Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology => Topic started by: Poppa Oomowmow on 25/08/2011 13:50:16
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Stephen Hawking says the Universe was created out of nothing. So, were the laws of nature, such as gravity, just a by product of the 'big bang?' If not, where did the laws of the Universe come from (not a god freak [:)] )? Are the laws of nature just a natural occurence? If another 'big bang' occurs, would it have the same laws or different ones? Are 'big bangs' just a roll of the dice? Thanks.
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The true answer to this is that no one knows at the moment.
Most experts consider that the physical laws arrive from processes early in the big bang
Most of the theoreticians tend to favour just a random choice. It is the easiest option it saves them thinking any more.
The string theoreticians describe the vast number of choices available from their models but don't know how to decide which.
I tend to favour a simple and possibly provable route that comes from the laws of thermodynamics.
That is, the laws of physics have evolved physically in a way that creates longevity and complexity.
A simple explanation is as follows. When the universe was very hot all the laws were blurred out by quantum uncertainty.
as the universe cooled any process that persisted in time i.e. offered a stable or metastable structure was favoured by the laws of thermodynamics which would apply in ANY universe irrespective of the values of critical constants this process will tend to create complexity and structure. This is a bit like water crystallising into ice and snow crystals, when water is vapour or liquid the potential for structure exists but it does not appear until it is cool enough.
This may result in there being many possible universes but at least the concept is amenable to study.
I call this hypothesis "evolutionary cosmology" and have written more about it in the "new theories" area
It appears that there is a tendency towards some of these ideas in recent work by reputable scientists notably Lee Smolin and Roger Penrose so I hope that proper progress will soon be made.
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Start here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle
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The anthropic principle is a very weak argument. It is in some ways tautalogical because it in effect says that our part of the universe has physical laws that permit complex life because we are complex life and can observe it. If you consider small variations of any of the major physical laws, The probability of life forms like us evolving rapidly becomes vanishingly small or impossible. This low probability is one of the arguments that are used to favour the concept of multiverses where many isolated universes may exist in parallel
What I am saying above is that if the universe has "evolved" rather than been set up at random the probability of life becomes much greater.
The fact that our universe appears to have a beginning a middle and an end suggests that there must be a continuing process that we do not yet understand for the "continuous creation" of universes.