Krauss errored and, as a result, has made false assertions Cycel. I know that's difficult for you to accept, but it's true. So let's correct both him and you.
As Dr. Hugh Ross (Ph.D., M.S., Astrophysics, University of Toronto; Post-doctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology; B.S., Physics, University of British Columbia) published:
First, even though the total Newtonian gravitational energy of the universe is zero, the universe still contains a huge amount of heat left over from the cosmic creation event and enormous quantities of dark energy, exotic dark matter, ordinary dark matter, and visible galaxies, stars, planets, dust, and gas meaning the universe does not reduce to nothing.
Imagine someone throwing a shot put straight up in the air. There reaches a point in the shot put’s trajectory where the upward kinetic energy exactly equals the downward gravitational energy. At that point, the shot put is moving neither up nor down. Its motion energy is zero. However, it would be wrong to conclude that the shot put is nothing. Even at that zero energy point, it is still a sphere of metal that weighs sixteen pounds.
Virtual particle production is a natural outcome of the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics. This principle states, in part, that quantum fluctuations in the universe’s space-time fabric will generate particles, provided those particles revert to quantum space-time fluctuations before any human observer can detect their appearance. Typically, the particles so produced must disappear in less than a quintillionth of a second. Since these particles cannot be detected directly, physicists refer to them as virtual particles. Krauss suggests that the entire universe may have popped into existence by the same means.
However, this idea has caveats. To begin with, for a system as massive as the observable universe, the time for it to arise from nothingness (the space-time fabric) and revert back to nothingness (the space-time fabric) must be less than 10[SUP]
-102[/SUP] seconds (101 zeroes between the decimal point and 1). This episode is a bit briefer than the 14-billion-year age of the universe!
A second inadequacy in Krauss’ suggestion comes from another principle of quantum mechanics. The probability of a quantum outcome occurring increases in proportion to the passage of time. That is, the larger the time interval, the greater the probability that a quantum outcome, like the production of a virtual particle, will take place. This principle implies that if the time interval is zero, the probability for any quantum event is zero (1).
Secondly, Krauss’ suggestion comes from another principle of quantum mechanics. The probability of a quantum outcome occurring increases in proportion to the passage of time. That is, the larger the time interval, the greater the probability that a quantum outcome, like the production of a virtual particle, will take place. This principle implies that if the time interval is zero, the probability for any quantum event is zero. (1)
The space-time theorems prove that time has a beginning coincident with the beginning of the universe. Thus, the time interval at the beginning of the universe is zero. This eliminates quantum mechanics as a possible candidate for natural generator of the universe.
Krauss never acknowledges the weaknesses of the virtual particle production analogy for cosmic creation. However, he does hypothesize a second way the universe could have arisen from nothing without divine agency. Krauss proposes that—in addition to the observable quantum mechanics constrained to space and time—there is an unobserved hyper quantum mechanics that exists beyond our universe. Here some dimension (or dimensions) of time, entirely distinct from cosmic time, would permit space-time bubbles, independent of the space or time dimensionality posited to exist beyond our universe, to pop into existence spontaneously. However, if the hyper quantum mechanics is anything like the quantum mechanics we observe, then the space-time bubbles must also disappear spontaneously within extremely brief time episodes.
Krauss acknowledges that his appeal to some imagined hyper quantum mechanics to explain the origin of the universe leads to a time episode problem. He suggests that the problem might be solved if the universe experiences a very aggressive inflationary expansion event
before the hyper quantum mechanics forced the newly generated space-time bubble (our universe) to disappear.
Inflation is now an integral part of big bang cosmology. It refers to the brief but rapid exponential expansion of the early universe by a factor of at least 10[SUP]
78[/SUP] in volume. For our universe, the inflation epoch lasted between 10[SUP]
-36[/SUP] and 10[SUP]
-33[/SUP] seconds. It occurred near the very beginning of the electroweak era, during which three forces of physics existed: gravity, the strong nuclear force, and the electroweak force.
The electroweak force is actually a blending of electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force. This blending occurs only when the universe is very young and, hence, very hot. However, if the universe is too young, the electroweak force will blend with the strong nuclear force. When our universe was about 10[SUP]
-35[/SUP] seconds old, the strong-electroweak force separated into the strong nuclear force and the electroweak force. Accordingly, an inflation episode cannot begin in our universe until the universe is 10[SUP]
-35[/SUP] seconds old.
A hundred billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second might not seem like very much time, but it is far too long to make Krauss’s hyper quantum mechanics a viable “creator” of our universe. This albeit extremely brief time interval is 10[SUP]
67[/SUP] times longer than the time duration for a universe like ours to appear and then disappear via the quantum pathway that produces virtual particles.
It is important to note here that many viable inflationary big bang creation models (that is, those capable of explaining the possible existence of life) predict that the act of inflation between 10[SUP]
-35[/SUP] and 10[SUP]
-32[/SUP] seconds will spawn a large number of space-time bubbles. These bubbles, however, differ from the kind generated by Krauss’ proposed hyper quantum mechanics. These bubbles are generated well after our universe’s creation event. Once formed by the inflation event, they subsequently never overlap. This means humans can never detect the existence of any of these possible bubbles.
Nevertheless, though we cannot prove their existence, we can determine that all these bubbles, if they exist, require a transcendent causal Agent. The space-time theorem proved by Arvind Borde, Alan Guth, and Alexander Vilenkin (2) established that in all viable inflationary big bang models—no matter the quantity of space-time bubbles they predict—the universe and all of its bubbles are subject to a beginning in finite time. The implication is that they thus require a causal Agent beyond space and time to explain their existence.
References:
(1) Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose,
“The Singularities of Gravitational Collapse and Cosmology,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series A 314 (1970): 529–48; Arvind Borde, Alan H. Guth, and Alexander Vilenkin,
“Inflationary Spacetimes Are Incomplete in Past Directions,” Physical Review Letters 90 (April 2003): id. 151301; Arvind Borde and Alexander Vilenkin,
“Violation of the Weak Energy Condition in Inflating Spacetimes,” Physical Review D 56 (July 15, 1997): 717–23; Arvind Borde and Alexander Vilenkin,
“Singularities in Inflationary Cosmology: A Review,” International Journal of Modern Physics D 5, no. 6 (December, 1996): 813–24; Arvind Borde,
“Open and Closed Universes, Initial Singularities, and Inflation,” Physical Review D 50 (September 15, 1994): 3692–702; Arvind Borde and Alexander Vilenkin,
“Eternal Inflation and the Initial Singularity,” Physical Review Letters 72 (May 23, 1994): 3305–308.
(2) Arvind Borde, Alan H. Guth, and Alexander Vilenkin, “Inflationary Spacetimes Are Incomplete in Past Directions,”
Physical Review Letters 90 (April 2003): id. 151301.
Keep reading Dr. Hugh Ross's refutation of Krauss's mistakes and resulting false assertions:
Part 1:
Reasons To Believe : A Universe from Nothing? A Critique of Lawrence Krauss' Book, Part 1
Part 2:
Reasons To Believe : A Universe from Nothing? A Critique of Lawrence Krauss' Book, Part 2
Physicists explain that 'nothing' (quite literally empty space with nothing in it) is unstable and creates energy. This is a new finding, but apparently it's been confirmed. Such knowledge, as with all things in quantum physics, is outside our normal experience and so attempting to extrapolate from known experience is flawed from the get-go. Protons are made up of elementary particles called quarks. Ninety percent of the mass of a proton results from energy fields jumping in and out of existence in the empty space between the quarks. Truly amazing. It takes particle physics to make these kinds of discoveries. This kind of knowledge cannot be derived through crude guess work, nor can we determine the origin of the universe except through scientific investigation, and perhaps then only if we are smart enough. Time will tell.
If you are interested in listening to one of the people who helped figure this out then see the following link:
A Universe From Nothing - Lawrence Krauss Lecture - YouTube
