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Can Quantum Mechanics Produce a Universe from Nothing?
www.apologeticspress.org ^ | 2/1/2013 | Jeff Miller, Ph.D.

Posted on 07/18/2013 10:36:09 AM PDT by kimtom

According to the First Law of Thermodynamics, nothing in the Universe (i.e., matter or energy) can pop into existence from nothing (see Miller, 2013). All of the scientific evidence points to that conclusion. So, the Universe could not have popped into existence before the alleged “big bang” (an event which we do not endorse). Therefore, God must have created the Universe.

One of the popular rebuttals by the atheistic community is that quantum mechanics could have created the Universe. In 1905, Albert Einstein proposed the idea of mass-energy equivalence, resulting in the famous equation, E = mc2 (1905). We now know that matter can be converted to energy, and vice versa. However, energy and mass are conserved, in keeping with the First Law. In the words of the famous evolutionary astronomer, Robert Jastrow, “[T]he principle of the conservation of matter and energy…states that matter and energy can be neither created nor destroyed. Matter can be converted into energy, and vice versa, but the total amount of all matter and energy in the Universe must remain unchanged forever” (1977, p. 32). The idea of matter-energy conversion led one physicist to postulate, in essence, that the cosmic egg that exploded billions of years ago in the alleged “big bang”—commencing the “creation” of the Universe—could have come into existence as an energy-to-matter conversion.

In 1973, physicist Edward Tryon of the Hunter College of the City University of New York published a paper in the British science journal Nature titled, “Is the Universe a Vacuum Fluctuation?” He proposed the idea that the Universe could be a large scale ........

(Excerpt) Read more at apologeticspress.org ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Miscellaneous; News/Current Events; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: astronomy; belongsinreligion; notanewstopic; notasciencetopic; physics; quantummechanics; science; sourcetitlenoturl; space
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To: Red Badger

“..Gravity is the absence of space.
Space is the absence of gravity.....................”

wrong!!

Liberals’ heads are still intact!!!!


41 posted on 07/18/2013 10:58:10 AM PDT by kimtom (USA ; Freedom is not Free)
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To: Laissez-faire capitalist
What happens ultimately to the scientific method?

When one speaks of something outside of Physics(the physical Universe) one HAS to use a different science: Metaphysics.

Yet scientists CAN postulate that there was an UN-caused Cause (God) simply because every effect...including the singularity that became the Big Bang, needs a cause; but many refuse.

42 posted on 07/18/2013 11:00:00 AM PDT by ThomasMore (Islam is the Whore of Babylon!)
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To: Williams

As I understand it, matter is space that has been folded up and then put into motion. Fold space one way and electrons are formed. Fold space another way and protons are formed. The folding and unfolding of space is probably a very energetic process.


43 posted on 07/18/2013 11:02:52 AM PDT by AceMineral (One day the people will beg for chains.)
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To: fifedom

ummm;?

Jastrow—who is considered by many to be one of the greatest science writers of our time—certainly is no creationist. But as a scientist who is an astrophysicist, he has written often on the inescapable conclusion that the Universe had a beginning. Consider, for example, these statements from his pen:

Now both theory and observation pointed to an expanding Universe and a beginning in time.... About thirty years ago science solved the mystery of the birth and death of stars, and acquired new evidence that the Universe had a beginning (1978, pp. 47,105).
Jastrow, Robert (1978), God and the Astronomers (New York: W.W. Norton).

But Dr. Barrow went even further when he noted:

As the implications of the quantum picture of matter were explored more fully, a further radically new consequence appears that was to impinge upon the concept of the vacuum. Werner Heisenberg showed that there were complementary pairs of attributes of things which could not be measured simultaneously with arbitrary precision, even with perfect instruments. This restriction on measurement became known as the Uncertainty Principle. One pair of complementary attributes limited by the Uncertainty Principle is the combination of position and momentum. Thus we cannot know at once where something is and how it is moving with arbitrary precision….

The Uncertainty Principle and the quantum theory revolutionised our conception of the vacuum. We can no longer sustain the simple idea that a vacuum is just an empty box. If we could say that there were no particles in a box, that it was completely empty of all mass and energy, then we would have to violate the Uncertainty Principle because we would require perfect information about motion at every point and about the energy of the system at a given instant of time….

This discovery at the heart of the quantum description of matter means that the concept of a vacuum must be somewhat realigned. It is no longer to be associated with the idea of the void and of nothingness or empty space. Rather, it is merely the emptiest possible state in the sense of the state that possesses the lowest possible energy; the state from which no further energy can be removed (2000, pp. 204,205,
Barrow, John D. (2000), The Book of Nothing: Vacuums, Voids, and the Latest Ideas about the Origins of the Universe (New York: Pantheon).


44 posted on 07/18/2013 11:04:39 AM PDT by kimtom (USA ; Freedom is not Free)
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To: GraceG

Probably. But you have to have some “nothing” to start with, and there’s not much of that. Even the stuff we can’t see in the universe is something of a nothing. Dark Matter is everywhere. How would they know they weren’t starting with THAT?


45 posted on 07/18/2013 11:04:46 AM PDT by redhead (NO GROUND TO THE DEVIL! Remember BENGHAZI!! Use Weaponized Prayer)
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To: kimtom; Red Badger

The litter boxes would potentially contain litter. Of which hypothetical cats would make use. With theoretical cat poops.


46 posted on 07/18/2013 11:05:56 AM PDT by Black Agnes
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To: kimtom; GodGunsGuts; Fichori; tpanther; Gordon Greene; Ethan Clive Osgoode; betty boop; ...

It’s an interesting mental exercise considering the materialistic model of the universe.

Consider that your average super giant star, when it goes supernova, collapses into a black hole which has such a strong gravitational attraction that not even light can escape and the fabric of space itself is twisted.

And that’s just ONE star.

Now, here these ID deniers come along and tell us with a straight face, that billions of years ago, the entire mass of the entire known universe was contained in something called singularity. That’s a LOT of stars. And then some.

So space and time did not yet exist, but this blob (for lack of a better term) was sitting there, when there was no were to sit, for an indeterminate amount of time, even though time did not yet exist and nobody knows where that was or how long it took.

Then, for some reason, this singularity in one trillion-trilliointh of a second suddenly expanded to fill almost the entire expanse of the now known universe, even though nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, and the gravitational attraction of that much matter should have precluded ANYTHING from escaping in the least.

And then creationists and IDers are ridiculed for believing stuff on faith with no hard scientific evidence.

And that doesn’t even account for all the order and information present in creation that we see now. That just deals with the beginning.

Kind of hypocritical, is it not?


47 posted on 07/18/2013 11:06:08 AM PDT by metmom (For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore & do not submit again to a yoke of slavery)
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To: GraceG

The key to the rebuttal is the entropy level now and what it must have been at the moment before the big bang or at the moment of the big bang.


48 posted on 07/18/2013 11:08:02 AM PDT by MHGinTN (Being deceived can be cured.)
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To: Laissez-faire capitalist

“But how do you observe matter that is non-existent?”

In a particle collider.


49 posted on 07/18/2013 11:08:27 AM PDT by fruser1
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To: Williams
Regarding the whole something from nothing issue, I thought the latest ideas were that “empty” space is constantly creating and destroying matter and anti matter from “nothing”.

This is correct and his been well verified since the 1950's.

Also my only take away from the article is that scientists do not know what the universe is or where it came from.

This is not a scientific article, it is a religious article pretending to be science. That said, time -- as far as we know -- begins with the instant of the singularity. Speculation "before" that, if there is a "before" that -- is not in the realm of science. Science does not know what happens on the order of a trillionth of a second or so before the singularity, and the REALLY interesting physics happens around 10^-45 second or less.

It always seemed obvious to me that just because we can only observe this universe, that does not mean it is the “universe” meaning everything.

This is an abuse of terminology, which unfortunately some cosmologists/physicists participate in. By definition, the word "universe" means "everything that is." In correct English, if there are other realities they are still part of the "universe." If you're religious, universe is a synonym for "all of creation."

Within the region (it may be the only region there is, or not) governed by the same physical laws that we are, there are things beyond our horizon. That is, loosely, there are things within our universe we cannot see. They are moving away from us and because the speed of light is finite they are now so far away and moving so quickly that the light from them can never reach us; this is a scientifically established fact based on the expansion speed and the known start time and dimensions. So, loosely, in your language, there are already parts of our "universe" that we know are not "part" of the universe that we can know or that can even affect us...

50 posted on 07/18/2013 11:08:38 AM PDT by FredZarguna (They Old School. We New School. We don't read cursive in New School. My Generation. We retahded, sir)
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To: kimtom

Nope. That is God’s job


51 posted on 07/18/2013 11:09:38 AM PDT by Cyman
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To: kimtom
A particle of matter and a particle of anti-matter can collide and result in nothing.

I don't see why a particle of matter and a particle of anti-matter can't be spawned from nothing.

But I think that what is really going on there is that their are dimensions of our universe that are invisible to us.

I also think that the basis of consciousness is hidden in one or more of those dimensions.

52 posted on 07/18/2013 11:11:26 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum (Who knew that one day professional wrestling would be less fake than professional journalism?)
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To: fifedom

As you know, it’s already built-in to the Dirac and Klein-Gordon equations, and it’s happening to infinite orders every time an electron experiences the attraction of a proton (for example.) There’s nothing exotic about it. The exchange of gauge bosons holding the world together can’t happen without it.


53 posted on 07/18/2013 11:12:44 AM PDT by FredZarguna (They Old School. We New School. We don't read cursive in New School. My Generation. We retahded, sir)
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To: dfwgator
The Final Proof of the non-Existence of God provided by the existence of the Babel Fish.

Now, it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some have chosen to see it as the final proof of the NON-existence of God. The argument goes something like this:

"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."

"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves that You exist, and so therefore, by Your own arguments, You don't. QED"

"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

"Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

54 posted on 07/18/2013 11:13:25 AM PDT by Bloody Sam Roberts (Anywhere there is tyranny you will find that the people were first disarmed.)
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To: fifedom

The Casimir effect is the result of exclusion of certain wave lengths based upon the distance the plates are apart. The wave lengths exist due to the Universe which generates the waves of energy, so the Casimir effect has nothing to do with how a Universe could come into existence.


55 posted on 07/18/2013 11:14:08 AM PDT by MHGinTN (Being deceived can be cured.)
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To: metmom

“Now, here these ID deniers come along and tell us with a straight face...”

Your confusing liberals w/scientists.

ID deniers would be liberals. Scientists would be those that don’t care one way or the other.

That’s why they say the “big bang” or whatever else, is just a “theory”.

As a Catholic and an Engineer, I have no prob mixing faith and science. God gave man an ability to reason and that’s all the scientists do.

However, there are those that do work for political agendas, like global warming, etc., that are exercising political science, not physical science.

I have no prob w/the big bang theory myself. After all, maybe that’s how God DID it.


56 posted on 07/18/2013 11:16:25 AM PDT by fruser1
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To: MHGinTN
It doesn't get you anywhere.

The entropy of the Universe at the instant of the singularity was the lowest it's ever been, and has been increasing ever since. It's initial value is not particularly interesting; it is merely circumstantial. Whatever it was it's higher now, and will be higher tomorrow.

57 posted on 07/18/2013 11:17:23 AM PDT by FredZarguna (They Old School. We New School. We don't read cursive in New School. My Generation. We retahded, sir)
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To: fruser1

In a PET scan of your own body.


58 posted on 07/18/2013 11:18:01 AM PDT by FredZarguna (They Old School. We New School. We don't read cursive in New School. My Generation. We retahded, sir)
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To: GraceG
Yes you can, the tricky part is finding the shovel that can dig matter out of space time and leave a hole called gravity.....

So THAT'S where those shovel ready jobs are...

59 posted on 07/18/2013 11:19:15 AM PDT by wastedyears (One nation, under wub. Saints Row IV)
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To: kimtom

bump for later reading


60 posted on 07/18/2013 11:20:16 AM PDT by techcor
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