New guy with questions

[Aractus]

This view is becoming increasingly popular, the negation of the Beginning to irrelevance, to the point that models of the universe need no beginning, sending theists and cosmologists scrambling, till now we have models of self-replicating existences which always are and always will be. Admittedly they are very sketchy, but the implication is quite fascinating while we work out the details: that the universe no longer requires a point of creation, at least with regards to time, no beginning, at least in the classical sense.

We no not quite, even a self-replicating universe needs a starting point, and as part of that it requires the existence of space-time whether dimensional in the classic notion or in another form. By scientific definition, empty space in space-time isn't really empty, thus your starting conditions are not "nothing". Energy must exist within the system.

So while you can theoretically have self-creating universes, they still require a plane of existence to already exist and meet the required conditions.

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In Black Holes, Baby Universes, and Other Essays, Hawking entertains the idea that perhaps we have, or at least we can discover the secrets to how the universe came to exist, but he quickly adds that even if we do know this, we still do not know why the universe bothers to exist in the first place.

Hawking's ideas on the beginning of the universe fall outside of general scientific thought, and there's no reason to entertain his fringe ideas any more than say Halton Arp's.

If you like I'll ask Ken what he thinks about self-creating universes next time I see him and post the answer?