X-Message-Number: 17929 From: Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2001 11:39:03 EST Subject: Re: CryoNet #17906 (nothing...) From M. Perry: << You misunderstand my intent here, which was not to argue that something can form from nothing but to suggest that, even though we think of space as "nothing" (please note the quotation marks!) it really isn't, and we should not waste effort pondering how something can form from nothing. >> Empty space is empty if seen for an infinite time. For any finite time dt, we must take into account the Heisemberg's principle who says: dt x dE is on the order of h. Here, dE is the energy uncertainty and h the action constant (Planck's constant). If dt is finite, then dE must be too. So, even in empty space, for any finite time the energy can't be precisely zero. The dE value is seen as pairs of particles-antiparticles popping out of nothing and destroyed after a time dt. Even ordinary matter may be temporary: Matter has a mass and that mass is equivalent to some energy ( recall E = M c ^2 ). Matter has too a gravitational field and that field has too an energy inside it. Now, the positive energy of matter is equal in aboslute value to the negative potential energy of its gravitational field up to infinite distance. The sum is zero! We see some matter here simply because the Universe age is finite and gravitation propagates at a finite speed, so the potential negative energy has not expanded up to the infinite and can't cancel the positive local mass. Yvan Bozzonetti. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=17929