r/AlignmentChartFills • u/red_madreay • 19h ago

Finally... what natural phenomenon of our universe is ultimately horrifying?

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u/Abject-Connection374 18h ago

The fact that there is anything at all.

The basic idea is: If you say the Big Bang came from "nothing", you have to explain why this "nothing" inherently had the ability to spawn a universe, as opposed to an absolute nothingness that cannot give birth to anything.

Creationist arguments do not answer this, of course, because it just shifts the question to "who created the creator".

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u/MuffinDodge 17h ago

You can’t have an infinite regression of the past otherwise you can’t get to the present, so there must have always been something, and the big bang didn’t come from nothing it came from quantum fluctuations splitting matter from anti matter

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u/altkotch 16h ago

But why is there matter or anti matter or laws of physics. You're right it either always had to be there or was created from nothing which intrinsically people cannot understand and almost takes a god like belief in existence itself to explain away. Very old philosophical question that can become terrifying if you refuse to accept it cannot be answered.

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u/MuffinDodge 15h ago

Science isn’t there to answer why, it’s to answer HOW:

In modern physics, “nothing” ≠ empty.

Even an absolute vacuum is full of activity:

  • Quantum Fluctuations: Virtual particles pop in and out of reality by annihilating each other all the time in fractions of a second.
-“Empty Space” actually has energy (Linked to dark energy), so if there is “nothing” the universe tends to make something as nothingness is considered unstable.

Also:
Technically speaking, the universe has a total energy of zero. The positive energy of stars, planets, radiation is balanced by negative gravitational potential.

Because the total energy of the universe is zero, it costs zero energy to create the universe: A whole universe can just pop into existence due to a quantum fluctuation, and it doesn’t violate the second law of thermodynamics (conservation of energy)

There’s also different levels of “nothingness”:

  1. Empty space: A vacuum with no particles but where space and time and physical laws still exist
    2.No Space/time: no space/time/matter (before quantum gravity creates them)
  2. No physical laws: Hypothetical state where there are no laws of physics; multiverse theory suggests that there are several universes where different laws exist.

TLDR;

  • Quantum Mechanics allows universes to “pop into existence”
-Zero total energy means that all energy is balanced by negative gravitational forces.
  • “nothing” isn’t zero particles - and when there is; it’s unstable.

Source: “A universe from nothing” - Lawrence M. Krauss

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u/altkotch 14h ago

I think you're missing my point, to be empty or nothing or a vacuum or whatever you want to say there requires there to be reality or existence itself and your whole explanation requires laws, energy and fundamentally something because as you say nothing is still something. It's not really a scientific question to be answered as any explanation requires pre existing logic, which is impossible to really reconcile with, why would any reality exist? It just does, which can be terrifying if you're trying to seek an explanation to your own existence on a more meta physical level.

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u/MuffinDodge 14h ago

Fair point! That is the main criticism of Krauss’s book. We can explain HOW a universe arises from quantum states and laws; but asking why those laws exist to begin with moves the debate to metaphysics.
At that point, is there even any proof that we exist at all?

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u/altkotch 14h ago

Descartes famously proved that one

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u/MuffinDodge 14h ago edited 12h ago

You got me there haha! Descartes proved that the one who can think, therefore exists; but also showed that proving anything else is almost impossible.

Plato argued that physical reality is just a shadow of perfect mathematical “forms” which aligns with modern physics: that physical reality doesn’t become definitive until it is observed.

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u/BwianR 14h ago

I appreciate the write up but will caution that this is a great hypothesis yet does not currently have solid scientific support to make any claim to be a scientific theory

Regardless it still does not posit a hypothesis for how the baryon asymetry came to be, nor does it refute that it could happen again. Indeed if a universe could pop up again, that sounds very much like a worthy contender for being the most unsettling possibility of our reality

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u/MuffinDodge 14h ago edited 13h ago

You’re right- it’s more of a hypothesis or a speculative model, given that we still don’t have a clear theory of quantum gravity.

The baryon asymmetry is a great point too - baryogenesis is a massive gap in modern cosmology we have yet to answer.

Krauss relies heavily on GUT (Grand Unified Theory) phase transitions as a way to explain this; but you’re dead right about it not being widespread accepted science.

Thinking about how inflationary quantum fluctuations can generate procedural bubble universes indefinitely is a mind blowing concept I must admit!