Why is there something instead of having nothing?

 

Why is there something instead of having nothing?  I don’t remember when I first faced this question. Possibly by reading Jean-Paul Sartre’s(1905-1905) existentialist philosophy “Being and Nothingness” or Martin Heidegger’s (189-198) book “Introduction to Metaphysics”. The first line of the last book was-  ‘Why is  there something radiant than nothing?’ . Since then, I have noticed its presence in many books and in many places. The philosopher William James (1842-1910) In his book

Some Problems of Philosophy identified this question as the ‘darkest philosophy’. Astrophysicist Sir Arthur Bernard Lowell (1913-2012) saw this as question of ‘disintegrating the mind of a person’. Really-if this vast universe and this material world, if there were nothing instead of so many things-what would be the loss? And why is there so much instead of nothing? The matter is important. The latest book I have read so far is Jim Jolt’s why Why Does the world Exist(2012). There The author jokes- ‘Psychiatric patients are always obsessed with this question’!

There are philosophers as well as theologians. Until recently, this question was one of the favorite questions of theologians. This question was used extensively to lock the mouths of scientists. Yes, the question of ‘why there is something radiant than nothing’ was indeed a great challenge to scientists; Whether it was Paul's watch, Hale's Boeing, or Humayun's Nikon camera of recent times that produced the bells of contentment of the pious, this question also became like the last nail in the coffin of science in many science-religion debates. Mainstream scientists have been reluctant and silent for so long. Many again sidestepped such questions as not a matter of science. But the situation has changed a lot in the last few years. Now many scientists are confident that they know the answer. Although there is some light debate about the definitive answer to this question, it is now quite certain that physicists have begun to sneer at this question, which is in the realm of religion and philosophy, and want to reach a position on this. That's why I've been looking at the subject matter in books written by physicists for years.

For example, the famous astrophysicist Lawrence Krauss wrote an excellent book entitled ‘A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing’. In Bengali, we can say - ‘From zero to the universe - why is there something instead of nothing? For those who don't know Lawrence Krause, let me say two lines. Professor Lawrence Krauss, one of the world's best-known astrophysicists, received his PhD from MIT in 1982 and is currently the head of an important project called Origin at Arizona State University. In this project, research is done under his supervision on various marginal issues including the origin of the universe, the origin of matter and the origin of life.

Krauss's book deals with the emergence of the universe from scratch, as well as the most profound problem of philosophy - the most orthodox problem of our existence - or the absence of anything at all.

Instead, galaxies, galaxies, the solar system, the earth, the living world and so on exist all around us. What was the harm in having so much darkness instead of having so much?

In the preface to Krauss's book, scientist Richard Dawkins says, "Just as Darwin's Origin of Species is in biology, so is Krauss's zero-to-universe in astrophysics." Just as the theory of evolution described in Darwin's book refuted the hypothesis of an unnatural being in the case of living things, so Krause's book refuted all claims for the existence of an unnatural or supernatural being in the case of astrophysics. Readers must have noticed that the title of Krauss's book is centered around this question posed by the pious. Needless to say, all the mainstream physicists I have mentioned in my writings have all dealt with the problem through the eyes of science and tried to arrive at a solution, without diluting it like theologians or philosophers. For example, Krauss says in his book (‘The universe from scratch’, page 143) -

‘By understanding and reviewing the picture of modern science in our universe, its history, its possible future, and above all what zero actually means, we can say that we are now in the best position to deal with this question’.

Lawrence Krauss did not exaggerate. At one time it was thought that ‘nothing’ was a normal state of matter or world, and ‘something’ was imposed. For example, the German mathematician Leibniz, in his 1897 article On the Ultimate Origin of Things, opined that "nothing" is spontaneous, but "something" has to be achieved. And the transition from nothing to nothing happens without the intervention of anything outside. For Leibniz, the solution was, as usual, 'God'.

This is how our days have gone since then. ‘Why is there something instead of nothing?’ The answer is very simple - because God is. In fact, it was not until the birth of quantum cosmology in the seventies in the hands of scientists like Stephen Hawking that science was able to successfully answer the opposite, just as Paul's design arguments could not be properly addressed until Darwin's arrival. Even so, owning one is still beyond the reach of the average person. They would laugh at this kind of ‘why there is something racker than nothing’ branded question, if the ‘nothing’ thing was so normal and spontaneous, then what was the point of God or being? Why there is God rather than nothing? In order to resist ‘Nothing’ Babaji, the invisible unproven God can be shown as a witness, but the real universe that we see all the time in front of our eyes is not, is this not becoming a little exaggerated? It even occurred to our peasant philosopher Arj Ali Matubbar that presenting God as a witness to the final questions was not an answer. That is why in the book 'In Search of Truth' he asks the question - 'At what time did God create time?' Or 'Where did space come from?' The pious have never been able to give a very good answer to this kind of answer. Rather angry. A stubborn atheist once asked St. Augustine, a Christian theologian, "Father, what did God say Babaji was doing before he created this universe?" !

But even though the pious are angry, the philosophers have always questioned Leibniz's conclusion from various points of view. Have done it before, still doing it. For example, the German philosopher Adolf Grunbaum in his research paper entitled The Poverty of Theistic Cosmology.

Sean Carroll, a well-known physicist of the time, systematically criticized Leibniz's conclusion.

But even if the traditional philosophers could answer, in my opinion, they were just philosophical discussions in bold, not a scientific solution. The biggest reason behind this is that scientists had no idea about quantum mechanics and its progress during Leibniz's time. They and philosophers like them would make decisions based on the rules that apply to the world before their eyes. Little did they know that there was a vast world beyond their visible world; This is the intermolecular world, the rules of which are as strange as the rules of the Hogwarts School of Harry Potter story. In our visible world we do not see anything being created from scratch, nor can we walk through the brick walls of our home to the other side. But the quantum world seems to be different, here the particles and counter-particles arise from scratch like a system, preferring to be in the circle of possibility rather than taking a definite position, and sometimes they melt through the wall of impenetrable barrier through ‘quantum tunneling’. It would be wrong to think that the laws of the quantum world are unrealistic. It is as real as this article of mine. Everyone who deals with electronics knows about the tunnel diodes and the Josephson junction, but they are based on the same rules as the Hogwarts School of Harry Potter in Quantum State. Even though we know that hydrogen fusion is constantly happening inside our familiar Suzy Mama, it is still following the principles of the quantum world.

Scientists studying quantum physics in the last seventies and eighties have found that in the quantum world, 'nothing' is not the default thing, but 'something' is the 'default'. Nothing is unstable in the thick of it. Because emptiness is unstable, it can never lie in a quiet burial ground, there are incessant particles forming, the mysterious game of vacuum fluctuations continues incessantly. As we discussed earlier in our book, Aristotle once observed nature and commented, "Nature abhors a vacuum." Even emptiness was seen as ‘blasphemy’. But later scientist Toriselli, with the help of historical experiments with his mercury, showed that emptiness can be created at will, without blasphemy, without breaking the sky over anyone's head. Surprisingly, the phrase "nature does not like emptiness at all" seems to have come true for the quantum world. That's why scientist Frank Klose says in his book Nothing, "Aristotle didn't get a chance to see the quantum world, but his words seem to have come true for the quantum world."

"Nothing," said Frank Wilzek, a Nobel laureate physicist, in an article published in Scientific American magazine in the 1980s. The title of the article, published in 1980, was ‘The Cosmic Asymmetry Between Matter and Antimatter’. When matter and antimatter arose at the dawn of the origin of the universe, for a mysterious reason, nature showed a slight bias towards matter, albeit very little, compared to antimatter. If this bias had not happened, we would not be sitting here today asking this intellectual question about our own existence. Matter and antimatter would embrace and destroy each other, and in front of us there would be only the unfamiliar void full of radioactivity instead of the then known matter, the living star constellations. Instead of our earthly vitality, the silence of the grave prevailed. But one The subject is noteworthy here. This bias did not happen for any ‘miracle’ reason. Nor is it that nature had to show a huge miracle for this. On the contrary, scientists have calculated that only a fraction of a billion of matter-antimatter could have opened the door to the creation of this well-known universe. And to tell you the truth - that's probably what happened. By analyzing today's cosmic background radiation or cosmic background radiation, scientists are seeing exactly what they theoretically calculated. Frank Wilzek ​​explained in his article how the inequality between matter and antimatter was initially created by the breakdown of symmetry in a very natural way, not miraculously, and one of the main reasons behind it was - yes, as I said earlier - ‘zero matter is unstable’. He wrote the matter in his paper like this -

‘It is conceivable that the universe began as far as possible through the highest symmetrical state, and that no matter existed in that state, the universe was a vacuum. In the second stage came matter. At this stage the symmetry was somewhat less, but the energy was also less. Eventually a relatively less symmetrical phase came and it increased very quickly. The energy released as a result of this transition created particles. This phenomenon can be identified as the Big Bang… so why "there is something instead of nothing?" - The correct answer to this ancient question is - 'Nothing is unstable'.

We now know from the latest theories given by astrophysicists that our universe once emerged as a ‘quantum event’. So the basic principles of quantum mechanics will be equally applicable to the origin of the universe, what else is new! In doing so, scientists saw that the emergence of the universe from scratch was not only possible, but inevitable. That's why Stephen Hawking says in his book Grand Design -

‘Different theories of physics are as effective as the law of gravitational force, so the origin of the universe is possible and inevitable even from utter emptiness. Because there is ‘spontaneous origin’, ‘there is something, radar than nothing’, that is why the universe exists, we exist. There is no need for God to light the lamp at the origin of the universe. '

In fact, since quantum emptiness is unstable, the emergence of matter particles through "spontaneous origin" is inevitable. Lawrence Krauss also explains the matter in his recent book, The Zero to the Universe (Zero to the Universe , pace 169)

‘In the case of quantum gravity, the universe can arise from zero, and will be spontaneous. That whole universe does not need to be empty, it can have matter and energy until its total energy, including the negative energy associated with gravity, is zero. '

And Krauss's deliberate conclusion (‘The universe from scratch’, page 180) -

‘The matter is very clear. Quantum gravity does not stop at simply allowing the universe to emerge from zero, making it absolutely inevitable. Because, in the absence of space-time, the vacuum we are talking about is absolutely unstable.

The same idea is reflected in various books and articles by the physicist Victor Stanger. In his book, The Comprehensible Cosmos, he shows that the probability of something being and not being is actually calculated, and the probability of something becoming non-existent is found to be more than sixty percent. Professor Stanger concludes his essay with a quote from the paper of the Nobel laureate physicist Frank Wilzek, in which he argues that "nothing is unstable."

The skeptical philosopher Michael Sharma recently wrote two articles on the subject in Scientific American and his edited Skeptic magazine. The second article, published in Skeptic Magazine, explains why there is more to life than nothing at all. The eleven other solutions that Sharma has come up with, excluding the pious 'God-concept', are all scientific solutions given by modern physicists, in which the matter can be dealt with without importing any supernatural and miraculous entity. The solution he put at the end, and the most important scientific solution, is what Sharma says - "emptiness is unstable."

I recently wrote a book with Mizan Rahman, a Canadian-based mathematician and professor at Carlton University. In this book, entitled ‘From Zero to the Universe - The Most Recent Concept of the Origin of the Universe’, I have had the opportunity to discuss recent concepts of the origin of the universe; In particular, we have discussed at length the recent inflation theory. The development of inflation theory in the 1980s by Alexei Starobinsky, Demos Kazanas, Allen Guth and Andre Linde . In fact, the theory of inflation has been accepted by most mainstream astrophysicists as the strongest theory to solve the mystery of the origin of the universe. I have written articles in several magazines in the past, including Free Mind, Science World, and Zero to Infinity, explaining this theory. In the light of this well-structured theory, it can be shown that the origin of matter is possible through spontaneous phase transition, and the universe may have originated in that way. The matter is neither unusual nor unscientific.

It has been mentioned in many well-known journals in physics and in popular books.

Since the universe had to emerge through quantum emptiness, it originated by dealing with the ‘instability’ of the quantum level. We have shown in our book why there is something instead of nothing - it is not a religious or philosophical question, it is a purely scientific question today. In terms of the advances that science has made in the last few centuries, we can say that we are able to deal with this question, and that is scientifically.

Keeping in mind the laws of the quantum world, it is not impossible to move from a state of 'nothing' to a state of 'something'. And we don't need a middleman to oversee it; Naturally it is possible. Because in the eyes of modern science, the matter of emptiness is largely unstable.

And that is the root cause of our existence in the eyes of science. This is why we know that there is something instead of not having something at all. At least with the eyes of modern science, that is the latest answer so far.

But how could such a vast universe emerge from such emptiness? I am not going to discuss this in detail here. Readers can read the newly published book 'Zero to Universe' (Shuddhasvar, 2015). Of course, I have a little extra passion for the book, because - after all the arrangements for publishing the book were completed, just before going to the press, my co-author, eminent mathematician and Emeritus Professor Meezan Rahman of Carlton University in Canada, left us. He was not only a famous mathematician in his lifetime, but also a well-known writer. He has written many remarkable books including 'Lal Nadi', 'Tirtha Amar Gram', 'Prasang Nari', 'Album', 'Ananya Amar Desh', 'Ananda Niketan', 'Disaster Forecast', 'Autobiography of Thoughts', 'Not Just Land'. , Enriched Bengali literature. Among them, the book 'Zero to Universe' written with me is the last book of Professor Meezan Rahman, his last memory. After completing the manuscript of ‘From Zero to Universe’, Professor Meezan Rahman suddenly disappeared into the void! But even though he has vanished into thin air, he has left us with some inspiration. Through this book and all his other previous works, he will shed light on us, just like ‘that distant nebula’ - incessantly. Through this writing I express my humble respect to his memory.