Why does the universe exist?

[Interplanetary Engineer]

I like this mix of science and philosophy. Here are my thoughts:

On ‎18‎.‎09‎.‎2015‎ ‎05‎:‎52‎:‎35, baggers said:

Who came first: the rules, or the somethingless?

The rules. Because only rules can make a nothing to a somethingless.

Put another way, it feels much more logical to me for rules to have existed forever than a physical thing (even a somethinglessness)

On ‎17‎.‎09‎.‎2015‎ ‎18‎:‎35‎:‎36, parameciumkid said:

Perhaps the universe evolved. Eons ago, there may have been simpler ancestral universes with perhaps only a few laws of physics and no complex matter. If by some means they could produce more universes, and those universes could inherit their properties imperfectly, over time they might evolve to have sophisticated features like our own.

Interesting idea. So kinda like a grand scale evolution?

[very hypothetical] Or maybe one of the original "rules" lets the nothinglessness produce universes over and over... [/very hypothetical]

In any case of a multiverse, our universe would exist for us because we happen to exist in it ... or not? That would still leave the question of the meaning of any universe existing...

Anyways, we can see again that we have to get a better question if we don't want the

42.

[cubinator]

Nothing is impossible.

That statement can be interpreted two different ways.

The first interpretation is that it means that anything is possible, nothing is quite out of reach.

The second is that it is impossible to achieve "nothing." No matter how hard you, or even the universe tries, something will exist.

I think that the second interpretation is most correct, even though it is the less obvious one. We can observe things, and we are conscious, therefore we know that something exists. It doesn't matter if the universe is a simulation or a giant power generator or just a random blob of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff, we know that something exists. Therefore, nothing doesn't exist. So nothing is impossible. If nothing is impossible now, then nothing has always been impossible because nothing stretches out across everything. So if there was something a trillion years ago but there is nothing now, then there is still something that has existed. With that philosophy, there has always been something in the multiverse, but there has never been nothing, nor will there ever be.

Therefore, the universe had to come into existence because otherwise there would be nothing. That's a little paradoxical and redundant but that's just the way it seems to be when we come to these kinds of questions. At the beginning of time there was a singularity, that's a zero-dimensional point with all the energy of the universe contained in it. Therefore, the concentration of energy was {total energy of the universe}/0. We all know that there are no rules when we divide by zero. So maybe that's how anything can happen, because there are infinite possibilities when we divide by zero, and when the singularity picks one, like the roll of an infinity-sided die, a new universe is born.

All that thought is making my head spin, I think I'll go do something else now. 

[PB666]

6 hours ago, Interplanetary Engineer said:

I like this mix of science and philosophy. Here are my thoughts:

The rules. Because only rules can make a nothing to a somethingless.

Put another way, it feels much more logical to me for rules to have existed forever than a physical thing (even a somethinglessness)

Interesting idea. So kinda like a grand scale evolution?

[very hypothetical] Or maybe one of the original "rules" lets the nothinglessness produce universes over and over... [/very hypothetical]

In any case of a multiverse, our universe would exist for us because we happen to exist in it ... or not? That would still leave the question of the meaning of any universe existing...

Anyways, we can see again that we have to get a better question if we don't want the

42.

42 was the answer to the question  meaning of life, you know, everything, something about Author dents brain, not sure why trisha mcmillians brain would not do.

The answer to the question why the universe was created is ............generally agreed to have been a mistake and a bad idea. 

[Bill Phil]

To answer the question: because you observe it to be so.

[GeneralVeers]

On 8/29/2013, 7:32:09, Monkeh said:

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

It's this one.

In the strictly-technical sense, if it was the Laws of Physics that caused the Universe to be, then it's not random. Not the result of intelligent design, to be sure, but not random either.

How do I know? Well, if it was any of the others (i.e. the Universe was created with a purpose, whatever that purpose may be) we would have known about it because at some point or other, the entity that created this Universe would have dropped by and said hello to some--

--pardon me, someone's at the door. Back later.

 

 

[Bill Phil]

16 minutes ago, WedgeAntilles said:

It's this one.

In the strictly-technical sense, if it was the Laws of Physics that caused the Universe to be, then it's not random. Not the result of intelligent design, to be sure, but not random either.

How do I know? Well, if it was any of the others (i.e. the Universe was created with a purpose, whatever that purpose may be) we would have known about it because at some point or other, the entity that created this Universe would have dropped by and said hello to some--

--pardon me, someone's at the door. Back later.

 

 

Except:

Why are the laws the way they are?

[PB666]

1 hour ago, WedgeAntilles said:

It's this one.

In the strictly-technical sense, if it was the Laws of Physics that caused the Universe to be, then it's not random. Not the result of intelligent design, to be sure, but not random either.

How do I know? Well, if it was any of the others (i.e. the Universe was created with a purpose, whatever that purpose may be) we would have known about it because at some point or other, the entity that created this Universe would have dropped by and said hello to some--

--pardon me, someone's at the door. Back later.

 

 

The laws of physics need not exist before the universe. The only law that appears to have existed at the beginning is quantum gravity, which, problematically we have not show to exist.

As one physicist pointed out as energy density goes toward infinity, which theoreticcaly happens when you have a non-massive singularity, there are no known measures to measures that density, temperature, the means of last resort has no meaning, hv as in black body radiation, does not exist. The field propogate rate does not exist distance and anything that is a measure of change of distance per time, because within the sigularity both distance and time are irrelevant. Even Einstiens spacetime is irrelevant. 

This mess begins to inflate and with the smallest concievable timeframe has extremitities moving faster than the speed of light relative to each other, these spaces can no longer interact except through quantum anomlies. Quantun mechanics allows for these things, but in order for inflation to occur the foundational constant of the universe, planck constant,  may not have been then as it is today. Another thing is that given mass energy equivilance energy should not be added to the universe after the singularity resolves, but it appears that energy was created, and with d ark energy this appears to be an ongoing process, its hard to explain unless the laws of physics are not static everywhere at everytime (but as we recall where and when don't matter in singularities)

Creation is enigmatic. Its important to point out that CMBR is our earliest known good point. Deionization created our visible universe, something caused deionization and there is lots of speculation about what that was. 

[MircoMars]

wow, many interesting ideas, but tl;dry. will try to catch up on that.

On 12.12.2015, 03:06:53, PB666 said:

not sure why trisha mcmillians brain would not do.

Arthur was the last human to leave earth, so the "biological program" inside his head (why not in the rest?) was far closer to completion than in Trillian, who left Earth earlier with Zaphod...

OT later, have to make cookie dough

[Dispatcher]

On August 29, 2013 at 6:32:09 AM, Monkeh said:

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?

Well, some of what you are mentioning IS directly invoking possible religious discussion and you know this.  But whatever.  Your assumption that possibility of a 'Godlike' being making the universe as a personal plaything is already a skewed bias.  For such a being, any number of other, and more useful, purposes would be possible and at least as likely as a plaything, if not more so.  This leads to your next statement about sentience.  This is an alternative reason for such a being to form the universe(s).

Since any sufficiently advanced civilization's power would be indistinguishable from magic, it follows that another purpose for such universe(s) is the generations of not only energy for general use, but specifically for computational power.  I'm sure forum-goers here have read about the incredible computing potential of supermassive black holes.

I doubt that there is any direct way to cross over or travel from one universe to another, as theoretically they would seem to be closed.  However, perhaps there is some kind of quantum entanglement relationship between universes which could be exploited.

My own view is that the creation of multiverses and black holes is an ongoing occurrence, ad infinitum.

Cheers!

[WinkAllKerb'']

§ so we can ask question ! without never finding the answer ?

[peadar1987]

There's an interesting hypothesis that basically says that universes are created by the formation of black holes. The idea being that universes that are more likely to produce black holes "reproduce" more often, creating further universes with similar physical properties. Such universes would also be more conducive to the formation of stars, planets, and ultimately life, so this hypothesis is put forward as an explanation of the anthropic principle.

As far as I know, it's just an interesting though experiment, and is not yet backed up by any mathematical analysis, but it's still intriguing to think about.

[Dispatcher]

49 minutes ago, peadar1987 said:

There's an interesting hypothesis that basically says that universes are created by the formation of black holes. The idea being that universes that are more likely to produce black holes "reproduce" more often, creating further universes with similar physical properties. Such universes would also be more conducive to the formation of stars, planets, and ultimately life, so this hypothesis is put forward as an explanation of the anthropic principle.

As far as I know, it's just an interesting though experiment, and is not yet backed up by any mathematical analysis, but it's still intriguing to think about.

Yes, this is in part what I was referring to.  Westmoreland and Crane summarized this thinking.

[GeneralVeers]

20 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

Except:

Why are the laws the way they are?

Most likely because all other combinations are impossible.

Your phrasing--"why are THE LAWS the way they are"--hides a bit of a causality problem within it, because almost all of the things in the Universe we call "laws" actually come from other laws. Life on Earth comes from the Sun, Earth's ideal orbit around the Sun comes from gravity, gravity comes from the curvature of space, the curvature of space comes from mass.

A common argument of creationists is that the properties of the Universe, such as the strength of gravity, are exactly right for life to exist--if gravity had been any stronger or weaker, for example, stars would (theoretically) never have been able to form. So, why isn't gravity any stronger or weaker than it is? Maybe it's simply impossible for the gravitational constant to have any other value. Maybe it's a basic fact of existence that a given amount of mass, at a given density, in a given location, ALWAYS curves space exactly the same amount at that location. In the same way that F always equals MA and can never equal 2MA, maybe gravity is what it is because other laws of physics say so.

So what we need to do, to figure out the chain of cause and effect (i.e. to find out what "caused" the Universe), is we need to get to the start of the chain and figure out which Laws caused all the others. Or, more likely, which LAW (singular) caused all the others. If I've got my theoretical physics right, that's what Grand Unification Theory is all about: finding that first chicken that laid all the cosmic eggs.

 

I leave you with this thought: two paragraphs ago I mentioned the common argument that conditions in the Universe are exactly right for life to exist. I'm certain you've heard that one many times. Now, do this--go pour yourself a glass of water. Seriously. Got the glass? Good. Now contemplate the water in the glass (and chant a hypnotic mantra or something).

Do you not find it amazing that the glass turned out to be exactly the right shape for the water.......?

Of course not. See, everybody who says that "common argument" has it backwards. The Universe did not turn out to be exactly right for life to exist; the Universe is what it is. Life evolved and adapted according to the Universe's rules. The Universe did not shape itself to suit us. We shaped ourselves to suit the Universe.

Don't drink that glass of water, by the way--there could be an evolving civilization in there!

[Bill Phil]

47 minutes ago, WedgeAntilles said:

Most likely because all other combinations are impossible.

Your phrasing--"why are THE LAWS the way they are"--hides a bit of a causality problem within it, because almost all of the things in the Universe we call "laws" actually come from other laws. Life on Earth comes from the Sun, Earth's ideal orbit around the Sun comes from gravity, gravity comes from the curvature of space, the curvature of space comes from mass.

A common argument of creationists is that the properties of the Universe, such as the strength of gravity, are exactly right for life to exist--if gravity had been any stronger or weaker, for example, stars would (theoretically) never have been able to form. So, why isn't gravity any stronger or weaker than it is? Maybe it's simply impossible for the gravitational constant to have any other value. Maybe it's a basic fact of existence that a given amount of mass, at a given density, in a given location, ALWAYS curves space exactly the same amount at that location. In the same way that F always equals MA and can never equal 2MA, maybe gravity is what it is because other laws of physics say so.

So what we need to do, to figure out the chain of cause and effect (i.e. to find out what "caused" the Universe), is we need to get to the start of the chain and figure out which Laws caused all the others. Or, more likely, which LAW (singular) caused all the others. If I've got my theoretical physics right, that's what Grand Unification Theory is all about: finding that first chicken that laid all the cosmic eggs.

 

I leave you with this thought: two paragraphs ago I mentioned the common argument that conditions in the Universe are exactly right for life to exist. I'm certain you've heard that one many times. Now, do this--go pour yourself a glass of water. Seriously. Got the glass? Good. Now contemplate the water in the glass (and chant a hypnotic mantra or something).

Do you not find it amazing that the glass turned out to be exactly the right shape for the water.......?

Of course not. See, everybody who says that "common argument" has it backwards. The Universe did not turn out to be exactly right for life to exist; the Universe is what it is. Life evolved and adapted according to the Universe's rules. The Universe did not shape itself to suit us. We shaped ourselves to suit the Universe.

Don't drink that glass of water, by the way--there could be an evolving civilization in there!

Except that still doesn't explain why the gravitational constant is the value it is. It just is, that's all that we know. Why does space time curve when there's mass? Science is less of a why than it is a how. Theories try to explain why, but they're not perfect. 

That's not a good analogy. Fluids take the shape of whichever container they're in. But life changes the universe. And the argument is more along the lines of : If Gravity is too strong, the universe would've collapsed, and if it was too weak, the universe would've expanded too fast and be much colder.

[WinkAllKerb'']

Life is a "movement" your perceiving around you until you can't perceive it anymore , either because you miss time, either because what you're watching at is too small or too big for your own scale and life span. 

EDIT:
That precisely why i see photon as a living small being, But as it's proven this being live longer than me before fading lightyears away if i can say from how far it may come i can't say for how long it may take for it to fade away.

Is universe unique or not ? like many cells in the primordial soup, separated by distance superior to a photon lifespan none can tell.
(kinda like many universe next to each other moving real slow motion in comparaison to human peception standard motion and our current 50 years old measurement abilities)

i can't dis/prove it due to the fact were studying this accuratly since less less less time than the current distance and time we know a photon can travel.

Edited December 14, 2015 by WinkAllKerb''

[Just Jim]

I think the more interesting question would be: Does the Universe know it exists???

[WinkAllKerb'']

kinda yup, it's like asking if the things in our body: virus, bacteria,etc. whatever, consider our body as there universe when they can't see the next universe next. 

They can communicate in this body universe, they can reproduce, and sometime they can migrate. Some of our smallest entities have some short lifespan and probably no counsciouness of a human as a whole (never seen a virus or bacteria with a telescope yet myself ; ) , but they do there job for us while we can't really communicate with them. And we're aslo doing our job for them allowing hybridation.

Edited December 14, 2015 by WinkAllKerb''

[Concodroid]

(snip), but something something I'm a christian

Edited November 7, 2021 by Concodroid

[problemecium]

4 hours ago, WedgeAntilles said:

SNIP SNIP SNIP

A similar train of thought is what led me to the evolution hypothesis I brought up earlier. The law of natural selection, in its most basic form, is something like this:

In any space in which discrete entities can exist and have differing properties and some means exists by which new entities can be created, if an entity possesses a property that directly or indirectly results in an increased rate at which new entities with similar properties to it are created, relative to the rate at which those with properties similar to some other entity, then it is inevitable that over time entities with properties similar to that entity will comprise a larger fraction of the total population.

It sounds a little bit like legalese, for which I apologize, but the important thing is that when formulated this way it applies to quite a wide variety of things in addition to living organisms. The "entities" don't have to be creatures or even objects - they could be computer programs. Say we have an internet with a bunch of computer viruses in it (which, incidentally, we do): the internet is the "space" and the viruses are "entities". They can have properties such as what they do, where they save themselves inside computers, how fast they replicate, etc. If a virus hides itself well and replicates quickly, then it will directly create lots of new copies of itself, and after some time anyone who goes around counting viruses can see that a higher percentage of viruses descend from it compared to slow and weak viruses. This even applies to things that don't replicate themselves: Imagine we have a cell phone store in which we sell cases in red and green. The "space" is the store, and the "entities" are the cases. We notice that people buy more green cases. In the interest of profits, it's only wise for us to make lots of green cases and fill the shelves with them. So a few weeks later, someone walking into the store is quite likely to find it filled with lots of green cases and not as many red ones.

The other important thing about this is that it hardly relies on any physical laws at all - just very simple concepts like "things," "time," and "a space of some kind in which things can exist." As such, perhaps this is one of the "original" fundamental laws that gave rise to all the others, if not the original law or proverbial chicken itself. 'Course I am tooting my own horn here xP

[GeneralVeers]

4 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

Except that still doesn't explain why the gravitational constant is the value it is.

I know. Which doesn't change the fact that all other values of G might be impossible. There's definitely a reason why, but that particular reason why doesn't care if anybody knows about it. Gravity, after all, existed before life did, and the fact that we early humans hadn't explained gravity didn't cause gravity to suddenly go "oops, I don't belong here" and wink out of existence.....

There's a reason--we simply haven't found it yet.

 

4 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

That's not a good analogy. Fluids take the shape of whichever container they're in. But life changes the universe.

Disagree. Life can't change the laws of physics. Life can't change the gravitational constant; life can't turn "F=MA" into "F=2MA"; life can't nullify the Law of Thermodynamics that says you can't get free energy; life can't change Planck's constant. Etcetera.

The water can't change the shape of the glass. Though, if you leave that glass of water alone like I told you to, intelligent life could evolve in it and build tiny skyscrapers on the rim......

[Bill Phil]

19 minutes ago, WedgeAntilles said:

I know. Which doesn't change the fact that all other values of G might be impossible. There's definitely a reason why, but that particular reason why doesn't care if anybody knows about it. Gravity, after all, existed before life did, and the fact that we early humans hadn't explained gravity didn't cause gravity to suddenly go "oops, I don't belong here" and wink out of existence.....

There's a reason--we simply haven't found it yet.

 

Disagree. Life can't change the laws of physics. Life can't change the gravitational constant; life can't turn "F=MA" into "F=2MA"; life can't nullify the Law of Thermodynamics that says you can't get free energy; life can't change Planck's constant. Etcetera.

The water can't change the shape of the glass. Though, if you leave that glass of water alone like I told you to, intelligent life could evolve in it and build tiny skyscrapers on the rim......

Might be =/= truth.

We change the universe. We change the configuration, both physically and the energy. Life does that naturally. Not changing the laws, but changing the water and the glass. But the forces are something that is caused by something external to it. Which could be the case. 

[Findthepin1]

IMO the universe exists because the laws of physics say it has to. I think the laws of physics were there first.