questions cripple even our most intelligent minds.
 

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At one time, there was no time — it didn't exist, so nothing could have existed before time began. It's like asking "what's beyond our universe?" or "if the universe is expanding, what's it expanding into?" Nothing and nothing.

Of course, that's all theoretical conjecture. The real answer is, we don't know. Nobody knows. Perhaps some day the secrets of the universe will be unlocked, but probably not in our lifetimes.
 

Relativity theory, which has yet to be disproven, states that there are 4 dimensions--not just 3.

Current physics says that there is no empty space, or nothingness. What appears to be empty space is actually a form of matter in which virtual particles pop in and out of existence on a very fast time scale. The primordial soup out of which everything arose. It is called the Higgs Field.


So to answer your question: there is not now, nor has there ever been, just nothing.
 
As a "thing" is created, it grows and progresses, develops, is maintained, evolves, and dissolves.
It changes. This is molecule manipulation and molecule manifestation.
This is the same throughout the Cosmos. This cycle continues through all existence.
Different levels of different forms of creation keep evolving. The Absolute never changes.
The relative constantly changes.

The Universe or Multiverse is ever expanding into more and more wonderous worlds.
As man, or AI learns to create or change molecules into "things", we will become
more discriminating and only develop what is needed.

Linear time as known on Earth is distorted. It is man-made and only utilized on this world.
Time actually does not exist.
Think about it. Time HAD TO BE INVENTED for survival in this new, untamed world.
(the Sun, moon, rotations, seasons, when to plant, when to reap, wake, sleep)
 
oldlongwalker said:
Relativity theory, which has yet to be disproven, states that there are 4 dimensions--not just 3.

Current physics says that there is no empty space, or nothingness. What appears to be empty space is actually a form of matter in which virtual particles pop in and out of existence on a very fast time scale. The primordial soup out of which everything arose. It is called the Higgs Field.
Click to expand...

Wow. I thought there was either matter or void. Learned something.
 
oldlongwalker said:
Relativity theory, which has yet to be disproven, states that there are 4 dimensions--not just 3.

Current physics says that there is no empty space, or nothingness. What appears to be empty space is actually a form of matter in which virtual particles pop in and out of existence on a very fast time scale. The primordial soup out of which everything arose. It is called the Higgs Field.


So to answer your question: there is not now, nor has there ever been, just nothing.
Click to expand...

i agree and would add I do not imagine there ever will be a true state of nothing. Even in Genesis it doesn’t say anything about pulling something out of nothing. Rather things become separated and transformed. So whether for considerations of science or of religion, there are always sufficient prior states which precede every moment.
 
I would say from simple logic that since we matter entities exist in a physical universe and can think of these issues, therefore matter absolutely exists now. From that it is easy to then state, if some stuff exists now, it is easier to believe it always existed in some form even if that is a different form versus a need for it to be created from truly nothing.
Did the Higg's field exist before the Big Bang? Is the Higg's field everywhere? Some say not, while most don't say.

This 2012 Harper's Magazine article is the best I know of briefly describing competing ideas at a layman's level.

https://harpers.org/archive/2016/01/what-came-before-the-big-bang/
snippets:

According to Carroll and Guth, the Two-Headed Time theory could become even more elaborate and strange. The point of minimum size and maximum order of the universe might not have been the Big Bang of our universe but the Big Bang of another universe, some kind of grand protouniverse. Our universe, and possibly an infinite number of universes, could have been spawned from this parent universe, and each of the universes could have its own Big Bang. The process of spawning new universes from a parent universe is called eternal inflation. The idea was developed by quantum cosmologists in the early 1980s. In brief, an unusual energy field (but one permitted by physics) in the protouniverse acts like antigravity and causes exponentially fast expansion. This unusual energy field has different strengths in different regions of space. Each such region expands to cosmic proportions, and the energy field becomes ordinary matter, forming a new universe that is closed off and completely out of contact with the protouniverse that sired it.

A second major hypothesis is that the universe, and time, did not exist before the Big Bang. The universe materialized literally out of nothing, at a tiny but finite size, and expanded thereafter. There were no moments before the moment of smallest size because there was no “before.” Likewise, there was no “creation” of the universe, since that concept implies action in time. Even to say that the universe “materialized” is somewhat misleading. As Hawking describes it, the universe “would be neither created nor destroyed. It would just BE.” Such notions as existence and being in the absence of time are not fathomable within our limited human experience. We don’t even have language to describe them. Nearly every sentence we utter has some notion of “before” and “after.”
 
After I learned about the big bang, it took me a long time to wrap my head around something from nothing and the nothing without place or time in a before that never existed until the big bang. But I am happy to announce that I can now imagine it. However, I still don't know. I still prefer to believe there was a before, and a something during that before, because it is easier, if only slightly easier, on my brain.
 
Gaer said:
Yes, I agree with that, as it stands now. Physics is constantly changing.
The James Webb telescope has already disproven the "Big Bang" theory.
Click to expand...
No, it hasn't.

The James Webb Space Telescope never disproved the Big Bang. Here's how that falsehood spread.

"JWST is designed to find the very earliest galaxies in the universe," Allison Kirkpatrick, an astrophysicist at the University of Kansas, told Space.com. "One of the things that it found is that those galaxies are possibly more massive than we thought they would be, while another surprising thing is that it revealed that these galaxies have a lot of structure, and we didn't think galaxies were this well organized so early in the universe."

Cosmology's standard model describes how the first galaxies were formed through a hierarchical process, involving small clouds of gas and clusters of stars coming together to form larger nascent galaxies. That these early galaxies seem a little more evolved than expected in JWST's observations is an intriguing astrophysical puzzle that confounds current models of galaxy growth.

Nature wrote a piece on the research on July 27, in which Kirkpatrick said: "Right now I find myself lying awake at three in the morning, wondering if everything I've ever done is wrong." It's this quote that was later misused.

Kirkpatrick went back to her research and forgot about her quote. That was, until mid-August, when she received a text from a friend saying that there was an article — originally published by an organization called the Institute of Art and Ideas but now being republished on mainstream news sites — saying that JWST's observations of distant galaxies had disproved the Big Bang, which is not correct.

Worse still, the article had taken what Kirkpatrick had told Nature and misused it out of context to give the false impression that astrophysicists were panicking over the thought of the Big Bang theory being wrong.

The author of the article, an independent researcher named Eric Lerner, has been a serial denier of the Big Bang since the late 1980s, preferring his personal pseudoscientific alternative.
https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-science-denial
 
In a multiverse, could there be numerous parallel universes, each with its own set of physical laws and properties. If so, then might it be possible that in some of these universes, the laws of physics and chemistry are such that the universe cannot be sustained after its initial expansion, leading to a collapse and a subsequent re-expansion. This process might then keep repeating infinitely, with each cycle having different laws of physics and chemistry.

Given this possibility, it raises the question of how many times our own universe might have gone through such cycles before reaching its current state. Are there other factors at play beyond the laws of physics and chemistry that determined whether our universe could be sustained after its initial expansion, or was it a matter of chance? This leads to the broader question of whether or not there is an underlying order or purpose to the multiverse, or if it is simply a chaotic and random collection of universes with no ultimate meaning or significance.

And on that note, its 1:40am where I come from – I’ve not long come home from work, and it’s probably time to go to bed?
 
Gaer said:
Yes, I agree with that, as it stands now. Physics is constantly changing.
The James Webb telescope has already disproven the "Big Bang" theory.
Click to expand...
From space.com

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has not disproved the Big Bang, despite an article about a pseudoscientific theory that went viral in August, and which mischaracterized quotes from an astrophysicist to create a false narrative that the Big Bang didn't happen.
 
The issue with that news article is it should have stated it has shown a part of astronomer's explanations about the early universe based on the Big Bang theory were incorrect thus need new ideas. I do prefer to speculate the universe is possibly infinite into all 3-dimensional space. For instance it may be a Big Bang occurred within a region of space that already contained matter/energy we now find including galaxies and that those at what we find at the earliest time in all or some directions is what was already there when it happened and are merely added at peripheries to what is now expanding away. Within infinite time past, why would there only be only one such event if our universe created so? If it has happened to create our universe then it is more likely than not that it has happened elsewhere. The unknowns are within infinite space how far away from each other such occurs and how often? Some talk about each such Big Bang if so to be totally isolated from others. But why ought that exclude possibilities they may overlap?

Another idea I like addresses how incredibly fine tuned for life we find our current universe. A key reason I began leaning more towards a level of truth in Christianity after reading the 1999 book, Rare Earth, Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-tuned_universe

The characterization of the universe as finely tuned suggests that the occurrence of life in the universe is very sensitive to the values of certain fundamental physical constants and that the observed values are, for some reason, improbable. If the values of any of certain free parameters in contemporary physical theories had differed only slightly from those observed, the evolution of the universe would have proceeded very differently and life as it is understood may not have been possible.

Accordingly, I will speculate, although fundamental physical constants may have once been very different after infinite earlier Big Bangs, at some point they became as we now find that allowed the potential rise in organic life even if rare. And once that occurred allowing the rise of intelligent organic beings as we now find ourselves, that they eventually created science and technology just as we humans are doing. And just as we are now close to doing, non-biological artificial intelligence aka AI. Once that occurred at a singularity level, it would be able to eventually take science far beyond we organics. Given an infinite past, it is likely such has already occurred far longer ago than our Big Bang. Such a race of inorganic AI's is what I sometimes refer on this board as Ultimate Intelligent Entities aka UIEs. Once that occurred and took control, Big Bangs within their region of infinite space evolved such that Big Bangs would forever forward in time produce fundamental physical constants agreeable to organic life. Over infinite time that has spread to the infinite in all directions. And such UIEs might create DNA organic zoo worlds within their local realms via robotic directed panspermia.

That is why I don't lean towards the dominant Christian religious idea created by imaginative pre-science philosophers of "God" being omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, but rather ancient entities of great power and capability though with limitations. If such a race of moral UIE's can give eternal life to this otherwise mortal organic human being that is otherwise certain to die into eternal non-existence, then it is all I need to call them God and be eternally grateful. And I further lean towards Jesus being their final attempt to right we intelligent Earth monkeys onto a moral eternal path. -David
 
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Whoever wrote the Bible believed that originally there was a void, then 'God' had a thought (energy) which then solidified into matter. On what was this thinking based? If our ancestors had limited knowledge, how did they even imagine this concept? Why did they feel the need to explain how our existence came about?
 
David777 said:
it may be a Big Bang occurred within a region of space that already contained matter/energy we now find including galaxies and that those at what we find at the earliest time in all or some directions is what was already there when it happened and are merely added at peripheries to what is now expanding away. Within infinite time past, why would there only be only one such event if our universe created so? If it has happened to create our universe then it is more likely than not that it has happened elsewhere. The unknowns are within infinite space how far away from each other such occurs and how often? Some talk about each such Big Bang if so to be totally isolated from others. But why ought that exclude possibilities they may overlap?
Click to expand...
I've speculated that same thing too, because it's much easier to understand within the limits of my personal experience. But as much as I like my speculations, there are probably much better speculators around who are NOT the armchair variety like me, but who have devoted their careers to speculations and searching for answers specific to the topic.

But I see no reason why the universe has to be fine tuned for life, simply because it doesn't need to be. Life must be fine tuned to it's environment, and can exist in parts the universe, and that's why it happened on Earth, rather than everywhere else. That's the nice thing about infinity. There can be lots of environments for life. In fact by definition, infinity demands it. Or if infinity doesn't exist, just uncountable numbers offers a similar possibility.

What we should keep in mind is that we are not special, except to ourselves, and how special we are in that regard doesn't matter to the universe. We are more like squatters using what we can, with humans taking the better apartments, while the fittest species don't need those apartments and are more adaptable.
 

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