Why does the universe exist?

[Monkeh]

So we've all heard of the big bang and the origin of where all this stuff came from. I've read about 3 dimensional 'branes colliding in 4 dimensional space to create big bangs and I've heard of 'the heat death' and 'big crunch' but I ask you a question, Why does the universe exist?

Is it a random happening? A coming together of physics and probability?

Has the universe been created as some sort of energy producing device?

A 'Godlike' being's personal plaything?

A science experiment gone out of control?

Was it created specially for sentience to exist?

I'm interested in people's beliefs but would really like this to not become a religious discussion, those always end badly.

My personal belief is the universe was created to produce black holes, as that is where everything seems to be heading, for some kind of power production. Gas makes stars, stars make black holes, black holes become bigger black holes by devouring stuff, bigger black holes must eventually attract each other and the whole universe has just one super, super, super, super, super, super massive black hole and nothing else and some being somewhere lives of it's energy.

Yes, I'm not the most well read person or the most intelligent, but black holes seem to be the very heart beat of our universe, providing a core for galaxies to form around and being so otherwordly we can't even begin to understand them.

I can imagine somewhere, something, lapping up the delicious food or energy produced by these things as they rip holes in our spacetime through to theirs.

Wow, writing this down makes it sound so stupid, ah well, still gonna click submit...

So yeah, what do YOU think?

[Brapness]

Why, you ask...

why not?

[WestAir]

Why does life even have a "will to live?" - Why would something that is destined to survive a split second, compared to the cosmic timescale, fight so viciously hard to survive the entire second when at the end of the day its life doesn't even matter? Because it wants to. Somehow, things just want to live - despite the entire irrelevancy of the life cycle to begin with. Similarly, the Universe likely just "wants" to exist in the same sense that an atom wants to vibrate or a photon "wants" to propagate at C. It just does.

Sometimes things really are at face value. While it's true the Universe could exist because it's a giant simulation for super-powerful aliens, or that it was created to make us, or a billion of other reasons, but me? I personally like to take some things at the most basic face value. The universe exists because it can. The laws of physics exist because it "just feels right", and we organisms exist and have a desperate will to live because, well, "why not?"

[Monkeh]

Why not? Because it's incredibly unlikely that a universe with the exact measured values for the fundamental forces that just happen to allow atoms and orbits would exist at all. Any tiny variations in gravity or the strong nuclear force and none of these planets and stars would exist. With most values we wouldn't even get atoms, so it interests me greatly.

Other peoples ideas and opinions interest me greatly as well.

Life has a will to live thanks to the Selfish Gene. Richard Dawkins is your man there.

[Canopus]

Its random.

[Pyre]

Why does there have to be a reason? We have a whole universe filled with questions that we can answer, why do we need to ask ones that have no answer?

[Monkeh]

I don't believe it doesn't have an answer. The universe was created. By natural or random forces or through will in some way or another. Why wouldn't you ask the question?

[Canopus]

Well yes you couldn't answer it anyway. Just appreciate the fact that it exists.

[WestAir]

Monkeh,

"Because it's incredibly unlikely that a universe with the exact measured values for the fundamental forces that just happen to allow atoms and orbits would exist at all. Any tiny variations in gravity or the strong nuclear force and none of these planets and stars would exist."

True. However, imagine for one moment that the Universe was created with a much weaker force of gravity, and that resulted in life never being created. How would we know that the physics needed for us to exist were "just barely" off, resulting in our inability to exist? Now imagine there are hundreds - maybe even an infinite number of Universes out there where the physics "are just barely off" and no life exists, and imagine this one got it right - so here we are to critique it. If there are trillions other failed universes out there, and this one got it right but just barely, would that make it a lot less amazing that we exist? In such a scenario one of those infinite number of Universes would have to get it right, right? Then does it become any less amazing - like winning the lottery and telling yourself "Statistically someone was going to win - the odds were just against me."?

Edited August 29, 2013 by WestAir

[Monkeh]

Well yes you couldn't answer it anyway. Just appreciate the fact that it exists.

Oh I do. I often, on my drive home from work, look up at a sunset behind clouds and feel very lucky to be able to witness such a thing, the beauty and majesty of this planet really astounds me at times. Doesn't stop my mind wandering though...

Edited August 29, 2013 by Monkeh

[Monkeh]

Monkeh,

True. However, imagine for one moment that the Universe was created with a much weaker force of gravity, and that resulted in life never being created. How would we know that the physics needed for us to exist were "just barely" off, resulting in our inability to exist? Now imagine there are hundreds - maybe even an infinite number of Universes out there where the physics "are just barely off" and no life exists, and imagine this one got it right - so here we are to critique it. If there are trillions other failed universes out there, and this one got it right but just barely, would that make it a lot less amazing that we exist?

Also true. So why or how did this multiverse come into being? Does it have a purpose? Was it created for a reason? Same questions still apply.

[Pyre]

I don't believe it doesn't have an answer. The universe was created. By natural or random forces or through will in some way or another. Why wouldn't you ask the question?

The word "why" implies intent. Intent implies a creating entity. Any being or beings capable of creating a universe would so utterly alien that trying to understand their motivations would be impossible. I would rather ask questions that can be answered, such as how the universe works.

Sorry of this seems a bit ranty.

[Themohawkninja]

I like the idea of it being a computer simulation by beings that wanted to perfectly simulate their universe using the knowledge that they have accrued over the centuries. It gives theoretical potential for infinite recursion.

[Monkeh]

There is a Greg Egan book where a science experiment in deep space goes wrong and they create a new universe by accident. It's edge expands at 'c' and whole space faring cultures are wiped out.

That kind of thing is a good thought experiment.

"Whoops, sorry guys, just became God by accident! Good news though, we got loads of free energy to use."

It wasn't ranty Pyre but I still believe their is no such thing as an unanswerable question. Just because we cant answer it now doesn't mean we never will be able to.

Computer simulation was discussed at length in another thread on here somewhere and it's a good one as well, but the question of who or what created the people who originally created the simulation needs to be answered too. So it doesn't answer this question either.

[lajoswinkler]

There is no answer to that question. Science can give explanation to the question "how?", but question of ultimate purpose are things that it doesn't even try to tackle.

The only thing that tackles it is philosophy. (Religion doesn't question anything, it provides a fixed, instant answer that most people are happy with because they don't feel the need to ask more. And that's fine, it's their level of freedom.)

So philosophy tackes it, but it does not give any answers. Is the answer really neccessary? My opinion is that the act of wondering and questioning is what's worth. You make your own purpose. Whether there is something above it, we don't know and quite frankly we can't know because it's beyond our capabilities just like an ant can't tell if he's eating food to help him build something, or he's in a laboratory, eating predefined food and observed through glass. Ask yourself - would it change anything for the ant if he knew?

[WestAir]

Interesting point.

Philosophically speaking, how much of the unknown is left for us to know?

[Diche Bach]

I applaud you for asking this question Monkeh. Your idea of why sounds as viable as anything I've ever heard.

I tend to think we cannot ever know the answer to such things, simply because they are beyond our perceptual boundaries. What I mean by that is best explained from a personal experience and how I have reflected back on it over the years.

In college I had a biology class that included a lab. I was lucky in this lab to have been one of the few students to have spotted an amoeba in the microscope. Pretty much the entire class took turns making observations of it, while the Teaching Assistant stepped in periodically to keep the scope focused with the amoeba in the center. If memory serves, we stimulated it with light, we even put a tiny needle point or something like that in there. What really amazed me about this thing was that, it was able to respond to our 'signals' (the light).

This made me realize that, while an amoeba can perceive my indirect actions and respond to those actions (as can many organisms with less extensive sensory, perceptual and 'cognitive' apparatus than ourselves) this simple fact of being able to perceive manifestations of humanity obviously does not mean that the amoeba can 'understand' a human. An amoeba is nothing but a little bag of chemical factories running on genetically determined fixed action patterns, cruising through its liquid environment in response to signals of where to find food and avoid predators. It has nothing like a "nervous system" much les a complex central nervous system. Nonetheless, I had seen it for myself, an amoeba had a very limited capacity to respond to my actions, despite its scale of existence being thousands of times smaller than my own.

I suspect the same scaling issues must apply to we humans and the Universe itself. The 16 billion light year bubble that we can see with our 'sophisticated' telescopes seems enormously vast to us (as I'm sure the amoeba's petry dish must seem to 'her'). But what lies beyond that bubble? What lies within/beyond those black holes?

Your explanation seems as viable as any; but the main point I'm making is, it may be that we are simply physically incapable of perceiving or understanding what is beyond these boundaries of our perception and thinking. If the 'entity' or process that is beyond those boundaries of our current abilities to perceive is so massive and complex that our universe appears to be little more than a petry dish to it, then short of us evolving into a different animal with new means of perception (cyborg anyone?) we may never really be able to comprehend it.

Edited August 29, 2013 by Diche Bach

[Seret]

The search for meaning is understandable, it's your brain trying to make sense of the world around you. That's a useful survival trait, so it's not surprising that we do it. But the universe could (and in my opinion does) exist without any definable goal or purpose.

[SargeRho]

Because nothing can only exist in one way, while something can exist in an infinite number of ways. Quantum mechanics thus demands for the universe to come into existence at some point.

[Fleb]

Something my mind has been pondering for a long time, in human years anyway . I have come to the conclusion that there is no answer, it exists because it does. If it was anything other than what it is now, we wouldn't be around to ask or wonder at such questions. The universe just is, it needs no reasons.

[czokletmuss]

This is philosophical (ontological, to be precise) question for which science probably will never give an answer. Same goes for us on this forum - we're just humans, we don't know. I think nobody knows or will know ever.

[Brapness]

I don't believe there is a reason for existence beyond what we make for ourselves, and that is a personal decision for everyone to make for themselves. I agree that you should ask deep questions and contemplate their answers, I do it all the time. The way I see it, the question of why the universe exists is meaningless, because it assumes that there is an answer. But I don't think reality works that way, it's not like there's some law or constant deep within physics that says 'this' is why we are here, we just are. So we have to determine our reason ourselves, and no answer is right or wrong.

tl:dr version

[Monkeh]

So let's theorize some silliness. A probe encased in a null field is dropped through the event horizon of a black hole and drops into...onto...through (?) the singularity.. It has worm hole transmission technology and can beam images and sound back from 'the other side'.

No.1) We find nothing.

No.2) We find a 'power station' slurping up exotic matter.

No.3) We find an interuniversal stoner who greets our probe and offers a cup of tea.

No.4) We find actual God in some form or another.

No.5) We find a ream of universes like pages in a book.

No.6) We find a group of scientists studying their creation.

Which would you be most happy with? Feel free to add your own 8 or 9.

[Canopus]

No.7: we find as expected nothing we can perceive

(though i like your number 3)

Edited August 29, 2013 by Canopus

[Monkeh]

...or even a 7...

Doh...I can count me.