X-Message-Number: 23839 Date: Thu, 08 Apr 2004 23:48:55 -0700 From: Mike Perry <> Subject: Something from "nothing" David Pizer writes: >Why is the universe eternal? > >Something cannot come from nothing. and more recently reiterates that something cannot come from nothing. There are two interesting points I think worth making. One is that there could be more than one universe, thus some particular universe could be not eternal, while reality as a whole still was eternal. The second is that whether you can get something from nothing depends on your notion of nothing. Empty space qualifies as "nothing" in many people's opinion, yet we know that particles can spontaneously come into being from a vacuum. Could a whole universe come into being this way? I think this is more or less conjectured to have happened with the big bang. Mike Perry Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=23839