Alex Filippenko and colleagues have caused a stir by observing that the law of physics can now explain the Big Bang without one common element: God. The University of California (Berkeley) professor observed that . “With the laws of physics, you can get universes.” Before we replace the statement on our money to read “In the Law of Physics, We Trust” there is a fallback. If the law of physics can explain the Big Bang, God may have still invented the law of physics.
Filippenko was speaking at the SETICon 2 Conference at a panel called “Did the Big Bang Require a Divine Spark?” The answer, he insisted is no: “The Big Bang could’ve occurred as a result of just the laws of physics being there. With the laws of physics, you can get universes.”
Under quantum mechanics, random fluctuations can produce matter and energy out of nothingness. Panelist Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the non-profit Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute also agreed that “Quantum mechanical fluctuations can produce the cosmos.” Shostak seemed to offer an ray of hope for a super being substitute in the form of a giant kid from another universe:
“If you would just, in this room, just twist time and space the right way, you might create an entirely new universe. It’s not clear you could get into that universe, but you would create it . . . So it could be that this universe is merely the science fair project of a kid in another universe. . . I don’t know how that affects your theological leanings, but it is something to consider.”
I am not sure religious scholars will be quick to embrace Bobby The Giant Kid With The Science Kit as a substitute for God. It totally messed up the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
Filippenko and Shostak could be looking at the same reaction as the Science Guy — only greater. Bill Nye, the Science Guy, was virtually stoned when he suggested in Texas that the Moon does not generate its own light despite what the Bible says. Filippenko makes Ney look like a heretical piker. First he affirms a theory that our universe came into existence 13.7 billion years ago when we all know that the Earth can be no more than a few thousand years old. Then he posits a theory that seems markedly different from the following:
First God made heaven & earth 2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. 3 And God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.
Correct me if I am wrong but I could not find a single reference to Quantum Mechanical Fluctuations.
Legend has it that Galileo was convicted by the Vatican for merely stating Eppur si muove (“and yet it moves”). He was found “vehemently suspect of heresy.”
It is unclear when Filipenko and Shostak will be called upon to “abjure, curse, and detest” those opinions.
Regardless of the outcome, I for one am not about to buy all of those Bobby, The Giant Kid With the Science Kit, decorations and gifts. I find that Quantumas has already become totally commercial.
Source: MSNBC
“Correct me if I am wrong but I could not find a single reference to Quantum Mechanical Fluctuations.”
But Professor it has been translated so many times that maybe it was in the original ((*_*))
I do Believe but always the question remains, Who or What produced G-d, and Who or What produced the Who or What that produced G-d and, like the old shampoo commercial, on and on it goes.
lol. Ill never look at the sistene chapel the same way again.
Mike,
“Neither I nor any other human has any answer as to how this Universe came to be…”
I think the point is that now we have something other than “God did it” and “we don’t have a clue” to answer that with, even if that answer is “maybe X happened.” The really exciting part about that is, that for a good number of values of X we can say “O.k., well then Y should be true,” and test for Y.
anon 1, June 26, 2012 at 11:34 am
The MSNBC article is bullshit … the Planck length at which random quantum mechanical fluctuations dominate …
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I noticed “mechanical fluctuations”, and just had to also notice:
(Dictionary). Perhaps these quantum mechanical fluctuations were parenting machinations that brought about their own kind after all.
I mean, if atoms are components of molecules, and complex molecules (proteins, RNA, etc.) reproduce/replicate themselves, we seem to have described a hierarchy, a reproducing group, i.e., like kind producing like kind.
Then along comes the organics, thus the cyborgs … part machine and part organic.
Like the “10 -44 seconds” you mentioned, that is another somewhat nebulous zone that is difficult to navigate with words.
Is it not possible that the Genesis description might be a metaphor? Isn’t the Bible full of metaphors? (I guess fundamentalists would say “no, it’s literal”; others would say, “yes”.) Would those first (and later) learning of Genesis be able to understand the quantum mechanics if it were presented as science? Isn’t it more understandable to use the metaphor with “God” being the rules quantum mechanics?
The MSNBC article is bullshit.
Physicists tend to stay away from anything prior to 10 -44 seconds.
In the time before the first 10-44 seconds of the Universe, or the Planck Epoch, the laws of physics as we know them break down; the predictions of General Relativity become meaningless as distance scales approach the Planck length at which random quantum mechanical fluctuations dominate. Most particle physics models predict that during this epoch the four fundamental forces were combined into one unified force. Very little else is known about the early part of this era, and the mystery it poses is perhaps the central question in modern physics.
This may have changed since I got my degree, but SETICON is not where such results would be presented.
Filippenko’s statement was either nothing new, or speculation mistakenly reported by the idiot reporter as news.
An article caught my eye which may signal a return to The Divine
SparkQuirk, better known as wantum fluctuations:(Women Don’t Want Sex Anymore). There are some ancient evidences, in the form of living creatures that haven’t had sex for thousands of millennia now:
(The Virgin …). It would seem that the fluctuating universe has been entertaining a notion of advancing to the rear.
In hindsight, the fluctuations may now have the vibe that sex is less than it once was … nothing to get all shaky about.
It is definitely a fluctuating universe.
Fockers are dangerous….
http://libra.msra.cn/Publication/18938644/fluctuations-destroying-long-range-order-in-su-2-yang-mills-theory
As a life-long student of science (and a Christian!) I am always amazed that scientists ask us to accept the laws of science as undisputable fact in spite of the fact that almost all science is based on theories “proved” by mathmatics. The fact is that ANYTHING (given enough time and patience) can be “proven” by mathmatic formulation. As far as Quantum Physics, an absolutely fascinating discipline, it stands as a scientific world where anything can be made to conform to the theories of science. I hasten to remind readers that scientific theories (also referred to as “fact”) are constantly being corrected or disproven and replaced with new theories. Perhaps someday scientists might come to realize that, just as Spiritual Religions are based on spiritual faith, thier “religion” is based on nothing more than numerical faith!
Mike Spindell 1, June 26, 2012 at 10:07 am
This is why I call myself a Deist. Neither I nor any other human has any answer as to how this Universe came to be and so having a creator would be a nice thing, but damned if I could understand why It would have any interest at all in my sex life.
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Bodies at rest tend to stay at rest.
However, evidently fluctuations at rest tend to fluctuate.
It was the children of The Focker Fluctuations that invented sex, soon after they invented machines.
You know, those “elements” composed of the same atomic structure, then later molecule upon molecule, until they became microbes.
They did all this as soon as they could so they could get the sex thingy going.
Fluctuations in the unknown parts of our cognition do a lot of the inventing now.
Fluctuations have done some serious evolution, there just ain’t no holding them at rest, or at nothingness.
“However, evidently fluctuations at rest tend to fluctuate. It was the children of The Focker Fluctuations that invented sex”
Dredd,
Has it occurred to you that you and I both have some weird theories about different things. I’d say we were crazy if we weren’t so smart and rational. 🙂
@Oro Lee: Then Lawrence is begging the question; because what people are interested in is how things got started. If he posits we were a quantum fluctuation in an existing environment (the hyper-inflating thingamajig) then where did THAT come from?
His speculation is the equivalent of Mike positing a Deity. Where did the Deity come from? if it always existed, how is that any better than just claiming that nothingness and the rules of quantum mechanics always existed? (In fact, because mine is simpler IT is the better presumption, by Occam’s Razor).
I should also point out that Lawrence is presuming the laws of quantum mechanics itself predate our universe, and so did the concept of time, at minimum the quantum concept that something can appear from nothing and something can “happen” before our universe existed. Which demotes our universe to a subset of all reality, and that is a cheap dodge to the question of “Where did reality come from?”, which I think is what people are really asking when they ask where did the universe come from.
Lawrence just uses the same cheap trick of word play that religionists use, redefine the “universe” as not being 100% of reality, posit some reality that is both eternal and existed both before and independently of the universe, and then claim the universe was created by that thing according to some rules, the derivation of which are also unexplained.
It might as well be a children’s fantasy, as far as I am concerned.
“Did the Big Bang Require a Divine Spark?” The answer, he insisted is no: “The Big Bang could’ve occurred as a result of just the laws of physics being there. With the laws of physics, you can get universes.”
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The big bang may not have required a divine spark….but creating ‘matter’ is not the same as creating a universe peopled by living breathing thinking beings that exist inside of matter….the ‘divine spark’ is not matter so why would you expect it to behave like matter?
Sai Baba was said to be able to produce ash in his hands….I say so what? The day he can independantly mold that ash into a living breathing being that can think and walk and feel…or a green growing plant that roots and spreads with purpose….then I will agree that matter is self perpetuating and independant of a ‘divine’ spark.
Yes, I am a deist.
Tony C wrote —
“If so, why the universe NOW instead of a trillion quadrillion years ago? If you believe in serial universes (one big bang after another, a trillion years apart) when did THAT start?”
In his book “A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing,” Lawrence Kraus posits that our universe could have begun as but one of a number of quantum fluctuations occurring over time in a hyper-inflating supraverse (my term) with each universe obeying its own laws because QM holds that if something is possible it therefore must exist somewhere. We happen to exist in this universe simply because the laws of this universe permit the possibility of life. At least that is my take away from the book.
BTW, the book is short, not hyper-technical, and a easy read.
I think the problems all started when a pair of nudists took nutritional advice from a serpent.
This is why I call myself a Deist. Neither I nor any other human has any answer as to how this Universe came to be and so having a creator would be a nice thing, but damned if I could understand why It would have any interest at all in my sex life.
“Under quantum mechanics, random fluctuations can produce matter and energy out of nothingness.”
So the “fluctuations” are not composed of “matter and energy”, but “can” use “nothingness” to produce matter and energy?
You would think that big mommy and daddy fluctuations would produce little baby fluctuations wouldn’t you?
But they put there nothingnesses together and produce little baby matter and energy instead.
That has got to be as bad as hyperlinking which produces ho hose.
I suspect many christian moralistic would as soon have you convicted of heresy…….
As an atheist scientist, I think you are on the right track with the question, “where did the LAWS come from?”
There is no answer to this dilemma, it is an infinite regression into the past. It is true that quantum fluctuations can generate matter and energy from nothing, but where did the nothingness that obeys rules originate? Was it always here? Were the rules governing the nothingness always the same? If not, why would they fluctuate? If so, why the universe NOW instead of a trillion quadrillion years ago? If you believe in serial universes (one big bang after another, a trillion years apart) when did THAT start?
Whenever it started, why were there rules governing the behavior of electrons, quarks, and the whole zoo of particles and fields and interactions before any of those actually existed in the nothingness?
Join the club —