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I have a burning need to know stuff and I love asking awkward questions.

Thursday, December 21, 2017


Just Finished Reading: A Universe from Nothing – Why is there Something rather than Nothing by Lawrence M Krauss (FP: 2012)

I have always believed that the Universe is a natural phenomenon which came into existence, through completely natural processes, some 13.7 billion years ago. Over the years I have, occasionally, dabbled in the science of such things to flesh out my belief with some facts. This book was another part of the effort to get my head around the whole thing. Whilst not completely effective – much more my fault than the authors – I am now a little closer to my goal of appreciating the science behind the existence of the Universe if not exactly fully understanding it. I am the first to admit that I am not a scientist. My formal education over the years has, by and large, been in the Humanities and that’s where I feel most at home. However I have developed, mostly through reading and some excellent TV documentaries a deepening interest in biological Evolution, Cosmology and Quantum Mechanics. This book brought together two of those subjects – Cosmology & QM.

Most of us have by now heard of Dark Matter. It is an idea conceived to explain why the Universe is behaving in the way it does. Essentially, according to present theories, there isn’t enough visible matter in the Universe to explain why it’s continuing to expand after the Big Bang and looks like it’ll expand forever so not Big Crunch when it all comes back. But weirdly (and to be honest most of the ideas discussed in this book can easily be labelled ‘weird’) not only is the Universe continuing to expand but the expansion is actually accelerating. Yes, that’s right. Accelerating. Pretty soon – in cosmic terms – we’ll no longer to be able to see the furthest galaxies and stars because they’ll be accelerating away from our area of space faster than the speed of light. Told you it was weird… The cause, the driving force of this expansion? More weirdness – Dark Energy. All space – even the empty space between stars and between galaxies is literally frothing with energy at a quantum level. Not only that, at intervals too small to measure, things like electrons spontaneously pop into existence and just as quickly pop out again and this is happening all the time. Going a little deeper down the rabbit hole it’s not only matter that seemingly spontaneously generates itself – its space too in the form of a rapid expansion. Mostly this occurs in vanishing small timeframes followed by an equally rapid deflation. But sometimes the expansion goes on into measurable time periods – like 13.7 billion years. Yes, just like our Universe and, it seems, like others too. Weird enough yet? Because there’s just one more thing – not only do the observations of our Universe say that spontaneous generation of entire Universes could happen or even do happen but, as far as the observations seem to be indicating and backed up by very sophisticated and verified mathematics, that this sort of thing *has* to happen and is happening right now. Because of the nature of QM exhibited in Dark Energy entire Universes are coming into existence in other parts of our Universe, in effect ‘budding off’ multiple Universes that, given the right physical constraints may well be very similar to this one. OK, that’s weird enough I think.

Although some of this book clearly flew over my head – I did struggle at times to work my way through the logic of it all – I did ‘get’ enough of it to appreciate how far our understanding of Universe creation has come since the idea of the Big Bang first made scientific headlines. Clearly I need to keep reading about both QM and Cosmology to get my head around the difficult stuff so there will be more in both areas (and, naturally, in Evolution too) to come. I seriously doubt that I’ll ever understand the maths behind any of this and I’ll probably never understand the intricacies of QM (I mean, who does?) but I do hope that I’ll be able to deepen (and widen?) my appreciation of both subjects so I at least get the gist of what they’re talking about. Recommended if you fancy something weird, cool and reasonably difficult to get you head around.

7 comments:

Fred said...

This sounds very interesting. I shall look around for it. Thanks for posting on it.

Fred said...

I just checked the library and it has a copy of it. I noticed also that Krauss has another book out--The Greatest Story Ever Told . . .So Far. It's publication date is 2017, so it could be a later book.

Mudpuddle said...

sounds like a great book; i've read quite a bit, although i'm not a mathematician, about astronomy and qm... being a geologist, or was, i'm familiar with the earth's history, and i've tried to follow astronomical discoveries and theories, but it is very complex... i think i got lost somewhere back when string theory was first proposed; the idea of 13 dimensions is appealing... universes as balloons, though, just indicates to me that either the true realities are beyond limited human understanding, or we just haven't got a handle on what the root causes are like... the search for a
general field theory goes on... i'd recommend Richard Feynman's lectures; they're entertaining and informative up to the point where they're no longer comprehensible... great post and subject: tx a lot...

Brian Joseph said...

I also love both books and articles of this type. I actually should read this or a similar book as I have not kept up with the latest discoveries and theories. I also stuggle to understand a lot of this stuff. I think that quantum mechanics cannot be understood on an intuitive level but we can understand how it works.

CyberKitten said...

Both Cosmology & QM are difficult subjects and part of the attraction for me is to try to understand them - knowing ultimately that I probably never will (my Maths just isn't anywhere near that good!). But I think having an appreciation of these (and other science) subjects is valuable and, honestly, mind expanding.

Stephen said...

You say winter solstice, I say STEAM WINTER SALE!

I picked this book up for a QUARTER back in 2012..still haven't read it. O_O

Stephen said...

Edit: I'm not sure what triggered that comment about the solstice. I think it was the lion and sun photo, and I clicked on comment for the wrong post. Heh. Sorry!