Why is there anything at all? (Introduction)

by George Jelliss , Crewe, Tuesday, June 10, 2008, 22:28 (5798 days ago) @ David Turell

Some responses to david's last message: - David: "Logically we think of a space as something that has an inside and an outside." But the outside is not necessarily real. It is just a way we have of modelling things within our universe. - David: "If the universe is expanding like a loaf of raisin bread with all the raisins (Galaxies) spreading apart it is very difficult to imagine the universe does not have an edge." I think you have to distinguish the observable universe (out as far as our event horizon) from the actual whole universe. - David: "Is it a torus? We know that space is generally 'flat', and therefore most likely to expand forever. Imagining the relativity theory statement is like imagining quanta weirdness." I agree, it's difficult. I'm still trying to get my mind round it. - David: "I also can never buy the multiverse theory, which is unprovable and certainly un-Occam." There are in fact several different multiverse theories, the most objectionable to my mind is Deutsche's (or Everett's) that a whole new parallel universe branches off with every quantum action, to account for all possibilities. The type implied by Stenger requires only that universes can appear from nothing by chance, so presumably there can be any number like our own, but whether they can ever interact is not clear. I'm content to suppose that it happened just the once. - I've never been impressed by John Leslie's arguments. 
 
David: [We] "are left with a universe that appeared suddenly, and perhaps out of nothing, /// Now we consider that it is expanding into nothing. How do we know there was pre-existing space?" No it is not necessary to postulate anything pre-existing, except "nothing", which doesn't "exist" in the material sense. That's another paradox we find it difficult to get our minds round. - I shall have to put my ideas onto my website somewhere, to save making too many long posts here trying to explain what I mean!