Could the Universe Have Come into Existence

from Non-Existence by Physics?

From time immemorial, people believed that without a cause nothing comes from nothing. [12] This principle was formulated back in the fifth century BC in the philosophy of the era of Parmenides and has since been considered an obvious truth. Therefore, the best way to get people’s attention is to show that it is not.

In the 1830s, the Scottish illusionist John Henry Anderson (1814–1874) came up with a trick, the demonstration of which gathered full houses. The magician shows the audience his top hat, demonstrating that there is nothing in it. Doubters may even pick it up and check it out. After several magical passes, he puts the hat on the table or makes an arc movement with it in the air, as if scooping something up, and immediately pulls out a rabbit or even two in a row from the hat. The secret of performing the trick is that the illusionist discreetly puts the rabbits into the hat from the secret pockets of his tailcoat or from under the table.

Now, getting a rabbit out of a hat, in which initially there is nothing, you will surprise no one, but the concept of the formation of the universe from “nothing” has become the excitement of people’s minds. The prerequisites for this concept have been gradually taking shape since the beginning of the twentieth century. Protestant rationalism grew out of atheistic scientism and positivism. These doctrines deny philosophy and absolutize the role of natural sciences and mathematics not only in the epistemology of science, but also in explaining everything in general. They say that physics and mathematics can explain any phenomenon (even in the field of culture and anthropology!), If not just today, then in the near future. Several generations of scientists have already been brought up in the mainstream of this paradigm of thinking.

It is not surprising, therefore, that when physical and mathematical models had developed sufficiently, cosmologists began to try to answer the philosophical question about the beginning of the universe. [13] In 1973, the Soviet physicist P. I. Fomin and a little later the American physicist E. Tryon [14] announced the possible emergence of the universe from “nothing”. [15] In 1988, the journal Priroda published the last article by Ya. B. Zeldovich entitled “Is it possible for the universe to form ‘out of nothing’?” [16] with a positive answer to this question. [17] In 2012 L. Krauss published the book A Universe from Nothing. [18]

These and many other similar works of scientists on the emergence of the universe can be figuratively summarized like this:

“With the help of what did the universe come into existence?”

“With the help of physics (i. e., the totality of the laws of matter).”

“With the help of what did physics come into existence?”

“Eh . . ., hmm . . . with the help of physics.”

This type of “proof” is called a “vicious circle”. There is a tale about Baron Munchausen, who pulled himself out of the swamp by the hair with his horse. Alternatively, the same, about the boy who pulled himself out of the swamp by the laces of his own shoes. This is a metaphorical image of how physics created itself with the help of physics. The universe, as it were, pulled itself out of “nothing” by its “own laces”. This metaphor was even taken seriously as an explanation, and the process itself was called “bootstrap”. The universe, as it were, spontaneously aroused in itself all the energy that was necessary for the “creation” and “revitalization” of matter, and initiated the explosion that generated it. This “self-extension”, of course, is absurd and is a logical error, but nothing else can be invented in this atheistic paradigm. Scientists and positivists categorically reject philosophy, since for them “god” is physics, and its “prophet” is mathematics. Therefore, when asked about the origin of physics, they have to build a vicious circle of evidence. After all, otherwise their minds will go off the “rails” on which they were put at school and at institute. [19]

Let us explain the above with examples. Spontaneous electromagnetic radiation by atoms or spontaneous fission of heavy atomic nuclei occurs due to the instability of their energy (or other) state. The time of this event cannot be precisely determined, but is described probabilistically, according to the corresponding distribution function.

However, can we talk about the spontaneous emergence of the laws of physics (as Krauss says)? Of course not. For spontaneous occurrence of a photon, at least a hydrogen atom is needed. If the atoms (matter) themselves do not exist, then there will be no phenomenon of spontaneity, no wave functions of electrons, etc. The same can be said about the vacuum, which has energy and is capable of producing particles. Krauss wrote in his book A Universe from Nothing:

“The existence of energy in empty space-the discovery that rocked our cosmological universe and the idea that forms the bedrock of inflation-only reinforces something about the quantum world that was already well established in the context of the kinds of laboratory experiments I have already described. Empty space is complicated. It is a boiling brew of virtual particles that pop in and out of existence in a time so short we cannot see them directly.” [20]

But this means that the “empty space” that cosmologists study is not “nothing” at all, but a physical (material) object under the conditions of space-time and the existing laws of physics.

Cosmologists talk about quantum fluctuations of the physical vacuum, about the spontaneous emergence of particle-antiparticle pairs in very strong electric fields from “nothing”, about fluctuations of the scalar field (which allegedly gave rise to the universe). However, all these examples are taken from the material world with already existing physical laws. Thus, by “nothing” cosmologists mean, as it were, a special “pra-matter” that existed outside space and time. All theories that talk about the possibility of the emergence of the universe from “nothing” require the preliminary existence of the laws of physics and a special “nothing” that has the potential to give birth to quantum particles.

However, it begs the question: how did the laws of physics themselves emerge if there was nothing material yet, and why the original “nothing” could have any potential. Krauss quotes Richard Feynman in Preface of A Universe from Nothing: “The laws of physics could be like an infinitely layered onion, with new laws becoming operational as we probe new scales.” In addition, a little earlier, he recalled about the famous “story of an expert giving a lecture on the origins of the universe (sometimes identified as Bertrand Russell and sometimes William James), who is challenged by a woman who believes that the world is held up by a gigantic turtle, who is then held up by another turtle, and then another . . . with further turtles ‘all the way down!’” [21]

In fact, there are not only turtles, but a whole zoo: an elephant, a boa constrictor, a tiger, wild boars and a whale that swims in a bottomless and endless ocean. Krauss and those to whom he refers are arguing with representatives of the Abrahamic religions, in whose cosmogony there is nothing of the kind. But for the sake of argument, wanting to ridicule religion, Krauss mentions this “zoo” of Hinduism. However, he does not realize that he is ridicule of himself.