Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

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https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswitha...c72c486394

EXCERPT: . . . What does "nothing" mean to a scientist...? Depending on who you ask, you might get one of four different answers. Here's what they all mean.

1.) A condition where the raw ingredients to create your "something" didn't exist. [...] Everything we know of and interact with is made of subatomic matter particles [...] if the laws of physics are such that we can only create matter and antimatter in equal amounts, how did we wind up with a Universe where every structure we see is made of matter and not antimatter? ... So how, then, did we create an excess of these necessary raw ingredients if the Universe wasn't born with one? This is what is meant when you hear that the matter in our Universe arose from nothing. ... We don't know why there's something (more matter than antimatter) instead of nothing (equal amounts) at all.

2.) Nothingness is the void of empty space. [...] In order to achieve nothingness, you'll have to get rid of every fundamental constituent of matter. ... To some, that's the true scientific definition of "nothingness." But certain physical entities still remain, even under that highly restrictive and imaginative scenario. The laws of physics are still there, which means that quantum fields still permeate the Universe...

3.) Nothingness as the ideal lowest-energy state possible for spacetime. Right now, our Universe has a zero-point energy, or an energy inherent to space itself, that's at a positive, non-zero value. We do not know whether this is the true "ground state" of the Universe, i.e., the lowest energy state possible, or whether we can still go lower. It's still possible that we're in a false vacuum state, and that the true vacuum, or the true lowest-energy state, will either be closer to zero or may actually go all the way to zero (or below). To transition there from our current state would likely lead to a catastrophe that forever altered the Universe: a nightmare scenario known as vacuum decay. [...]

4.) Nothingness only occurs when you remove the entire Universe and the laws that govern it. This is the most extreme case of all: a case that steps out of reality — out of space, time, and physics itself — to imagine a Platonic ideal of nothingness. We can conceive of removing everything we can imagine: space, time, and the governing rules of reality. Physicists have no definition for anything here; this is pure philosophical nothingness.

In the context of physics, this creates a problem: we cannot make any sense of this sort of nothingness. We'd be compelled to assume that there is such a thing as a state that can exist outside of space and time, and that spacetime itself, as well as the rules that govern all of the physical entities we know of, can then emerge from this hypothesized, idealized state. [...] This final definition of nothing, while it certainly feels the most philosophically satisfying, may not have a meaning at all. It could just be a logical construct borne out of our inadequate human intuition.
* * * *
When scientists talk about nothing, they often talk past one another, thinking that their definition of "nothing" is the only one that's valid. But there is no consensus here: language is ambiguous, and the concept of nothingness means different things to people in different contexts. [...] Each of the four definitions is correct in its own way, but what's most important is understanding what the speaker means when they're talking about their particular form of nothingness. ... But these concepts have a drawback as well: they're all constructs of our own minds... (MORE - details)

How do we know if there aren’t any galaxies et al not made of antimatter?

Best way for me to look at it is comparing ‘something’ to magnetism, electricity and light etc where they are not separate items but all part of the same thing. Means there may really be only one thing, the universe, which in itself could be part and parcel of something even more colossal. Still when you add it all up, there is only one thing.

So by sticking to the ‘everything is part of the same’ principle.....if something came from nothing then does that make the one thing.....also nothing? So if we think everything we can observe came from nothing then isn’t there a possibility that what we think of as something is in reality nothing, including us?

(May 3, 2020 02:36 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: [ -> ]How do we know if there aren’t any galaxies et al not made of antimatter?

Best way for me to look at it is comparing ‘something’ to magnetism, electricity and light etc where they are not separate items but all part of the same thing. Means there may really be only one thing, the universe, which in itself could be part and parcel of something even more colossal. Still when you add it all up, there is only one thing.

So by sticking to the ‘everything is part of the same’ principle.....if something came from nothing then does that make the one thing.....also nothing? So if we think everything we can observe came from nothing then isn’t there a possibility that what we think of as something is in reality nothing, including us?

All distinction-making appearances and sensations (along with language-mediated, memory-based concepts) disappear upon death. That "nothing" would accordingly be how the universe at large is to itself (i.e., minus the local mental representations of humans and other brained animals). Which is amusing since there actually would not even be a manifestation and cognitive identification of "nothing" occurring. The most fundamental elimination of everything (entailing the total eradication of consciousness) would be "not even nothing".

Henri Poincaré: "...contrary to the naïve dogmatists’ view, that which science captures are not the things themselves, but simply relationships between them. Beyond these relations, there is no knowable reality..." --Science and hypothesis

"[A] reality completely independent of the mind which conceives it, sees or feels it, is an impossibility. A world as exterior as that, even if it existed, would for us be forever inaccessible. But what we call objective reality is, in the last analysis, what is common to many thinking beings, and could be common to us all; this common part, we shall see, can only be the harmony expressed by mathematical laws. It is this harmony then which is the sole objective reality, the only truth we can obtain." --The Value of Science

Quote:All distinction-making appearances and sensations (along with language-mediated, memory-based concepts) disappear upon death. That "nothing" would accordingly be how the universe at large is to itself (i.e., minus the local mental representations of humans and other brained animals). Which is amusing since there actually would not even be a manifestation and cognitive identification of "nothing" occurring. The most fundamental elimination of everything (entailing the total eradication of consciousness) would be "not even nothing".

Can't ever be in nothingness if you're there contemplating it. Life cannot go there. Don't think it means nothingness can't exist.

Why do we always think of nothingness as a past scenario/event? As far as I know the future could be the nothing/void. Perhaps the present is the point of transition from nothingness to something with the past becoming nothing as a result, plus we/life can't go there. Seems to me that everything I've sensed no longer exists. Maybe time has more of a relationship with nothingness than anything else.

(May 3, 2020 09:11 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: [ -> ]
Quote:All distinction-making appearances and sensations (along with language-mediated, memory-based concepts) disappear upon death. That "nothing" would accordingly be how the universe at large is to itself (i.e., minus the local mental representations of humans and other brained animals). Which is amusing since there actually would not even be a manifestation and cognitive identification of "nothing" occurring. The most fundamental elimination of everything (entailing the total eradication of consciousness) would be "not even nothing".

Can't ever be in nothingness if you're there contemplating it.

"'Nothingness' is a philosophical term for the general state of nonexistence, sometimes reified as a domain or dimension into which things pass when they cease to exist or out of which they may come to exist..."

A domain which seems unnecessary since entities are usually organizations or aggregations of other entities, with elementary particles at worst being excitations of fields. They can cease with "stuff" of another level still remaining.

Many people may use it to refer to a lack of structure (blank uniformity), but that again is a manifestation or outer appearance and one dependent upon relation to the observer's size and POV. At either a smaller or larger scale the empty smoothness might be roiling with either order or arbitrary activity.

Quote:Life cannot go there. Don't think it means nothingness can't exist.

"Possible" versus empirically affirming. Similar to a trans-sensory God, one can't validate or eliminate skepticism and denial about the existence of purely rational objects which can't be detected or manifested beyond representation as words or symbols. (Although the latter might be approved as legit components of abstract systems as long they're consistent with the axioms). Positivist scientists didn't even become realists about atoms and particles until instruments turned them into direct or indirect manipulatable phenomena (residents of perception, consciousness -- no longer just denizens of reason).

Henri Poincaré: ... “possible” in the language of geometers simply means exempt from contradiction. [...] To sum up, the mind has the faculty of creating symbols, and it is thus that it has constructed the mathematical continuum, which is only a particular system of symbols. The only limit to its power is the necessity of avoiding all contradiction; but the mind [or practical application and science] only makes use of it when experiment gives a reason for it.

Quote:Why do we always think of nothingness as a past scenario/event? As far as I know the future could be the nothing/void.

Having an "origin" can be hierarchical or prior in rank to cause-effect relationships arranged in a temporal framework. If the universe came from a literal nothing (devoid of causation, time, space, etc), then it would be neither in the past nor in the future (i.e., part of the universe or spacetime), but outside it. "Outside" being figurative or spatial bias inherent in our language. "Nothing" treated as a supreme generative principle would not reside in any kind of "place" or "location" or "when", but be what made items like those possible in the first place.

Quote:Perhaps the present is the point of transition from nothingness to something with the past becoming nothing as a result, plus we/life can't go there.

You might be grazing Hegel territory, whose infamous 19th-century popularity helped engender the backlash of the anti-metaphysics movement in positivism and early analytic philosophy.

Thesis: The Absolute is Pure Being
Antithesis: The Absolute is Nothing
Synthesis: The Absolute is Becoming (some combo or interaction of being and nothing)

Quote:Seems to me that everything I've sensed no longer exists. Maybe time has more of a relationship with nothingness than anything else.

A distinct conscious brain state can only be about the sensory information it is holding or certain memory it is recalling. By its very nature of being confined to its own particular moment or limited chunk-sequence of differences instantiating a process event, it doesn't have the capacity for awareness of one's entire life from start to finish (as in manifesting the whole of the latter or making it immediately real).

I don't perceive the town I was born in right now or I might be barred from ever visiting it again by a tyrannical local government. But that doesn't mean it still doesn't exist to past versions of myself that were there in it or that it isn't a reliable possibility of perception in the future (for its residents and at least some visitors who could still enter there).

Oh Hell, could argue over nothing all day. However this thought crossed my mind while contemplating this thread and it is somewhat off topic. It has to deal with hypothetical >c travel. Here goes....

If a spaceship could travel at >c then would all events outside of that craft appear to be moving backwards? IOW...The observer would be catching up to (nearing) lightwaves faster than they could approach him. However when it comes time to decelerate and once the light barrier is crossed over again, do events start to appear moving forward in time? So by accelerating would one move forward in time until crossing the c barrier, then move back in time while exceeding c, only to move forward again when slowing down once below the c threshold?

Don't know why I started thinking about this but I was wondering, if that was the situation one might be able to calculate just exactly where you want to end up in time.

(May 5, 2020 03:36 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: [ -> ]If a spaceship could travel at >c then would all events outside of that craft appear to be moving backwards?

Objects with mass, of course, can't travel at the speed of light (it requires an infinite amount of energy). With constant acceleration only approaching the SoL, one could arguably travel across the visible universe in a lifetime, but the world back here would be long gone by then. Effects from the fictional idea of traveling faster than SoL is addressed by the research in the last two entries below.

William Harris ((HSW): ... but what if we tweaked it to say, "What if you traveled almost as fast as the speed of light?" In that case, you would experience some interesting effects. One famous result is something physicists call time dilation, which describes how time runs more slowly for objects moving very rapidly. If you flew on a rocket traveling 90 percent of light-speed, the passage of time for you would be halved. Your watch would advance only 10 minutes, while more than 20 minutes would pass for an Earthbound observer.

You would also experience some strange visual consequences. One such consequence is called aberration, and it refers to how your whole field of view would shrink down to a tiny, tunnel-shaped "window" out in front of your spacecraft. This happens because photons (those exceedingly tiny packets of light) -- even photons behind you -- appear to come in from the forward direction. In addition, you would notice an extreme Doppler effect, which would cause light waves from stars in front of you to crowd together, making the objects appear blue. Light waves from stars behind you would spread apart and appear red. The faster you go, the more extreme this phenomenon becomes until all visible light from stars in front of the spacecraft and stars to the rear become completely shifted out of the known visible spectrum (the colors humans can see). When these stars move out of your perceptible wavelength, they simply appear to fade to black or vanish against the background.

Relativistic Rocket: That means that from your vantage point in the rocket, everything in the universe is falling from "above" to "below" the rocket, but never receding any farther than a distance of [non-rendered code gibberish] as measured by you. It all piles up just short of this distance, asymptoting to a plane called a "horizon". You see this horizon actually form as the rocket accelerates, because there comes a time when no signal emitted from "below" the horizon can ever reach you. Everything falls towards that plane, and as each object approaches that plane you see it begin to redden and fade, due to the increasing red shift of its light, because you are accelerating. Finally it fades out of visibility. In fact, as anything gets closer to the horizon, its rate of ageing as measured by you slows more and more; time comes to a complete halt on the horizon. The horizon is a dark plane that appears to be swallowing everything in the universe! But of course, nothing strange is noticed by the non-accelerating Earth observers. There is no horizon anywhere for them.

- - -

If it was possible to travel faster than light: The science fiction vision of stars flashing by as streaks when spaceships travel faster than light isn't what the scene would actually look like, a team of physics students says. Instead, the view out the windows of a vehicle traveling through hyperspace would be more like a centralized bright glow, calculations show. The finding contradicts the familiar images of stretched out starlight streaking past the windows of the Millennium Falcon in "Star Wars" and the Starship Enterprise in "Star Trek." In those films and television series, as spaceships engage warp drive or hyperdrive and approach the speed of light, stars morph from points of light to long streaks that stretch out past the ship.

- - -

Can You Really Go Back in Time by Breaking the Speed of Light?: Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. But if it could, the conventional wisdom goes, it would travel back in time. Is the conventional wisdom right? Earlier this year, I was part of a team of researchers that decided to find out whether “superluminal” travel—that is, going faster than the speed of light—really does take you back in time.

To find out, we imagined a souped-up spacecraft that could somehow go faster than the speed of light and sent it on an (imaginary) journey out to a distant planet and back again. [...] We pictured what the trip would look like to an observer waiting back on Earth and watching the ship’s progress through a powerful super-telescope.

When the spaceship goes exactly at the speed of light, from the point of view of the observer back on Earth, everything appears normal as the ship speeds away. But just when the spaceship appears to reach the planet, it instantly materializes back on its landing pad on Earth, and the observer sees a huge flash of light containing an “instantaneous movie” of the spaceship’s trip back!

Here’s why: imagine that it takes the ship ten years to get to the planet and ten years to get home. The light that the spaceship emits, say, five years into the journey will be seen by the Earthbound observer ten years after the ship took off, because it takes it five more years for it to get all the way back to Earth. Light the spaceship emits when it reaches the planet, ten years into its journey, makes it back to Earth twenty years after take-off. Now the ship turns around and heads home. As it gets closer to Earth, the light it emits has a shorter distance to backtrack. So, light from year 15 of the trip only has to travel for five years before it reaches the observer, 20 years after launch day. In fact, because the spaceship is “riding along” at the speed of light with the light it emits on the way back, the observer sees both the landed ship and the “movie” of its return journey, all at the same time, when it arrives back on Earth. Traveling at the speed of light, half of the journey appears to be instantaneous, but the ship hasn’t actually traveled back in time.

But what if the spaceship breaks the speed of light? Now, we are entering the purely theoretical realm of superluminal travel. The spaceship is outracing the light it emits, so when the spaceship takes off, it leaves its own light in the space-dust. At some point later, the spaceship arrives back on the landing pad, but since the light emitted closer to Earth is what the observer there will see first, the spacecraft’s journey will appear to her as a series of images retracing the ship’s journey in reverse, like a movie on rewind. Meanwhile, images from the spaceship’s outbound trip are still coming in, so the observer can see three versions of the spaceship: one image going forward towards the planet, one image heading in reverse towards the planet, and the real spaceship on the landing pad. We call this an “image pair creation event,” because the real ship is accompanied by two images.

You can think of it like mailing selfies home from long, round-trip vacation. Just as the spaceship was traveling faster than light, you are traveling faster than snail-mail, so you beat some (or all) of your mailed selfies home. The day after your homecoming, the mail carrier delivers two of your pictures: one from the trip out, and a second from your trip back. It’s a more mundane kind of image pair creation event: There are three versions of you there at the mailbox, but only one is real.

In the case of the faster-than-light spaceship, though, something very strange happens that our snail-mail analogy can’t account for: Eventually, as someone watches the two moving images, they will see them meet up and disappear at the planet at the same time in what is called an image pair annihilation event.

This is all very peculiar, but it doesn’t actually take you back in time. So, we imagined pushing the ship even faster.... (MORE)

Kind'a difficult to talk about geometry without talking about geometry.
Let us imagine there is a fixed geometry to spacetime. There's time and there's distance and there's some fixed relationship between the two. In our particular universe the relationship between time and distance frequently involves a constant which I will call k (k for konstant) along the lines of this much distance is equivalent to that much time. This is what Einstein worked out and he called it the Theory of Special Relativity. In our bizarre universe there is a thing we call 'light' (or electromagnetic radiation) that appears to have exactly the same relationship between distance and time as the konstant k that appears in the geometry of spacetime. If you want things to arrive before they left I think you need to look at General Relativity which involves the manipulation of spacetime. A very poor interpretation of something that arrived before it left might involve some claim about having travelled faster than light but in reality you would be playing with the geometry of spacetime not the speed of light.

if the laws of physics are such that we can only create matter and antimatter in equal amounts, how did we wind up with a Universe where every structure we see is made of matter and not antimatter? ... So how, then, did we create an excess of these necessary raw ingredients if the Universe wasn't born with one? This is what is meant when you hear that the matter in our Universe arose from nothing. ... We don't know why there's something (more matter than antimatter) instead of nothing (equal amounts) at all.The fallacy here lies in the "reaction rate". Whilst there may be an excess of + or - it really does not matter a jot if they don't meet up with each other. That is kinetics. With an expanding Universe there is NO CHANCE that all + and - will meet up.Ugh. I hate this bold type. Wrote:https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswitha...c72c486394

EXCERPT: . . . What does "nothing" mean to a scientist...? Depending on who you ask, you might get one of four different answers. Here's what they all mean.

1.) A condition where the raw ingredients to create your "something" didn't exist. [...] Everything we know of and interact with is made of subatomic matter particles [...] if the laws of physics are such that we can only create matter and antimatter in equal amounts, how did we wind up with a Universe where every structure we see is made of matter and not antimatter? ... So how, then, did we create an excess of these necessary raw ingredients if the Universe wasn't born with one? This is what is meant when you hear that the matter in our Universe arose from nothing. ... We don't know why there's something (more matter than antimatter) instead of nothing (equal amounts) at all.

2.) Nothingness is the void of empty space. [...] In order to achieve nothingness, you'll have to get rid of every fundamental constituent of matter. ... To some, that's the true scientific definition of "nothingness." But certain physical entities still remain, even under that highly restrictive and imaginative scenario. The laws of physics are still there, which means that quantum fields still permeate the Universe...

3.) Nothingness as the ideal lowest-energy state possible for spacetime. Right now, our Universe has a zero-point energy, or an energy inherent to space itself, that's at a positive, non-zero value. We do not know whether this is the true "ground state" of the Universe, i.e., the lowest energy state possible, or whether we can still go lower. It's still possible that we're in a false vacuum state, and that the true vacuum, or the true lowest-energy state, will either be closer to zero or may actually go all the way to zero (or below). To transition there from our current state would likely lead to a catastrophe that forever altered the Universe: a nightmare scenario known as vacuum decay. [...]

4.) Nothingness only occurs when you remove the entire Universe and the laws that govern it. This is the most extreme case of all: a case that steps out of reality — out of space, time, and physics itself — to imagine a Platonic ideal of nothingness. We can conceive of removing everything we can imagine: space, time, and the governing rules of reality. Physicists have no definition for anything here; this is pure philosophical nothingness.

In the context of physics, this creates a problem: we cannot make any sense of this sort of nothingness. We'd be compelled to assume that there is such a thing as a state that can exist outside of space and time, and that spacetime itself, as well as the rules that govern all of the physical entities we know of, can then emerge from this hypothesized, idealized state. [...] This final definition of nothing, while it certainly feels the most philosophically satisfying, may not have a meaning at all. It could just be a logical construct borne out of our inadequate human intuition.
* * * *
When scientists talk about nothing, they often talk past one another, thinking that their definition of "nothing" is the only one that's valid. But there is no consensus here: language is ambiguous, and the concept of nothingness means different things to people in different contexts. [...] Each of the four definitions is correct in its own way, but what's most important is understanding what the speaker means when they're talking about their particular form of nothingness. ... But these concepts have a drawback as well: they're all constructs of our own minds... (MORE - details)

Catastrophe Wrote:
if the laws of physics are such that we can only create matter and antimatter in equal amounts, how did we wind up with a Universe where every structure we see is made of matter and not antimatter? ... So how, then, did we create an excess of these necessary raw ingredients if the Universe wasn't born with one? This is what is meant when you hear that the matter in our Universe arose from nothing. ... We don't know why there's something (more matter than antimatter) instead of nothing (equal amounts) at all.The fallacy here lies in the "reaction rate". Whilst there may be an excess of + or - it really does not matter a jot if they don't meet up with each other. That is kinetics. With an expanding Universe there is NO CHANCE that all + and - will meet up.Ugh. I hate this bold type.So, I have to come back here to reply to (3) (Stop moaning Cat). You can shrink your Cartesian space coordintes back to the origin, but how wil you do that to time? Wrote:https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswitha...c72c486394

EXCERPT: . . . What does "nothing" mean to a scientist...? Depending on who you ask, you might get one of four different answers. Here's what they all mean.

1.) A condition where the raw ingredients to create your "something" didn't exist. [...] Everything we know of and interact with is made of subatomic matter particles [...] if the laws of physics are such that we can only create matter and antimatter in equal amounts, how did we wind up with a Universe where every structure we see is made of matter and not antimatter? ... So how, then, did we create an excess of these necessary raw ingredients if the Universe wasn't born with one? This is what is meant when you hear that the matter in our Universe arose from nothing. ... We don't know why there's something (more matter than antimatter) instead of nothing (equal amounts) at all.

2.) Nothingness is the void of empty space. [...] In order to achieve nothingness, you'll have to get rid of every fundamental constituent of matter. ... To some, that's the true scientific definition of "nothingness." But certain physical entities still remain, even under that highly restrictive and imaginative scenario. The laws of physics are still there, which means that quantum fields still permeate the Universe...

3.) Nothingness as the ideal lowest-energy state possible for spacetime. Right now, our Universe has a zero-point energy, or an energy inherent to space itself, that's at a positive, non-zero value. We do not know whether this is the true "ground state" of the Universe, i.e., the lowest energy state possible, or whether we can still go lower. It's still possible that we're in a false vacuum state, and that the true vacuum, or the true lowest-energy state, will either be closer to zero or may actually go all the way to zero (or below). To transition there from our current state would likely lead to a catastrophe that forever altered the Universe: a nightmare scenario known as vacuum decay. [...]

4.) Nothingness only occurs when you remove the entire Universe and the laws that govern it. This is the most extreme case of all: a case that steps out of reality — out of space, time, and physics itself — to imagine a Platonic ideal of nothingness. We can conceive of removing everything we can imagine: space, time, and the governing rules of reality. Physicists have no definition for anything here; this is pure philosophical nothingness.

In the context of physics, this creates a problem: we cannot make any sense of this sort of nothingness. We'd be compelled to assume that there is such a thing as a state that can exist outside of space and time, and that spacetime itself, as well as the rules that govern all of the physical entities we know of, can then emerge from this hypothesized, idealized state. [...] This final definition of nothing, while it certainly feels the most philosophically satisfying, may not have a meaning at all. It could just be a logical construct borne out of our inadequate human intuition.
* * * *
When scientists talk about nothing, they often talk past one another, thinking that their definition of "nothing" is the only one that's valid. But there is no consensus here: language is ambiguous, and the concept of nothingness means different things to people in different contexts. [...] Each of the four definitions is correct in its own way, but what's most important is understanding what the speaker means when they're talking about their particular form of nothingness. ... But these concepts have a drawback as well: they're all constructs of our own minds... (MORE - details)

(May 18, 2020 10:03 PM)Catastrophe Wrote: [ -> ]
if the laws of physics are such that we can only create matter and antimatter in equal amounts, how did we wind up with a Universe where every structure we see is made of matter and not antimatter? ... So how, then, did we create an excess of these necessary raw ingredients if the Universe wasn't born with one? This is what is meant when you hear that the matter in our Universe arose from nothing. ... We don't know why there's something (more matter than antimatter) instead of nothing (equal amounts) at all.The fallacy here lies in the "reaction rate". Whilst there may be an excess of + or - it really does not matter a jot if they don't meet up with each other. That is kinetics. With an expanding Universe there is NO CHANCE that all + and - will meet up.Ugh.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswitha...c72c486394

With regard to point (4)
" Nothingness only occurs when you remove the entire Universe and the laws that govern it."

You could make it slightly more realistic by rephrasing:
Nothingness only occurs when the entire Universe and the laws that govern it are removed.
Takes away some of our god-like power but still suggests that such a thing is a possibility.
When you make an impossible assumption you are likely to come out with an impossible answer - or no answer at all.

EXCERPT: . . . What does "nothing" mean to a scientist...? Depending on who you ask, you might get one of four different answers. Here's what they all mean.

1.) A condition where the raw ingredients to create your "something" didn't exist. [... Wrote:Everything we know of and interact with is made of subatomic matter particles [...] if the laws of physics are such that we can only create matter and antimatter in equal amounts, how did we wind up with a Universe where every structure we see is made of matter and not antimatter? ... So how, then, did we create an excess of these necessary raw ingredients if the Universe wasn't born with one? This is what is meant when you hear that the matter in our Universe arose from nothing. ... We don't know why there's something (more matter than antimatter) instead of nothing (equal amounts) at all.

2.) Nothingness is the void of empty space. [...] In order to achieve nothingness, you'll have to get rid of every fundamental constituent of matter. ... To some, that's the true scientific definition of "nothingness." But certain physical entities still remain, even under that highly restrictive and imaginative scenario. The laws of physics are still there, which means that quantum fields still permeate the Universe...

3.) Nothingness as the ideal lowest-energy state possible for spacetime. Right now, our Universe has a zero-point energy, or an energy inherent to space itself, that's at a positive, non-zero value. We do not know whether this is the true "ground state" of the Universe, i.e., the lowest energy state possible, or whether we can still go lower. It's still possible that we're in a false vacuum state, and that the true vacuum, or the true lowest-energy state, will either be closer to zero or may actually go all the way to zero (or below). To transition there from our current state would likely lead to a catastrophe that forever altered the Universe: a nightmare scenario known as vacuum decay. [...]

4.) Nothingness only occurs when you remove the entire Universe and the laws that govern it. This is the most extreme case of all: a case that steps out of reality — out of space, time, and physics itself — to imagine a Platonic ideal of nothingness. We can conceive of removing everything we can imagine: space, time, and the governing rules of reality. Physicists have no definition for anything here; this is pure philosophical nothingness.

In the context of physics, this creates a problem: we cannot make any sense of this sort of nothingness. We'd be compelled to assume that there is such a thing as a state that can exist outside of space and time, and that spacetime itself, as well as the rules that govern all of the physical entities we know of, can then emerge from this hypothesized, idealized state. [...] This final definition of nothing, while it certainly feels the most philosophically satisfying, may not have a meaning at all. It could just be a logical construct borne out of our inadequate human intuition.
* * * *
When scientists talk about nothing, they often talk past one another, thinking that their definition of "nothing" is the only one that's valid. But there is no consensus here: language is ambiguous, and the concept of nothingness means different things to people in different contexts. [...] Each of the four definitions is correct in its own way, but what's most important is understanding what the speaker means when they're talking about their particular form of nothingness. ... But these concepts have a drawback as well: they're all constructs of our own minds... (MORE - details)

Catastrophe Wrote:
if the laws of physics are such that we can only create matter and antimatter in equal amounts, how did we wind up with a Universe where every structure we see is made of matter and not antimatter? ... So how, then, did we create an excess of these necessary raw ingredients if the Universe wasn't born with one? This is what is meant when you hear that the matter in our Universe arose from nothing. ... We don't know why there's something (more matter than antimatter) instead of nothing (equal amounts) at all.The fallacy here lies in the "reaction rate". Whilst there may be an excess of + or - it really does not matter a jot if they don't meet up with each other. That is kinetics. With an expanding Universe there is NO CHANCE that all + and - will meet up.Ugh. I hate this bold type.So, I have to come back here to reply to (3) (Stop moaning Cat). You can shrink your Cartesian space coordintes back to the origin, but how wil you do that to time? Wrote:https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswitha...c72c486394

EXCERPT: . . . What does "nothing" mean to a scientist...? Depending on who you ask, you might get one of four different answers. Here's what they all mean.

1.) A condition where the raw ingredients to create your "something" didn't exist. [...] Everything we know of and interact with is made of subatomic matter particles [...] if the laws of physics are such that we can only create matter and antimatter in equal amounts, how did we wind up with a Universe where every structure we see is made of matter and not antimatter? ... So how, then, did we create an excess of these necessary raw ingredients if the Universe wasn't born with one? This is what is meant when you hear that the matter in our Universe arose from nothing. ... We don't know why there's something (more matter than antimatter) instead of nothing (equal amounts) at all.

2.) Nothingness is the void of empty space. [...] In order to achieve nothingness, you'll have to get rid of every fundamental constituent of matter. ... To some, that's the true scientific definition of "nothingness." But certain physical entities still remain, even under that highly restrictive and imaginative scenario. The laws of physics are still there, which means that quantum fields still permeate the Universe...

3.) Nothingness as the ideal lowest-energy state possible for spacetime. Right now, our Universe has a zero-point energy, or an energy inherent to space itself, that's at a positive, non-zero value. We do not know whether this is the true "ground state" of the Universe, i.e., the lowest energy state possible, or whether we can still go lower. It's still possible that we're in a false vacuum state, and that the true vacuum, or the true lowest-energy state, will either be closer to zero or may actually go all the way to zero (or below). To transition there from our current state would likely lead to a catastrophe that forever altered the Universe: a nightmare scenario known as vacuum decay. [...]

4.) Nothingness only occurs when you remove the entire Universe and the laws that govern it. This is the most extreme case of all: a case that steps out of reality — out of space, time, and physics itself — to imagine a Platonic ideal of nothingness. We can conceive of removing everything we can imagine: space, time, and the governing rules of reality. Physicists have no definition for anything here; this is pure philosophical nothingness.

In the context of physics, this creates a problem: we cannot make any sense of this sort of nothingness. We'd be compelled to assume that there is such a thing as a state that can exist outside of space and time, and that spacetime itself, as well as the rules that govern all of the physical entities we know of, can then emerge from this hypothesized, idealized state. [...] This final definition of nothing, while it certainly feels the most philosophically satisfying, may not have a meaning at all. It could just be a logical construct borne out of our inadequate human intuition.
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When scientists talk about nothing, they often talk past one another, thinking that their definition of "nothing" is the only one that's valid. But there is no consensus here: language is ambiguous, and the concept of nothingness means different things to people in different contexts. [...] Each of the four definitions is correct in its own way, but what's most important is understanding what the speaker means when they're talking about their particular form of nothingness. ... But these concepts have a drawback as well: they're all constructs of our own minds... (MORE - details)

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