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Category Archives: Science

As a result of a conversation on another blog I was motivated to Google for the following scientific hypothesis:

The “popping into being” idea is that the probability of a universe popping into being is not (quite) zero, therefore it’s gonna happen.

Its One Of Hawking’s

Hawking explains the “popping into being” theory in “Stephen Hawking Says Universe Created From Nothing” (2007)

It’s an entertaining read. The theory is based on work done by:

Richard Feynman a brilliant physicist at the California Institute of Technology. He proposed that a system got from a state A, to a state B, by every possible path or history.

Each path or history, has a certain amplitude or intensity, and the probability of the system going from A to B, is given by adding up the amplitudes for each path. There will be a history in which the moon is made of blue cheese, but the amplitude is low

Come Again ?

So non-existence is posited merely as a state which can be moved freely from or to and this movement is achieved by traversing all possible paths, including the one in which Invisble Pink Unicorns tap dance on tables at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe. You are expected to take this seriously, even once you swallow the concept of non-existence as a valid state.

Non-existence as a state is a logical contradiction. Its like asking where you want the immovable object put.

Hawking goes on:

The picture Jim Hartle and I developed, of the spontaneous quantum creation of the universe, would be a bit like the formation of bubbles of steam in boiling water.

The idea is that the most probable histories of the universe, would be like the surfaces of the bubbles. Many small bubbles would appear, and then disappear again. These would correspond to mini universes that would expand, but would collapse again while still of microscopic size. They are possible alternative universes, but they are not of much interest since they do not last long

As I understand this, Hawking is talking about the expansion of the Universe fom a singularity. Which seems to me that Hawking wants to have his Invisible Pink Unicorn and eat it too. If the Universe is non-existent, where did the singularity come from ?

Perhaps I misunderstand the article. I am happy to be corrected.

Science. Yairs. *Cough*

So there you have “popping into being”. As might be expected from an untestable and highly entertaining idea from the realms of pure creativity it is full of preposterous nonsense and downright contradiction.

But because this fairy story is labelled “Science” many swallow it without bothering to read the fine print. And for many on the Left, or fanatical atheists like Stepehn Hawking and Richard Dawkins, anything that ejects God from the room is axiomatically justified.