I just saw a documentary about Stephen Hawking's newest discovery: did God create the universe?
He discovered that the universe, before the big bang, was a black hole. he also discovered that a black hole doesn't only absorb all matter and even light, but also time. This means that inside a black hole, time stands still, time does not exist.
If that is true, questions like "who created the universe" or "what caused the creation of the universe" are non-sensical. It is like asking where is the edge of the earth. Since the earth is spherical it doesn't has an edge. An event can only have a cause when time exist. Since time did not exist before the big bang, nothing could have caused the big bang, because nothing happened before the big bang.
besides this he also discovered the answer to "where does matter comes from". Matter that appears out of nothing is not something that we are familiar with in our daily lives. But on the subatomic level, it does happen. Subatomic particles can appear out of nothing and disappear again. But a particle doesn't just appear out of nothing. When it appears also something else appears: anti-matter, the opposite of matter. It is like when you built a mountain of sand. To built a mountain you need to take sand from an other place and eventually you are not only making a mountain but also a hole.
So if matter is created also anti-matter is created and when you add them up you are left with nothing. That is how matter is created out of nothing. For me this means that matter/the universe/life is just an illusion.
I think all this is really fascinating and pops up more questions. If time isn't as solid as we experience it (a black hole can make time go slower and eventually stop), then what the hell is time and is our life really linear or can it be that everything happens at the same time.
and even though he proved that you don't need a god to create the universe, I can't stop but wonder "what is the purpose of the universe, why did it start, will it ever end? how many universes are there, ...?
First of all, I enjoyed reading all the responses to this thread. I love the INFJ intuition. Excuse my INTPness if I come across as frank, or combative, this is not my intention. I am trying to clear up some misconceptions and be helpful.
But I think I should clarify a few points. Stephen Hawking is a brilliant man, but he didn't discover (i.e. observe) these things. He's a theoretical physicist. Also, any objection I make to the reasoning provided in this thread is not a direct objection to his theories per sé, but an objection to the way they have been (misleadingly) presented by the documentary you referred to.
Subatomic particles do not wander willy nilly into and out of existence. The statement that particles come from nothing is a misguided reference to quantum mechanics, which states that a particle both exists and does not exist
in a certain state until observed. This leads to some very interesting and mindbending consequences, but is not analogous to saying that stuff comes from nowhere all the time, plain as day.
Antimatter particles
do annihilate matter particles when they collide, but there is nothing beyond speculation and hunches to say that the reverse happens (nothingness spontaneously coalescing into matter and antimatter.) Furthermore, a great deal of energy is released when antimatter and matter collide, which intuitively implies that if nothingness were to beget matter+antimatter pairs a great deal of energy would need to go
into the process. And where did
that energy come from? Finally, there is the big question of why there is so much more matter than antimatter in our observable universe. This is a big debate among the physics heavyweights and involves complicated conjectures hinged on dark matter and the like.
On black holes: Black holes
do "suck in" light and matter and time. (spacetime) Actually it is more accurate to say that black holes curve spacetime to an almost infinite singularity. But simply because time ceases to retain any significant meaning
inside a black hole, doesn't mean that time doesn't exist at all. Consider this: black holes do not let light escape and yet our universe remains illuminated with the light from all the stars, black holes do not let matter escape and yet I am sitting here on a chair of matter typing on keys of matter. (I presume that I am at least) Black holes have
boundaries. They are very distinctly bounded infinities. Yes, very trippy.
Now it is possible, theoretically, for closed time loops to exist. But it is as atrocious an oversight in logic to make a statement like "before the beginning of the universe, the universe was a black hole." as it is to say "before I typed this sentence, this sentence was about gorillas." Indeed an event can only have a cause when time exists, but have you considered that a cause can come about after an effect? This is a difficult concept to swallow (for me at least) but in any sort of circularly defined time scheme it is a necessary consideration. Okay so that was a bit of a lot to digest in one sitting, I have been studying this stuff for some time and don't really have it all sorted out yet. It is also difficult to explain things in English that cry out to be described by math, using physical systems as examples. So please excuse me if I'm not being clear, it is my fault.
Okay, on relativity: Black holes "slow down" time (warp spacetime) because of their massive mass-y-ness.
However they slow down time for someone inside the black hole
relative to someone outside the black hole. So if you went into a black hole and stayed there for five minutes your-time and came back, my great-great-grandchildren might already be dead. But to you only five minutes has passed. This does not mean you experienced hundreds of years while you were in the black hole, you experienced only five minutes passing by. So time being "stopped" inside a black hole doesn't really mean what it sounds like, because to anyone/anything outside the black hole time has not stopped at all. If spacetime is considered infinite or even circularly defined, even at the inception of the universe as we know it (i.e. at the time of the big bang or just before it,) the entirety of spacetime will not lie within the black hole, thus time is passing to some observers. This is because, with the advent of general relativity, we understand time and space as being intimately intertwined as one thing, indivisible from each other. If a black hole exists at all, it occupies some space and consequently some time. To imagine anything laying
beyond the scope of space and time is a task left for someone with a much much much more powerful imagination than mine. (And potentially no humans could accurately imagine such a thing.)
On that note I should step off my little soap-box and add, that after lurking here for a while I have come across great and imaginative ideas on this forum. I don't mean to be discouraging, but the problem with (especially physics) science, is that if you seek to jump to the last chapter and read the last few sentences to see if the main character died and how the plot turns out, you will inevitably walk away with at most a superficial understanding of the science and thus your intuition is free to run wild without any checks or balances to ensure that what you are imagining has underpinnings in science, or just fantasy.
))) very interesting
