Why does the universe exist?

[rkman]

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

Aside from any unknown unknowns that there might be, and limiting the question to fundamental physics, approximately 96% are known unknowns (dark matter and dark energy http://www.space.com/11642-dark-matter-dark-energy-4-percent-universe-panek.html).

[lajoswinkler]

Until you have proof for your answer to the question "Why does the universe exist?", you should probably not criticize his answer for not giving any.

My original reply is, and I quote: "There is no answer to that question."

Therefore I have every right to criticize someone's ad hoc answer which is equivalent to saying that garden fairies did it.

Everyone's right to a belief has to be respected, but the belief itself not. Right to criticize a belief is incredibly important.

Do not argue with religious people! They believe because they WANT to. And if someone just want something to be truth so bad, he will not listen to anything that could prove him wrong.

Religion is their personal choice, and unles they are forcing it on others, theres no reason to even care.

It's not arguing. It's just a slap back into their faces. They slap us with definitive "answers" that lack falsiability and proof, we slap them back by exposing their lack of those things.

I have no interest in arguing because of the reasons you've mentioned.

Edited September 9, 2013 by lajoswinkler

[Echostatic]

My original reply is, and I quote: "There is no answer to that question."

Therefore I have every right to criticize someone's ad hoc answer which is equivalent to saying that garden fairies did it.

Everyone's right to a belief has to be respected, but the belief itself not. Right to criticize a belief is incredibly important.

I would agree with that, it just how you did so that doesn't seem right to me. Criticizing him for not providing proof seems kind of silly when every other answer here cannot be proven either.

[Monkeh]

I understand it's because a three dimensional 'brane had the idea to touch another three dimensional 'brane' 'floating' in four dimensional space. If that is the case then the big bang may not have happened at an infinitely small point and all the problems of physics breaking down there may not be actual, real problems.

The energy released by trans-dimensional membranes crashing into each other must be unimaginable. I love this theory for it's simpleness, I mean, everyone can understand two things whacking into one another and producing energy via heat or sound for example, no-one can wrap their heads around infinitely small, dense and energetic points, doesn't make sense, but if those 'branes collided over an area that would correspond to a galaxy or two then all the problematic physics simply melt away into the trans-dimensional sub space.

I love making psuedo-scince phrases up...hark at me with my trans-dimensional sub space.

Now what the three dimensional 'branes are doing 'floating' in a four dimensional space is another question altogether, but at least for our universe it's an explanation that doesn't break physics.

At least I know that I know nothing

[TheGatesofLogic]

Unable to read all of the remarks on this thread i have decided to simply work my way from the back and respond.

You ask, "why does EXISTENCE IN AND OF ITSELF exist", and as such we see that existence must by necessity be self sustaining. Now, if nothing were to exist what could we prove? The only thing that can both exist and be non existent that we really know about is zero. It can be taken from zero to mean nothing, and any statement through and by this premise must therefore be correct. But this defines everything as nothing (bar the contradiction there, as it's a concept not clearly defined in any language) and so nothing OF NOTHING must therefore be a valid statement drawn from the premise. But here it gets interesting, for nothing OF nothing implies the existence of SOMETHING. In other words: if nothing is possible, then nothing being possible is impossible and so something is possible. And as such we can derive that everything must be possible and from there we are given a representation of the multiverse!

[tetryds]

The universe exists because its stable.

[K^2]

And saying 'god did it' is just the same as saying 'it just exists, shut up'...

In fact, they are equivalent statements in this context. It doesn't really matter if you believe "In Principio Erat Verbum^*," or "In Principio Erat Fragor Maximus^**," or some combination. It's the "In Principio Erat" that is the question here.

Of course, from modern perspective, it's even easier. We don't need to understand why universe happened. There is no "happening" in the grand scheme of things. Universe just exists as a 4-dimensional object. And from our perspective of time it always existed and always will exist, because there is no time outside of the universe. Nor is there an outside. And some people ask what was before the Big Bang, and by all symmetries, I'd have to say, most likely, the other side of the Big Bang. (Picture our expanding universe as a bunch of shells, each shell corresponding to a moment of time, together making up the hyper-sphere of the universe. If you go back in time, towards the center, as you pass the center, you just end up going forward again on the other side. Now, topology doesn't have to be spherical, but the point remains. Not that this is anything but conjecture, but it'd be the most elegant explanation for matter-antimatter imbalance.)

But why it exists is still a question, which just happens to be completely beyond science in this form. Even if there is some external cause, we'll just want to know the cause of that.

P.S. For these who don't read Latin.

^* "In the beginning was the Word" - Biblia Vulgata, John 1:1. (I give King James translation here.)

^** "Big Bang"

[Eldar158]

Nothing is impossible as well all is possible, its needs 0 proofs.

The only thing that i think is impotent is life, a self awaring, because it is the only thing that we can know really. Anything you can imagine or not to is true somewhere, maybe even a situation where this theory is false.

Why it exist ? Why not.

Thats quite explain it all.

Eldar158

[TheGatesofLogic]

But you see your argument is not valid in that case, eldar. Without a premise to argue upon and a source of evidence your theory must be considered improbable by comparative standards. I'm not saying that WHAT you argue is wrong, but HOW and WHY you are arguing it is.

Like i said before nothing OF nothing must necessarily imply SOMETHING and we can deduce that this also implies EVERYTHING and give us the multiverse predicted by quantum wavefubction collapse

[vetrox]

The Kraken needs something to watch to entertain itself for eternity.

[TheGatesofLogic]

It is also important to recognize our understanding of cognizance. Descartes proved that NOTHING can be proven EXCEPT that which pertains to universal concepts such as math, bon-existence, and surprisingly existence, which was his key discovery with the phrase "i think, therefore i am" so you cannot argue that life is important because it may be an illusion. Even awareness can not be proven to not be an illusion.

[LLlAMnYP]

To quote Jostein Gaarder, "Life is like a lottery in which only the winning numbers are shown".

[NASAFanboy]

Why?

I don't know, and we will never know.

Why not?

The universe is just there. That's all. It may be a illusion, it may be virtual reality, it might just be one heck of a long dream, but I don't know.. The only thing that can be proved is that we exist as sentient...souls?? I don't know.

[Dominatus]

This... This is an incredibly open topic. Very philosophical, and as such an unlimited possibility exists for variation on answers. The universe exists- at least this is what I feel- for one of a couple of reasons.

The first is simply because it is. The universe exists because it always had. With the Big Bang, galaxies were created. Relationships between dark matter, gravity, dark energy, and other things cause collections of dust and gas to coalesce, form nebulas, stars, individual galaxie. And these are constantly moving out, spreading across the universe due to those forces. Until one day, they are spread to far. Either galaxies no longer hold together, or the hypothesized collapse of the universe occurs, and everything begins to "fall back" into the singularity it was before. And then, once more, expansion. The Big Bang, not for the second time, but for the hundredth, thousandth time. The repetition of an event which knows no end. Because it is all eternal, the same and different each time. The reason for its existence is one science can never accept: it exists because it is, or it exists to allow humanity to learn. Because that's our purpose, isn't it? To learn and gain knowledge, so we may pass it on to future generations to build and expand upon? And what better way to learn than to have an entire universe full of mysteries?

I have others as well, and enjoy philosophical discussions such as this immensely. I think I've written enough for now though.

[rkman]

A 'Godlike' being's personal plaything?

A science experiment gone out of control?

Was it created specially for sentience to exist?

Those would not explain it because it would require explanation as to why any of those hypothetical creators exist. In case their existence does not require explanation, then why would the existence of the universe require explanation?

Ultimately it boils down to "why does something exist rather than nothing", which i think is unanswerable.

Although that does not stop cosmologists from trying.

(TL;DR - "nothing" is unstable) (bonus points for tetryds)

A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing

By Lawrence Krauss

http://www.amazon.com/Universe-Nothing-There-Something-Rather/dp/1451624468

http://youtu.be/R5A2OVYJkFk (4 min)

http://youtu.be/bbD6qt2pTZ4 (41 min)

Edited December 13, 2013 by rkman

[TheGatesofLogic]

Those would not explain it because it would require explanation as to why any of those hypothetical creators exist. In case their existence does not require explanation, then why would the existence of the universe require explanation?

Ultimately it boils down to "why does something exist rather than nothing", which i think is unanswerable.

Although that does not stop cosmologists from trying.

(TL;DR - "nothing" is unstable) (bonus points for tetryds)

A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing

By Lawrence Krauss

http://www.amazon.com/Universe-Nothing-There-Something-Rather/dp/1451624468

http://youtu.be/R5A2OVYJkFk (4 min)

http://youtu.be/bbD6qt2pTZ4 (41 min)

That is the question i answered in my post, it's the last post two pages back from here (page 8), and it states that "nothing" is a comprehensible subject and thus it is defined, and since "everything" is defined as "ALL defined things" and "nothing" is defined and that "nothing" is defined as "the absence of everything" then "the absence of nothing" (or alternatively "the absence of the absence of everything) MUST therefore imply EVERYTHING! what this means is that EVERYTHING must then exist and the reason the universe is so perfectly shaped is because we live in one universe out of an infinite number where the possibilities are defined such that we can live and thus observe them.

Edited December 13, 2013 by TheGatesofLogic

[Nuke]

it was created because one of jebs descendants accidentally sat on the create universe button.

[Skyler4856]

And this is why I hate philosophy...This question is POINTLESS!

The why of gravity is important, the why of the universe on the other hand...

[Halsfury]

Here's my math

Given infinite space + infinite time = an infinite number of totally messed up and unexpected things will happen

Also Given that God = true, Therefore God will find the results of the above equation [EDIT: infinitely] hilarious

Edited December 14, 2013 by Halsfury

[tetryds]

the laws of physics are part of the universe

the universe runs by the laws of physics

no universe = no laws

no laws = boom

boom = universe

tadaa!

[Halsfury]

the laws of physics are part of the universe

the universe runs by the laws of physics

no universe = no laws

no laws = boom

boom = universe

tadaa!

I liked mine better, cause it makes it seem more like the way universes are born is just God's personal youtube stream of funny ****

[Jug head]

So that jeb has a place to explode stuff. Just joking for reasons

[jwenting]

In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.

Terry Pratchett

[rkman]

That is the question i answered in my post

I assume you mean the question "Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing?"

"nothing" is defined as "the absence of everything"

"the absence of nothing" MUST therefore imply EVERYTHING!

Yes, but i don't see how that explains why/how there is something rather than nothing, nor how something could arise from nothing.

[rkman]

And this is why I hate philosophy

As it is a question about the physical universe, it is not philosophical question, it is a physics question.

But philosophy is useful because it helps formulate questions and helps in understanding what exactly we mean by the questions.

The why of gravity is important, the why of the universe on the other hand

In science "why" questions are problematic because it is not clear whether it asks about intent (which implies an agent/entity, e.g. God), or whether it is actually a "how" question. Strictly speaking science only does how questions, not why questions.