Hawking Back in The News Again

[Adam West]

Let the discussion begin

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100902/...ritain_hawking

"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist," Hawking writes.

Would someone please explain this to me? This quote makes absolutely no sense to me especially from a scientist. How can something be created out of nothing? Hawking says "the law of gravity".

Then how did the law of gravity come into existence? It just seems like a circular argument.

"In his latest book, he said the 1992 discovery of a planet orbiting another star other than the Sun helped deconstruct the view of the father of physics Isaac Newton that the universe could not have arisen out of chaos but was created by God."

Again, this argument makes no sense to me. Why does a planet orbiting a star other than the sun confirm chaos theory?

I certainly respect him as a scientist and again maybe I shouldn't jump so fast since the media might have quoted him out of context or attempted to sensationalize the story.

If someone can dumb this down for me; I certainly would appreciate it. I'm not trying to be a wise guy; I'm just looking at a quote and I honestly don't see how it makes any sense even from a pure science point of view.

[GSPUSA]

How does this guy become the leading mouth piece for all man kind? I have no use for the jerk what so ever.

[Bill]

I would venture to guess that his spontaneous creation would need to be, to explain everything. Were there not a spontaneous creation from nothing than there could be no beginning or ending.
On that note, I'm gonna grab a shower and hit the bar for a few after work beers. I'll try an after three/four beers explanation in about two hours.

[livnxxxl]

Just for the record I have not been following anything this Hawking person has said or done. Therefore, I cannot even begin to give an informed decision.

In fact this is really only the second time I have even heard of him. Both times was here at the Museum. I do find it interesting to read the comments of others here though. Maybe I may learn something about this Hawking's character.

[livnxxxl]

How does this guy become the leading mouth piece for all man kind?

It is always amazing to me how people come out of the wood work and create stuff and they have instant followers. Then again I always say even Manson had followers. So anything is possible I suppose. Some people will follow anyone.

I myself am a leader and not a follower. Anyone want to join MY cult? LOL!!! j/k

[livnxxxl]

I'll try an after three/four beers explanation in about two hours.

This ought to be good. I will await the update.

[Mikey]

It all started with God and his Mego parts box

[livnxxxl]

It all started with God and his Mego parts box

Hey, That sounds about as good as some of the other theories that I have heard. I do not see why not.

[Brazoo]

I saw this on the news last night and rolled my eyes. I think - as with all these recent Hawking articles there are a couple of shady things happening here.

Obviously the lines from the book that are circulating in the media right now were selected to sensationalize this topic. I don't have a lot of faith that the argument he's making is being represented properly in those few lines.

The "something from nothing" argument is really interesting to me. It's also a favorite debate between religious and non-religious people. Part of the problem here is that we're using language and concepts to explain theories that can probably only be explained with mathematics. For example the concept of the word 'nothing' may not be a relevant concept altogether when discussing the origin to the universe.

Here's the wikipedia entry on this topic: Something from nothing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

One basic argument that Hawking might be getting at is that all the positive energy in our universe is perfectly balanced with all the negative gravitational energy in our universe - so the total energy in our universe is actually zero. Here's a link to an article on that:

ASP: A Universe from Nothing

[jimsmegos]

It all started with God and his Mego parts box

[Brazoo]

"In his latest book, he said the 1992 discovery of a planet orbiting another star other than the Sun helped deconstruct the view of the father of physics Isaac Newton that the universe could not have arisen out of chaos but was created by God."

Again, this argument makes no sense to me. Why does a planet orbiting a star other than the sun confirm chaos theory?

I certainly respect him as a scientist and again maybe I shouldn't jump so fast since the media might have quoted him out of context or attempted to sensationalize the story.

I think here you're probably right about the media getting it wrong to sensationalize the article - not that I'm the brightest bulb or anything - but just looking at this, this argument doesn't make sense to me either. Unless he's saying that Newton thought there were no other solar systems, and that confirmed Newton's belief in god - and Hawking is just saying Newton was wrong about the one thing - so he's wrong about the other, which is a poor argument to make in my opinion. It's really hard to know because that quote is from the article and not from Hawking. I'm not sure if they're talking about chaos theory though - I think maybe they just mean chaos as oppose to an organized system.

[spamn]

It is always amazing to me how people come out of the wood work and create stuff and they have instant followers. Then again I always say even Manson had followers. So anything is possible I suppose. Some people will follow anyone.

I myself am a leader and not a follower. Anyone want to join MY cult? LOL!!! j/k

Seriously - the guy is probably the best known physicist on the planet. He's a big brain and wrote a well-received and famous book - A Brief History of Time - that sought to explain the current physics theories on creation and formation of the Universe from year zero to the current day to the masses.

It's not like he's some nutjob getting airtime because he's wacky. He's one of the foremost scientific thinkers of our time.

I don't really have an opinion on the quote other than it's bound to PO a lot of people.

Let's not bring any of that here, please.

[Nostalgiabuff]

because of it's subject matter, this thread treads on dangerous ground for these boards.
that being said, I think we can relate this to a theme from Lost......man of science vs. man of faith and which side each of us leans towards. I consider myself a man of science.

[johnmiic]

I read something which might have explained this but forgot where I read it. My feeble attempt follows. This sounds like real Doctor Who stuff but is very interesting:

There are 4 forces of nature which had to have been combined as one at the begining of the universe to make the Unified Field Theory possible. Apparently the problem has always been Gravity. Gravity does not begin nor end. Gravity is the consequence of the curvature of space-time. Any object existing in space-in reality-curves space and time and has a gravitational field. The bigger the object the stronger the field. Has anyone ever seen Cosmos w/Carl Sagan? Have you ever seen the bit where he shows the metal ball on the rubber graph? He rolls a smaller ball towards the bigger one and when it gets close it's trajectory changes. If the larger ball were not there the smaller one would continue on it's original course unaffected. That is space-time curvature.

Scientists can't quite explain gravity because in comparison to the other forces of nature it's too weak. They feel gravity should be so strong it would prevent life from existing in this universe. Why is gravity so weak? They figured it out mathematically and reverse engineered the problem. They came to the conclusion that gravity does not originate here in this dimension. Gravity reaches us after passing thru 10 other dimensions which sap its energy and weaken it. We are in the 11th dimension. They feel that the power of gravity passing thru these dimensions can cause the dimensions to rub against each other and cause a giant explosion, ( like the Big Bang). This means universes can be created again and again without anyone's intervention. It just happens. Gravity is always on like the current from the Electric Co. but never begins and ends.

That's some of what I remember but it was a long time ago so that's probably not the whole thing. I don't know what the structure of the dimensions are meant to look like or how they exist letting gravity pass thru them without touching ordinarily. It really does read like a Doctor Who episode.

[Brazoo]

because of it's subject matter, this thread treads on dangerous ground for these boards.
that being said, I think we can relate this to a theme from Lost......man of science vs. man of faith and which side each of us leans towards. I consider myself a man of science.

I'm not sure this kind of conversation needs to invoke any controversy.

I don't think science can prove or disprove the existence of god - and matters of faith have nothing to do with science. In my view (and a lot of other much smarter people's views) there really shouldn't be a debate between the two.