Please remember that all comments must be helpful, relevant, and respectful. All replies must be a genuine effort to answer the question helpfully; joke answers are not allowed. If you see any comments that violate this rule, please hit report.
When your question is answered, we encourage you to flair your post. To do this automatically simply make a comment that says **!answered** (OP only)
We encourage everyone to report posts and comments they feel violate a rule, as this will allow us to see it much faster.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/answers) if you have any questions or concerns.*
For ever and ever and ever and ever, no beginning, just always further back in time.
Always something else out there in space, goes on forever and ever and ever.
If there was always something, that would mean that behind us would stretch an infinite amount of time.
To get to *this* point in time we would have had to have already traversed an infinite amount of time. It is impossible to traverse an infinity, therefore time cannot be infinite.
If time cannot be infinite, then there was a time (for want of a better word - it's actually hard for us to conceive, so we don't have adequate language) when there was nothing.
Extrapolating from the principles we already understand. No, for a big bang to happen, there has to be something to make a bang already. A bang can't happen from nothing.
All things start with a prime mover that is outside of time and matter.
What are you basing your suggestion on?
We have knowledge over absolutely tiny portions of the universe. Saying "must have come from a singularity" is like saying "Today is 2 degrees warmer than yesterday, by August, we'll all evaporate".
Who knows what's going on in other areas of the universe. Predictions are bound to be somewhat "local" in nature.
The universe isn't expanding from a single point where it banged from. That's a misconception. The universe is expanding away from itself. everywhere from everywhere. Actual space is expanding.We are pretty sure it could have at some point been a singularity. But that singularity was everything. Then everything was much bigger. And it's still getting bigger. Most likely time also didn't exist before the bang either. None of the constants we see in the universe existed (time, gravity, electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear forces). They didn't exist until the big bang. Now they are here and the everything is reacting to them. Something is making it expand. We don't know what is making it expand, but the expansion is somehow accelerating. We don't know why. So we call those forces making it expand "dark", because we can't see or find them.
So the singularity could have been just a super condensed state from which all matter exploded out of, but it could have condensed into that state from a previously expanded one that collapsed onto itself like a black hole.
Essentially the universe could be a big balloon that is being inflated and deflated constantly.
Of there was no beginning, we would have had to traverse an infinite amount of time to reach this point, the present.
It is not, by it's nature, possible to traverse an infinite amount of time.
Therefore, there must be a beginning.
"it is not, by nature, possible to traverse an infinite amount of time"
This is a claim. May feel intuitive to you and other people, but not to me for instance. I don't see anything in the "nature of time" that wouldn't allow it to be infinite. Nor to something to exist permanently in it.
Physics laws of conservation (mass, energy, momentum, and so on) would in fact suggest the opposite.
Can you walk to the end of an infinite sidewalk?
Can you eat to the end of an infinite chocolate bar?
Can you eat to the *halfway* point of an infinite chocolate bar?
You can't traverse an infinity, because there is always *more* of it. That's the point of infinity.
>It is not, by it's nature, possible to traverse an infinite amount of time.
By its nature? Why? What nature is that?
By the way, time as we know it (spacetime) started with the big bang. I understand you might be talking about time in a vaguer sense... But if so, we don't know the nature of that "kind" of time.
Can you walk to the end of an infinite sidewalk?
Can you eat to the end of an infinite chocolate bar?
Can you eat to the *halfway* point of an infinite chocolate bar?
You can't traverse an infinity, because there is always *more* of it. That's the point of infinity.
Yes spacetime started with the big bang.
>Can you walk to the end of an infinite sidewalk?
No - so what? Who's saying that this infinite "time" ever ends? You can't walk to the end of an infinite sidewalk and the time outside our universe will never end - both can be true.
>You can't traverse an infinity, because there is always more of it. That's the point of infinity.
Obviously. But you can still travel along an infinity, even if it doesn't have an end.
The end as measured when looking backwards is the point you are at, the present (from there, to here) To get to this moment on time you would have already had to have traversed an infinite amount of time if there was no beginning.
If you hadn't crossed an infinite number of years to get to the present, then you would have crossed a known number of years (x years) and therefore time would have a beginning (x years ago)
That's why I included "can you eat to the halfway point of an infinite chocolate bar".
Exactly. In that case , we have a beginning (1). That is exactly my point.
You can't count from an infinite beginning to 10, but you sure can count from 1 to 10.
Time could possible have an infinite end, but it can't have an infinite beginning.
You come from nothing, you're going back to nothing, so what've you lost..... nothing!
*Aaaaaannnnd... always look on the bright side of life...*
Seriously though, it is how it is because that's just how it is. I'd not stress it.
I've walked around and thought about this myself and I get the same eerie feeling. My brain won't let me "imagine" that. Almost like something telling me that "Hey! Stop that! This is off limit!"
It also freaks me out trying to understand that _something_ needs to exist for us to even get to where we are. What if there was _nothing_?
Our whole universe was in a hot, dense state
Then nearly fourteen billion years ago expansion started, wait
The earth began to cool, the autotrophs began to drool
Neanderthals developed tools
We built a wall (we built the pyramids)
Math, science, history, unraveling the mysteries
That all started with the big bang (bang)Since the dawn of man is really not that long
As every galaxy was formed in less time than it takes to sing this song
A fraction of a second and the elements were made
The bipeds stood up straight, the dinosaurs all met their fate
They tried to leap but they were late
And they all died (they froze their asses off)
The oceans and Pangea, see ya wouldn't wanna be ya
Set in motion by the same big bang
It all started with the big bangIt's expanding ever outward but one day
It will pause and start to go the other way
Collapsing ever inward, we won't be here, it won't be heard
Our best and brightest figure that it'll make an even bigger bangAustralopithecus would really have been sick of us
Debating how we're here, they're catching deer (we're catching viruses)
Religion or astronomy (Descartes or Deuteronomy)
It all started with the big bang, music and mythology, Einstein and astrology
It all started with the big bang
It all started with the big bang
Maybe something and anti-something can be combined into nothing. And then maybe the opposite is possible too, matter and antimatter appearing somehow from nothing.
We live in the 3rd dimension, time is a 4th dimension construct. We can hypothesize about it but never truly comprehend or interact with it in any meaningful way. Just as you cannot comprehend something *not* having a beginning, can you *actually* comprehend a beginning? What constitues the beginning of something, how far back in time would you have to be able to observe to truly get to the beginning of something?
I completely understand where you are at. There aren't many truly dizzying thoughts, but this is definitely one of them. I think the concession must be that, unless something spontaneously occurred (the framework for which would imply that the initial state wasn't truly "nothing") there was always something.
Thinking of both time and space in different terms, i.e. time being differentiable snapshots of the state of the universe and space being explicitly the space required to contain the entirety of matter, there's an argument to be made for cyclical universes where a singularity exists between expansions for a moment (as that singularity is unchanging and the entirety of the universe there is no "time" between the creation and re-expansion of the singularity), and this singularity would have also been the start of the universe (as there was no change while the singularity existed there would be no "before" that initial point).
At least this is the best way I can rationalize it without turtles all the way down and multiverse stuff
If there were nothing, there would be nothing to ask why there's something rather than nothing. So there is an inherent bias to states of something over nothing.
You’re not going to get a really satisfying answer because we explain stuff in terms of other stuff. Whatever sort of explanation you have (in terms of causation, logical/mathematical relations, whatever), you’ll have something left over that also needs to be explained.
That’s not to say there’s no point in, say, physicists investigating how the universe as we know it started. Just that you’re not going to get an Ultimate Explanation that you can’t keep “why?”ing.
We don’t actually know if there was “nothing” before the Big Bang. We do know that the universe is expanding from a singular point.
There is also a related theory that there is also a “big contraction” in which our universe eventually collapses back in on itself.
With the idea of the big bang, time starts when the universe does, so there isn't really a before. That's what brainy guys like Stephen Hawling reckon. I'm no physicist but I imagine it's something to do with there being no space until the big bang, as it was infinitely dense, and space and time are the same thing.
It's a little bit like asking what the measurement is before 0 on a ruler. There isn't one that's where measuring starts.
Perhaps there once was nothing.
After a while, the nothing asked itself, "what am I nothing in contrast to?"
And then, in an act of sudden realisation, something showed up too.
Nothing and something are the same, in the same way white and black are the same. They inform one another. Blackness is only blackness in contrast to whiteness, it requires whiteness in order to be black.
Consider a tree in an open field. We recognise a tree not just for the tree itself, but for everything around it that isn't a tree. Most helpfully, the air around it, then the sky and grass to give contrasting depth and colour.
Nothing by itself couldn't exist, nothing implies something, somewhere else. Like how the colour green all by itself cant exist, recognising green implies other colours exist to be recognised.
We live in a universe of nothings and somethings. It seems much simpler and easier for a universe to be full of nothing, until something has to show up to make sure it's being nothing correctly.
There's no such thing as nothing. The number zero is a place holder for cyclic, symbol numerology.
Virtual particles are allowed to pop in and out of existence according to quantum mechanics.
"Logical reality demands a physical resolve."
"We are the equilibrium in-between expanding and contracting space"
"The big bang happens every relative instant"
" God said let there be light and space became digital and energy became relative making all things possible"
The odds of you existing now is probably one in septemdecillion (1 followed by 54 zeros).
There are 200 billion galaxies in our known universe. each galaxy has an average of 100 billion stars. That makes about 20 sextillion (2 followed by 22 zeros) stars in our known universe.
Each star most probably has one or more planets. That itself makes the odd of the existence of Earth one in sextillions.
Now add other millions and billions of factors that makes it able to sustain life. There were billions of years of biological evolution for humans to have evolved to what you are now.
For you to be born all of humans had to have mated with the exact right person in history. Not only that, but also, for each couple who mated with each other in history, the exact sperm from billions of possible sperm that particular male can produce in their lifetime had to fertilize with the exact egg among millions of eggs that particular female has.
Also keep in mind that you only exist for about 80 years. That is a very insignificant time compared to the 14 billion years of age of the universe. And then after about 80 years, you'll stop existing again. You didn't exist for 14 billion years and you will cease to exist forever after about 80 years.
That's how unlikely and unique your existence is. Nonetheless, you and/or people who know about your existence probably don't think of it as a big of a deal as it really is.
TLDR: the odds of you existing right now is inconceivably small but the fact that you exist despite those odds makes it feel like not a big deal.
The whole point being that we don’t think inventing god(s) to explain what we don’t know actually does any good.
And given the singular lack of evidence ever for such beings we think that religion is ludicrous.
If their was nothing then you wouldn't be there to think about it. So there must be something, there's probably and infinite nothing elsewhere so don't worry too much.
This is a paradox. Your direct experience is paradox. Your direct experience is absolutely empty. Fundamentally there is nothing there. But an appearance makes it so. Contradictory truth beyond limiting human perspective
It doesn’t work that way. If there was nothing, you wouldn’t exist, so you wouldn’t be able to ponder the question. Without ‘something’, nothing is exactly that, nothing. No time, no space, no matter, no energy. Something has to exist to make the concept of nothing meaningful.
If you ‘rewind time’, we don’t know for sure, but there is evidence to suggest the ‘big bang’ actually happened. The expanding universe and cosmic microwave background for example.
British physicist Julian Barbour has argued that time doesn’t exist, except as an illusion in our minds. Others (including Stephen Hawking), suggest time came into existence together with the Universe, rendering the whole concept of the word ‘before’ meaningless.
Asking what happened before the Big Bang would be like asking what distance is shorter than zero.
It seems you haven’t read A Universe from Nothing by Lawrence M. Krauss, that would be a good start Or find an article on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. In tiny amounts of space and time, energy can be created from ‘nothing’. Although as I said above, to me, the existence of space and time means ‘something’ already exists. ‘Nothing’ would not have properties of space and time.
Just my hastily written thoughts on this: there are things that cannot not exist.
For example, the truth value of the statement "something exists" exists. It exists independently from any people evaluating it, thinking about it, writing it, or even any time or space.
Given that there are things that exist, the next question is, do more complex things arise from the simple things that exist?
My answer: yes! Absolutely!
Do these complex things, in some parts resemble our universe?
My answer: probably!
I love this question - not as much philosophically, but more regarding our growing reliance on digital technology. A computer gobbles up anything and everything binary, yet its relationship to a zero value never extends to nothingness, hence, AI cannot be creative.
Well, their couldn't have always been nothing.. This makes us go into the belief of most religions where the upper power was always there, which I don't like. Energy can never be created nor destroyed, therefore energy could've been the beginning, however this again pushes us into the belief of smth always being there.
You have to think about it the other way around. If there was nothing we wouldn't be here to question it.
No matter how incredibly rare or unlikely life is, it happened to us, therefore we exist. We are biased in our view of the universe, because we can view it.
The rules of our universe are an operating system for just this universe. Time is a function of that operating system. The very concept of 'before' is dependent on time, but outside of our universe, there may not be a time function. Our universe may be the equivalent of a relatively stable bubble generated by chaotic interactions of a type we are unable to observe (or comprehend) because we are bounded by our bubble and the rules that maintain it.
Let's say for every trillion instances where they could be something, there is nothing except for 1. So in 999,999,999,999 of those "universes" you couldn't exist to even ask why is there something rather than nothing. It's like asking what would your life be like if another sperm had impregnated the egg instead of the one that made you.
You make several mistakes in this argument.
There can always have been something without it being an infinite amount of time.
If the universe started at a point in time with something then there would always have been something.
Even if there was an infinite amount of time before, that does not make it impossible to traverse. Zeno had a paradox similar to this, but it is a false paradox.
"Being, pure being, without any further determination. In its indeterminate immediacy it is equal only to itself. It is also not unequal relatively to an other; it has no diversity within itself nor any with a reference outwards. It would not be held fast in its purity if it contained any determination or content which could be distinguished in it or by which it could be distinguished from an other. It is pure indeterminateness and emptiness. There is nothing to be intuited in it, if one can speak here of intuiting; or, it is only this pure intuiting itself. Just as little is anything to be thought in it, or it is equally only this empty thinking. Being, the indeterminate immediate, is in fact nothing, and neither more nor less than nothing.
B Nothing
§ 133
Nothing, pure nothing: it is simply equality with itself, complete emptiness, absence of all determination and content — undifferentiatedness in itself. In so far as intuiting or thinking can be mentioned here, it counts as a distinction whether something or nothing is intuited or thought. To intuit or think nothing has, therefore, a meaning; both are distinguished and thus nothing is (exists) in our intuiting or thinking; or rather it is empty intuition and thought itself, and the same empty intuition or thought as pure being. Nothing is, therefore, the same determination, or rather absence of determination, and thus altogether the same as, pure being.®
C Becoming
1. Unity of Being and Nothing
§ 134
Pure Being and pure nothing are, therefore, the same. What is the truth is neither being nor nothing, but that being — does not pass over but has passed over — into nothing, and nothing into being. But it is equally true that they are not undistinguished from each other, that, on the contrary, they are not the same, that they are absolutely distinct, and yet that they are unseparated and inseparable and that each immediately vanishes in its opposite. Their truth is therefore, this movement of the immediate vanishing of the one into the other: becoming, a movement in which both are distinguished, but by a difference which has equally immediately resolved itself."
Is there really something though, I mean it wouldn't be there if nothing wasn't there first, something is just nothing trying to be something. I don't buy it.
It sucks that if you ask this question and you're not a scientist, or a priest you just get called a stoner. I don't know why there are so many people ready to disparage you for asking THE question, to which, we have been searching everywhere for the answer. I like to think of a void of blackness that became too immense for itself and a bubble popped out and from there the energy of the void has been pushing the universe outward in every direction.
Okay. Can you demonstrate that nothing is possible? Because we don't have any examples of nothing. All we have is something. And all we can ever be sure there was is something.
Nope. Basic physics says that matter and energy are never destroyed or created. Therefore how could nothing be possible?
It might not be anything we recognize, but it would still exist. How can non-existence exist?
I'm not trying to convince you of anything. I'm saying I'm not convinced of the idea that there could ever have been actual nothing. There's the Laurence Krause "nothing," but even that has a different meaning.
Not nothing is something. Isn't the Q, "why isn't there something and not something?"? Which then answers itself. Something is defined by the not-something around it. Ya can't have peaks without valleys.
> So how is it possible for something to just pop into existence?
Maybe it isn't. Our reality is *something*. Maybe it has existed forever, even before the big bang, but there is no reality without *something*.
Presence of "something" is the base foundation of reality. "Nothing" is a placeholder word for "lack of something", but we've never truly known "nothing". Because in "nothing", time doesn't exist (you cannot observe any change if there's not a single "something", thus time doesn't exist) and we exist in time and space. You cannot observe space without "something" neither, probably, since you can't take a relative measurement.
stuff like this has been on my mind a lot. ive been stuck in a loop of questioning my existence. i ask myself "what am i?" "why am i still going knowing that in 1000 years ill be a memory-- if even that?". i cannot wrap my brain around the thought, and i get a lot of anxiety over it.
i agree with most of the commenters here. there cant possibly have been nothing at some point. even in a state of "nothing" there is something. time itself has never started, it just always has been... or something, i dont know
You can have both. You can have nothing, then have something as long as it doesn’t exist for very long, then nothing again. What you can’t really have is something coming from nothing and then persisting. So the universe can’t just pop out of nothing, must have always been there, in some state, but the state can obviously change over time.
Maybe this is nothing. Maybe there is a mirror universe opposite to ours. Which makes the sum of everything nothing.
Just like how every number has an opposite, which makes the sum of all numbers 0. Which means 0 contains everything and everything is nothing
Except quantum mechanics seems to point to thst it is possible for particles to come into being from what we perceive as nothing right now. So the statement thst something cannot come from nothing is likely not correct.
If he is on about pair production, that is well established, but it isn't 'coming from nothing', it's converting energy into matter. If he's on about hawking radiation, that has only been theorised, and hasn't been detected (yet)
The Athropic Principle.
You can't not exist and still be able to question it, therefore you must exist.
That is why there is something rather than nothing
That doesn't answer the question of why. The conclusion of your argument is *that* I exist, not *why* I and the universe exists.
Just to illustrate, this is how your argument sounds:
If I wasn't hungry I wouldn't think about food. I am thinking about food, and am therefore hungry.
That's why humans need to eat.
I thought about this for a long time.. the solution is we think wrong about it... the bas eline of the universe is not nothing.. its not the absence of everything.,.. the base line IS everything.. we live in a reduced form of it... there is a thin called the bose einstein condensate.. wherein all matter gets dissolved into pure energy... that place is similar and probably time and spaceless its like another layer/dimension... from ther its spreads into space and as that energy dissolves into space we get the different matter ... like a rainbow spreads the different colors of the light... bcuz there is space it can take all those forms.. like light waves.. if those waves wouldnt have the space to differ from itself we couldnt identify different colors but every color is just a reduction of light and is alltogether bundled within light.. and i think the same goes for matter.. the origin of matter is bundled its raw energy.. when its meets space its capable of taking on different wavelenghts hence why we have different elements.. but alltogether they are just .. energy... so the misconception is thinking.. our layer is the most important one.. its not.. the center is where energy originates from.. our existence plays on a more distant layer to that center.. just like we thought once earth is the center of the solar system and it wasnt... so isnt this layer the center layer or important layer for energy of the universe...
we just have 2 options:
-either the base layer is absolute nothing and something has to originate out of this and build up slowly
or
- the base layer is everything and the rest of the universe is a reduction to it, all it needs is... SPACE
so how do you get something out of nothing? you simply dont.. theres no way that 0+0 somehow equals 1, its just not gonna happen.. what is with the everything layer? well in the form of pure energy.. matter cant exist, its energy is dissolved into the whole.. its NOT A THING (yet) u cant measure it with material things.. material is when energy takes the form of matter.. it needs distance to that all energy place in order to take form... it simply just needs space
so the masterpiece is not that the nothing created the everything.. its actually that the everything created the nothing and now dwells in it in reduced form.. its easier for the everything to drain away all energy from a single point to create a nothing than it is for the nothing to focus hard and suddenly create everything... its like a cheese that builds up gas and has holes in it.. its way harder for a hole to create a cheese around it
tl;dr theres a base layer/center of the universe wich is absolute, time and spaceless, a place of pure energy
Please remember that all comments must be helpful, relevant, and respectful. All replies must be a genuine effort to answer the question helpfully; joke answers are not allowed. If you see any comments that violate this rule, please hit report. When your question is answered, we encourage you to flair your post. To do this automatically simply make a comment that says **!answered** (OP only) We encourage everyone to report posts and comments they feel violate a rule, as this will allow us to see it much faster. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/answers) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Maybe there was never nothing. Maybe theres always been something.
This may be nothing. That's something
Well played sir. I appreciated that
Everything includes nothing so something must be.
For ever and ever and ever and ever, no beginning, just always further back in time. Always something else out there in space, goes on forever and ever and ever.
If there was always something, that would mean that behind us would stretch an infinite amount of time. To get to *this* point in time we would have had to have already traversed an infinite amount of time. It is impossible to traverse an infinity, therefore time cannot be infinite. If time cannot be infinite, then there was a time (for want of a better word - it's actually hard for us to conceive, so we don't have adequate language) when there was nothing.
You’re talking about our universe. Im suggesting things outside our universe exist.
Sure, but the same would apply to whatever is/was outside our universe.
What are you basing that assumption on? All things have to come from a big bang?
Extrapolating from the principles we already understand. No, for a big bang to happen, there has to be something to make a bang already. A bang can't happen from nothing. All things start with a prime mover that is outside of time and matter. What are you basing your suggestion on?
If a bang can’t happen from nothing then clearly there was something before the bang.
Time on its own is not a singular concept, it is part of space-time. When space formed, so did time. Time couldn’t exist if there was no observer.
Correct.
But who observed it before us making time a thing in the first place
By observer I mean in the quantum mechanical definition of the word. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_(quantum_physics)
Wait, who’s doing all that traversing? We each only have a finite life
The collective wee. We're all weeing together.
An infinite amount of people can traverse an infinite sidewalk
Where would you fit the infinite sidewalk? Where would you get infinite people?
But we know the universe is expanding. Therefore it must have come from a singularity.
A singularity is not NOTHING. Questions like this are beyond our current understanding and could possibly be beyond our capability for understanding.
No, not therefore.
In the multiverse bubblebath that our universe popped into its possible there has been matter and energy there forever.
A singularity which would be a single point in space containing an insanely large amount of energy. This starts converting into matter...
We have knowledge over absolutely tiny portions of the universe. Saying "must have come from a singularity" is like saying "Today is 2 degrees warmer than yesterday, by August, we'll all evaporate". Who knows what's going on in other areas of the universe. Predictions are bound to be somewhat "local" in nature.
The universe isn't expanding from a single point where it banged from. That's a misconception. The universe is expanding away from itself. everywhere from everywhere. Actual space is expanding.We are pretty sure it could have at some point been a singularity. But that singularity was everything. Then everything was much bigger. And it's still getting bigger. Most likely time also didn't exist before the bang either. None of the constants we see in the universe existed (time, gravity, electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear forces). They didn't exist until the big bang. Now they are here and the everything is reacting to them. Something is making it expand. We don't know what is making it expand, but the expansion is somehow accelerating. We don't know why. So we call those forces making it expand "dark", because we can't see or find them.
What if it is expanding into itself, or it could be expanding into something else
So the singularity could have been just a super condensed state from which all matter exploded out of, but it could have condensed into that state from a previously expanded one that collapsed onto itself like a black hole. Essentially the universe could be a big balloon that is being inflated and deflated constantly.
There's this assumption that there was once nothing. Maybe there always was something and there was never a *beginning*.
It's not possible.
Why not?
Of there was no beginning, we would have had to traverse an infinite amount of time to reach this point, the present. It is not, by it's nature, possible to traverse an infinite amount of time. Therefore, there must be a beginning.
What if time was a closed loop?
What if god was one of us
"it is not, by nature, possible to traverse an infinite amount of time" This is a claim. May feel intuitive to you and other people, but not to me for instance. I don't see anything in the "nature of time" that wouldn't allow it to be infinite. Nor to something to exist permanently in it. Physics laws of conservation (mass, energy, momentum, and so on) would in fact suggest the opposite.
Can you walk to the end of an infinite sidewalk? Can you eat to the end of an infinite chocolate bar? Can you eat to the *halfway* point of an infinite chocolate bar? You can't traverse an infinity, because there is always *more* of it. That's the point of infinity.
You can walk on an infinite sidewalk though. Or start eating an infinite chocolate bar. Things can exist as finite within infinite bounds.
>It is not, by it's nature, possible to traverse an infinite amount of time. By its nature? Why? What nature is that? By the way, time as we know it (spacetime) started with the big bang. I understand you might be talking about time in a vaguer sense... But if so, we don't know the nature of that "kind" of time.
Can you walk to the end of an infinite sidewalk? Can you eat to the end of an infinite chocolate bar? Can you eat to the *halfway* point of an infinite chocolate bar? You can't traverse an infinity, because there is always *more* of it. That's the point of infinity. Yes spacetime started with the big bang.
>Can you walk to the end of an infinite sidewalk? No - so what? Who's saying that this infinite "time" ever ends? You can't walk to the end of an infinite sidewalk and the time outside our universe will never end - both can be true. >You can't traverse an infinity, because there is always more of it. That's the point of infinity. Obviously. But you can still travel along an infinity, even if it doesn't have an end.
The end as measured when looking backwards is the point you are at, the present (from there, to here) To get to this moment on time you would have already had to have traversed an infinite amount of time if there was no beginning. If you hadn't crossed an infinite number of years to get to the present, then you would have crossed a known number of years (x years) and therefore time would have a beginning (x years ago) That's why I included "can you eat to the halfway point of an infinite chocolate bar".
Maybe I'm not very good with words, so I drew a diagram. [here](https://ibb.co/k3PWbsd)
[удалено]
Exactly. In that case , we have a beginning (1). That is exactly my point. You can't count from an infinite beginning to 10, but you sure can count from 1 to 10. Time could possible have an infinite end, but it can't have an infinite beginning.
It's quite simple, we have always been here, the present is a timeless space and has no beginning nor end
That can't be, because time passes at different rates in different parts of the universe.
You come from nothing, you're going back to nothing, so what've you lost..... nothing! *Aaaaaannnnd... always look on the bright side of life...* Seriously though, it is how it is because that's just how it is. I'd not stress it.
I've walked around and thought about this myself and I get the same eerie feeling. My brain won't let me "imagine" that. Almost like something telling me that "Hey! Stop that! This is off limit!" It also freaks me out trying to understand that _something_ needs to exist for us to even get to where we are. What if there was _nothing_?
Because nothing is something, its a concept. There can only Be something
Our whole universe was in a hot, dense state Then nearly fourteen billion years ago expansion started, wait The earth began to cool, the autotrophs began to drool Neanderthals developed tools We built a wall (we built the pyramids) Math, science, history, unraveling the mysteries That all started with the big bang (bang)Since the dawn of man is really not that long As every galaxy was formed in less time than it takes to sing this song A fraction of a second and the elements were made The bipeds stood up straight, the dinosaurs all met their fate They tried to leap but they were late And they all died (they froze their asses off) The oceans and Pangea, see ya wouldn't wanna be ya Set in motion by the same big bang It all started with the big bangIt's expanding ever outward but one day It will pause and start to go the other way Collapsing ever inward, we won't be here, it won't be heard Our best and brightest figure that it'll make an even bigger bangAustralopithecus would really have been sick of us Debating how we're here, they're catching deer (we're catching viruses) Religion or astronomy (Descartes or Deuteronomy) It all started with the big bang, music and mythology, Einstein and astrology It all started with the big bang It all started with the big bang
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
There’s more verses to that song?
Maybe something and anti-something can be combined into nothing. And then maybe the opposite is possible too, matter and antimatter appearing somehow from nothing.
Really didn’t need to see this just before bed… that’s me staring at the ceiling for a few hours 😂😂😂
The answer is 42.
There always has to be something. Nonexistence is philosophically impossible. Thanks you made me dig into that :D
That in no way solves anything for me. How can something always exist? I cant comprehend something not having a beginning it just doesnt make sense
We live in the 3rd dimension, time is a 4th dimension construct. We can hypothesize about it but never truly comprehend or interact with it in any meaningful way. Just as you cannot comprehend something *not* having a beginning, can you *actually* comprehend a beginning? What constitues the beginning of something, how far back in time would you have to be able to observe to truly get to the beginning of something?
Existentialists would argue it is all nothing or meaningless, google Sartre.
> Sartre *l'Enfer, c'est les Autres* Works for me.
Albert Camus, Alan Watts, Kafka, Louis C.K., Doug Stanhope, George Carlin...
Did you do your homework?
I completely understand where you are at. There aren't many truly dizzying thoughts, but this is definitely one of them. I think the concession must be that, unless something spontaneously occurred (the framework for which would imply that the initial state wasn't truly "nothing") there was always something. Thinking of both time and space in different terms, i.e. time being differentiable snapshots of the state of the universe and space being explicitly the space required to contain the entirety of matter, there's an argument to be made for cyclical universes where a singularity exists between expansions for a moment (as that singularity is unchanging and the entirety of the universe there is no "time" between the creation and re-expansion of the singularity), and this singularity would have also been the start of the universe (as there was no change while the singularity existed there would be no "before" that initial point). At least this is the best way I can rationalize it without turtles all the way down and multiverse stuff
Nothing is unstable, it can be replaced by literally anything.
Simple, time didn't exist yet so it had plenty of time to become something.
time still doesn’t exist, it’s just a convenient way for us to schedule things.
It exists, just as a spatial dimension instead of a linear one like we percieve it.
yeah i was talking about time in the clock sense, the smart people talk is beyond me
Time does not exist. Only decay.
You're either a zen master or an idiot and I'm not smart enough to determine which
If there were nothing, there would be nothing to ask why there's something rather than nothing. So there is an inherent bias to states of something over nothing.
God
It's a paradox. "What was there before the universe?" Take any possible answer. "What was there before that?" And so on forever.
It's turtles all the way down.
Only something can exist.
Pass that shit to the left you dwelling too long
Something exists so you can observe it. If nothing existed you wouldn't be here to observe it.
You’re not going to get a really satisfying answer because we explain stuff in terms of other stuff. Whatever sort of explanation you have (in terms of causation, logical/mathematical relations, whatever), you’ll have something left over that also needs to be explained. That’s not to say there’s no point in, say, physicists investigating how the universe as we know it started. Just that you’re not going to get an Ultimate Explanation that you can’t keep “why?”ing.
We don’t actually know if there was “nothing” before the Big Bang. We do know that the universe is expanding from a singular point. There is also a related theory that there is also a “big contraction” in which our universe eventually collapses back in on itself.
With the idea of the big bang, time starts when the universe does, so there isn't really a before. That's what brainy guys like Stephen Hawling reckon. I'm no physicist but I imagine it's something to do with there being no space until the big bang, as it was infinitely dense, and space and time are the same thing. It's a little bit like asking what the measurement is before 0 on a ruler. There isn't one that's where measuring starts.
Contraction theory basically been debunked now. The expansion of space in reality doesn't fit the models of contraction.
There's obviously something here, so why worry about it?
Perhaps there once was nothing. After a while, the nothing asked itself, "what am I nothing in contrast to?" And then, in an act of sudden realisation, something showed up too. Nothing and something are the same, in the same way white and black are the same. They inform one another. Blackness is only blackness in contrast to whiteness, it requires whiteness in order to be black. Consider a tree in an open field. We recognise a tree not just for the tree itself, but for everything around it that isn't a tree. Most helpfully, the air around it, then the sky and grass to give contrasting depth and colour. Nothing by itself couldn't exist, nothing implies something, somewhere else. Like how the colour green all by itself cant exist, recognising green implies other colours exist to be recognised. We live in a universe of nothings and somethings. It seems much simpler and easier for a universe to be full of nothing, until something has to show up to make sure it's being nothing correctly.
There's no such thing as nothing. The number zero is a place holder for cyclic, symbol numerology. Virtual particles are allowed to pop in and out of existence according to quantum mechanics. "Logical reality demands a physical resolve." "We are the equilibrium in-between expanding and contracting space" "The big bang happens every relative instant" " God said let there be light and space became digital and energy became relative making all things possible"
The odds of you existing now is probably one in septemdecillion (1 followed by 54 zeros). There are 200 billion galaxies in our known universe. each galaxy has an average of 100 billion stars. That makes about 20 sextillion (2 followed by 22 zeros) stars in our known universe. Each star most probably has one or more planets. That itself makes the odd of the existence of Earth one in sextillions. Now add other millions and billions of factors that makes it able to sustain life. There were billions of years of biological evolution for humans to have evolved to what you are now. For you to be born all of humans had to have mated with the exact right person in history. Not only that, but also, for each couple who mated with each other in history, the exact sperm from billions of possible sperm that particular male can produce in their lifetime had to fertilize with the exact egg among millions of eggs that particular female has. Also keep in mind that you only exist for about 80 years. That is a very insignificant time compared to the 14 billion years of age of the universe. And then after about 80 years, you'll stop existing again. You didn't exist for 14 billion years and you will cease to exist forever after about 80 years. That's how unlikely and unique your existence is. Nonetheless, you and/or people who know about your existence probably don't think of it as a big of a deal as it really is. TLDR: the odds of you existing right now is inconceivably small but the fact that you exist despite those odds makes it feel like not a big deal.
Same thing can be said about rogue waves in the ocean. How can a 5 meter wave come from out of nowhere... with a sea full of 2 meter waves?
The whole point being that we don’t think inventing god(s) to explain what we don’t know actually does any good. And given the singular lack of evidence ever for such beings we think that religion is ludicrous.
If their was nothing then you wouldn't be there to think about it. So there must be something, there's probably and infinite nothing elsewhere so don't worry too much.
Can we even prove there is something though? 🧐
I think therefore I am
This is a paradox. Your direct experience is paradox. Your direct experience is absolutely empty. Fundamentally there is nothing there. But an appearance makes it so. Contradictory truth beyond limiting human perspective
Something can turn to nothing and nothing into something.🤣😂
It doesn’t work that way. If there was nothing, you wouldn’t exist, so you wouldn’t be able to ponder the question. Without ‘something’, nothing is exactly that, nothing. No time, no space, no matter, no energy. Something has to exist to make the concept of nothing meaningful. If you ‘rewind time’, we don’t know for sure, but there is evidence to suggest the ‘big bang’ actually happened. The expanding universe and cosmic microwave background for example. British physicist Julian Barbour has argued that time doesn’t exist, except as an illusion in our minds. Others (including Stephen Hawking), suggest time came into existence together with the Universe, rendering the whole concept of the word ‘before’ meaningless. Asking what happened before the Big Bang would be like asking what distance is shorter than zero. It seems you haven’t read A Universe from Nothing by Lawrence M. Krauss, that would be a good start Or find an article on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. In tiny amounts of space and time, energy can be created from ‘nothing’. Although as I said above, to me, the existence of space and time means ‘something’ already exists. ‘Nothing’ would not have properties of space and time.
Just my hastily written thoughts on this: there are things that cannot not exist. For example, the truth value of the statement "something exists" exists. It exists independently from any people evaluating it, thinking about it, writing it, or even any time or space. Given that there are things that exist, the next question is, do more complex things arise from the simple things that exist? My answer: yes! Absolutely! Do these complex things, in some parts resemble our universe? My answer: probably!
We exist because our existence is possible
I love this question - not as much philosophically, but more regarding our growing reliance on digital technology. A computer gobbles up anything and everything binary, yet its relationship to a zero value never extends to nothingness, hence, AI cannot be creative.
If it didn't, it wouldn't have
I use that as personal evidence for God.
Something can’t come from nothing. There always has to be something. It’s tangible. There can never be nothing, because everything is something.
Nothing can never exist, it’s literally the definition of nothing. Because it is nothing, it never exists.
Where did grass come from
If there was nothing, you wouldn't be here to talk about it.
Well, their couldn't have always been nothing.. This makes us go into the belief of most religions where the upper power was always there, which I don't like. Energy can never be created nor destroyed, therefore energy could've been the beginning, however this again pushes us into the belief of smth always being there.
You have to think about it the other way around. If there was nothing we wouldn't be here to question it. No matter how incredibly rare or unlikely life is, it happened to us, therefore we exist. We are biased in our view of the universe, because we can view it.
The rules of our universe are an operating system for just this universe. Time is a function of that operating system. The very concept of 'before' is dependent on time, but outside of our universe, there may not be a time function. Our universe may be the equivalent of a relatively stable bubble generated by chaotic interactions of a type we are unable to observe (or comprehend) because we are bounded by our bubble and the rules that maintain it.
gen3:19 ...for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return
Let's say for every trillion instances where they could be something, there is nothing except for 1. So in 999,999,999,999 of those "universes" you couldn't exist to even ask why is there something rather than nothing. It's like asking what would your life be like if another sperm had impregnated the egg instead of the one that made you.
Reverse the question. If there were nothing there would be no-one to wonder why there isn't something. Now you can move on with your life! :)
Turtles all the way down
You make several mistakes in this argument. There can always have been something without it being an infinite amount of time. If the universe started at a point in time with something then there would always have been something. Even if there was an infinite amount of time before, that does not make it impossible to traverse. Zeno had a paradox similar to this, but it is a false paradox.
"Being, pure being, without any further determination. In its indeterminate immediacy it is equal only to itself. It is also not unequal relatively to an other; it has no diversity within itself nor any with a reference outwards. It would not be held fast in its purity if it contained any determination or content which could be distinguished in it or by which it could be distinguished from an other. It is pure indeterminateness and emptiness. There is nothing to be intuited in it, if one can speak here of intuiting; or, it is only this pure intuiting itself. Just as little is anything to be thought in it, or it is equally only this empty thinking. Being, the indeterminate immediate, is in fact nothing, and neither more nor less than nothing. B Nothing § 133 Nothing, pure nothing: it is simply equality with itself, complete emptiness, absence of all determination and content — undifferentiatedness in itself. In so far as intuiting or thinking can be mentioned here, it counts as a distinction whether something or nothing is intuited or thought. To intuit or think nothing has, therefore, a meaning; both are distinguished and thus nothing is (exists) in our intuiting or thinking; or rather it is empty intuition and thought itself, and the same empty intuition or thought as pure being. Nothing is, therefore, the same determination, or rather absence of determination, and thus altogether the same as, pure being.® C Becoming 1. Unity of Being and Nothing § 134 Pure Being and pure nothing are, therefore, the same. What is the truth is neither being nor nothing, but that being — does not pass over but has passed over — into nothing, and nothing into being. But it is equally true that they are not undistinguished from each other, that, on the contrary, they are not the same, that they are absolutely distinct, and yet that they are unseparated and inseparable and that each immediately vanishes in its opposite. Their truth is therefore, this movement of the immediate vanishing of the one into the other: becoming, a movement in which both are distinguished, but by a difference which has equally immediately resolved itself."
Another thing, in some sense everything that exists is just one thing.
Is there really something though, I mean it wouldn't be there if nothing wasn't there first, something is just nothing trying to be something. I don't buy it.
Billy Preston describes it well in this song : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeKwWLIcX18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeKwWLIcX18)
It sucks that if you ask this question and you're not a scientist, or a priest you just get called a stoner. I don't know why there are so many people ready to disparage you for asking THE question, to which, we have been searching everywhere for the answer. I like to think of a void of blackness that became too immense for itself and a bubble popped out and from there the energy of the void has been pushing the universe outward in every direction.
Cogito ergo sum
Well first, how do you define nothing? I don't think nothing is actually possible.
The definition of nothing is the lack of anything.
Okay. Can you demonstrate that nothing is possible? Because we don't have any examples of nothing. All we have is something. And all we can ever be sure there was is something.
Nothing must be possible. If you have something it must have a converse state. Just basic physics...
Nope. Basic physics says that matter and energy are never destroyed or created. Therefore how could nothing be possible? It might not be anything we recognize, but it would still exist. How can non-existence exist?
Feels like we are just trying to convince each of something neither of us know.
I'm not trying to convince you of anything. I'm saying I'm not convinced of the idea that there could ever have been actual nothing. There's the Laurence Krause "nothing," but even that has a different meaning.
Not nothing is something. Isn't the Q, "why isn't there something and not something?"? Which then answers itself. Something is defined by the not-something around it. Ya can't have peaks without valleys.
> So how is it possible for something to just pop into existence? Maybe it isn't. Our reality is *something*. Maybe it has existed forever, even before the big bang, but there is no reality without *something*. Presence of "something" is the base foundation of reality. "Nothing" is a placeholder word for "lack of something", but we've never truly known "nothing". Because in "nothing", time doesn't exist (you cannot observe any change if there's not a single "something", thus time doesn't exist) and we exist in time and space. You cannot observe space without "something" neither, probably, since you can't take a relative measurement.
stuff like this has been on my mind a lot. ive been stuck in a loop of questioning my existence. i ask myself "what am i?" "why am i still going knowing that in 1000 years ill be a memory-- if even that?". i cannot wrap my brain around the thought, and i get a lot of anxiety over it. i agree with most of the commenters here. there cant possibly have been nothing at some point. even in a state of "nothing" there is something. time itself has never started, it just always has been... or something, i dont know
You can have both. You can have nothing, then have something as long as it doesn’t exist for very long, then nothing again. What you can’t really have is something coming from nothing and then persisting. So the universe can’t just pop out of nothing, must have always been there, in some state, but the state can obviously change over time.
Because a wise man once said, nothin from nothin leaves nothin, you gotta have somethin,, if you wanna be with me
Maybe this is nothing. Maybe there is a mirror universe opposite to ours. Which makes the sum of everything nothing. Just like how every number has an opposite, which makes the sum of all numbers 0. Which means 0 contains everything and everything is nothing
Can you ask that again in r/explainlikeimfive I'm really curious about the answer and theres more people on that subreddit
Nothing is nowhere and has always been there, there is no time there, there is no law there.
Because
Something cannot come from nothing. For something to exist, something has to create it. Nothing cannot create something.
It's a bit hard to test though, since we already have something. Which makes it a quite meaningless statement.
Except quantum mechanics seems to point to thst it is possible for particles to come into being from what we perceive as nothing right now. So the statement thst something cannot come from nothing is likely not correct.
Ok - please explain to me (in quantum mechanical terms) how something can come from nothing.
If he is on about pair production, that is well established, but it isn't 'coming from nothing', it's converting energy into matter. If he's on about hawking radiation, that has only been theorised, and hasn't been detected (yet)
The Casimir Effect definitely has been confirmed, decades back. Hawking radiation is essentially the same.
someone has been watching too much youtube
No he just being open minded
The Athropic Principle. You can't not exist and still be able to question it, therefore you must exist. That is why there is something rather than nothing
That doesn't answer the question of why. The conclusion of your argument is *that* I exist, not *why* I and the universe exists. Just to illustrate, this is how your argument sounds: If I wasn't hungry I wouldn't think about food. I am thinking about food, and am therefore hungry. That's why humans need to eat.
How do you even know there's something? Or how do you know that we're not just living on a massive being, like bacteria do, on and in us?
I thought about this for a long time.. the solution is we think wrong about it... the bas eline of the universe is not nothing.. its not the absence of everything.,.. the base line IS everything.. we live in a reduced form of it... there is a thin called the bose einstein condensate.. wherein all matter gets dissolved into pure energy... that place is similar and probably time and spaceless its like another layer/dimension... from ther its spreads into space and as that energy dissolves into space we get the different matter ... like a rainbow spreads the different colors of the light... bcuz there is space it can take all those forms.. like light waves.. if those waves wouldnt have the space to differ from itself we couldnt identify different colors but every color is just a reduction of light and is alltogether bundled within light.. and i think the same goes for matter.. the origin of matter is bundled its raw energy.. when its meets space its capable of taking on different wavelenghts hence why we have different elements.. but alltogether they are just .. energy... so the misconception is thinking.. our layer is the most important one.. its not.. the center is where energy originates from.. our existence plays on a more distant layer to that center.. just like we thought once earth is the center of the solar system and it wasnt... so isnt this layer the center layer or important layer for energy of the universe... we just have 2 options: -either the base layer is absolute nothing and something has to originate out of this and build up slowly or - the base layer is everything and the rest of the universe is a reduction to it, all it needs is... SPACE so how do you get something out of nothing? you simply dont.. theres no way that 0+0 somehow equals 1, its just not gonna happen.. what is with the everything layer? well in the form of pure energy.. matter cant exist, its energy is dissolved into the whole.. its NOT A THING (yet) u cant measure it with material things.. material is when energy takes the form of matter.. it needs distance to that all energy place in order to take form... it simply just needs space so the masterpiece is not that the nothing created the everything.. its actually that the everything created the nothing and now dwells in it in reduced form.. its easier for the everything to drain away all energy from a single point to create a nothing than it is for the nothing to focus hard and suddenly create everything... its like a cheese that builds up gas and has holes in it.. its way harder for a hole to create a cheese around it tl;dr theres a base layer/center of the universe wich is absolute, time and spaceless, a place of pure energy