(March 7, 2014 at 11:42 am)whateverist Wrote:(March 7, 2014 at 1:45 am)Wyrd of Gawd Wrote: By definition everything had to originate from Nothing. The stumbling block is that it is very difficult to understand what Nothing is and what its properties are.
When the Earth was first formed did it have any dirt on it?
Not sure I follow. Do you mean each item in the cosmos, such as our Earth, had to have originated from nothing? Because that much we know is not true. The blob of debree whose gravitational field led to the formation of our solar system with the greatest mass of debree conscentrated in what was to become our sun. But owing to the rotation of the field about its center became stabilized in rotation rather than crowding into the center. One such ring became our planet.
I don't think this makes a good example of anything coming from nothing. The earth and our solar system arose following multiple generations of larger, less stable stars whose destruction created debree fields one of which, eventually, became ours. I find no "nothing" in this story.
There is a huge difference between saying before I was born the world was devoid of me versus saying before I was born there was absolutely nothing. Choose anything currently existing, sure there was a time before which it existed. But none of it sprang from nothing. Anything can always and only come from recycled and transformed states of what there was before. As proof I offer this entire bald assertion. QED
When I say that everything came from Nothing what I'm saying is that Nothing produces the first building blocks, such as strings. The strings then evolve into quantum foam. Quantum foam produces the first particles. And eventually those particles produce hydrogen. Once hydrogen is created then everything else follows one step after the other until we get the current universe. That's not to say that the process is over. It may continue to create even more complex elements in the future.
Here's a link to an interactive video that explains it. Move the cursor from the left to the right and you will progress through the entire process.
http://scaleofuniverse.com/
Our main stumbling block is that it's almost impossible for us to comprehend Nothing and its properties that cause it to be the source of creation.
The growth and death of stars that we see is really no different that the life and death of body cells. But when stars go supernova it results in the creation of new elements in that area that didn't have them before.
Things start out simple and over eons they become more complex. Right now we don't know how long each stage takes. We know it took over 5 billion years for the Earth to produce humans. We don't know how long it takes Nothing to produce hydrogen. And we don't know how long it takes hydrogen to form nuclear masses that become stars. We just know that it happens on a continuous basis throughout the universe.
