Far out cosmology (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, February 06, 2014, 15:46 (3941 days ago) @ George Jelliss

George: Your (DT and dhw) mantras that "There must have always been something" and that "Nothing can come from nothing" are where we disagree. 
> 
> But we have discussed this before in the context of Victor Stenger's "Comprehensible Cosmos". -But Stenger does not start with nothing. He starts with a false vacuum. So he must assume it is and was eternal. And he denies fine tuning, which most every other scientist accepts.-A Stenger quote: 'Many simple systems of particles are unstable, that is, have limited lifetimes as they undergo spontaneous phase transitions to more complex structures of lower energy. Since 'nothing' is as simple as it gets, we cannot expect it to be very stable. It would likely undergo a spontaneous phase transition to something more complicated,like a universe containing matter.'- In my view this view, however, is clearly metaphysically absurd. True nothingness cannot have any properties whatsoever, including the property of instability.-> 
> George: The idea that there must have "always" been something betrays your inability to get the Newtonian idea of time out of your head. Time and space are measurable properties that only make sense within the universe. Once it contracts down to sub-Planck dimensions time and space have no meaning.- All you have stated is that Time began with the Big Bang. I agree. I have no problem with eternal timlessness until the Bang.