Ten years ago, this would never have happened. Then, there was no doubt that "before the big bang" made no sense. But today, the certainty has gone. There is no escaping the inconvenient truth that Hubble's graph, work of genius though it is, contains a huge problem. It tells us that everything we see in the universe today -- us, trees, galaxies, zebras, emerged in an instant from nothing. And that's a problem. It's all effect, and no cause. The idea of "everything from nothing" is something that has occupied physicist Michio Kaku for much of his professional life.
The physicist then says,
You know, the idea sounds impossible. Preposterous. I mean, think about it -- everything from nothing! The galaxy, the stars in the heavens coming from a pinpoint. I mean how can it be? How can it be that everything comes from nothing? But you know, if you think about it a while, it all depends on how you define "nothing".
In Sandusky, Ohio, is Plum Brook Station. It is here that NASA recreates the conditions of space on Earth, and part of that means generating nothing. ..in vast quantities. This is the biggest vacuum chamber in the world. Its eight-feet-thick walls are made from 2,000 tons of solid aluminum. It takes two days of pumping out the air, and another week of freezing out the remaining molecules to create a near-perfect vacuum. A cathedral-sized volume of nothing. When they switch this place on, this is as close as we can get to a state of nothingness. Everywhere we look we see something. We see atoms, we see trees, we see forests, we see water. But hey, right here, we can pump all the atoms out, and this is probably the arena out of which genesis took place. So if you really understand the state of nothing, you understand everything about the origin of the universe.
The commentator then continues:
Except, of course, it isn't quite that straightforward. For a start, the "nothing" created by NASA still has dimensions -- this is nothing in 3-D. And the tests carried out within the chamber can, of course, be viewed. This is nothing through which light can travel. NASA's "nothing" has properties. This "nothing" is, in fact, something.
This sort of absurdity needs a warning that those who watch it are in danger of becoming dumber after the unfortunate experience. Many don’t get a warning and believe what they hear--that nothing that is something, is still nothing…a new and special scientific version of “nothing.” In their mind they think that it gets rid of the unscientific craziness of the “nothing created everything” scenario. An atheist website says,
“When physicists say there was ‘nothing’ before the Big Bang of our universe they do not mean literally “nothing.” What they mean is that there was no matter, just energy.”[2]
It is an intellectual embarrassment to have to point this out to a supposed rational human being, but if “energy” is present, there’s not nothing at all. There is “energy.”
[2] “Something from Nothing.” http://truth-saves.com/god-doesnt-exist/
Photo: Mars and Acidalia
