The Ever Expanding Universe
“If Alan Guth is the man who answered the central question of human existence—the origin of the universe—neither he nor those around him seem terribly awed by the fact. ”
An interesting article in Discover about how the universe most probably began from nothing. Guth is a physicist at MIT who is interested in what occurred before the big bang, or as the author puts it, “Where did the stuff that went “bang” come from? What was it? Why did it bang? “.
I never fully understand this quantum physics stuff. After all I am a liberal arts type guy. I always find it fascinating, however. Pondering things like the origns of the universe makes one feel insignificant, yet at the same time, it is mind-blowing that we are here to ponder it.
Woo-hoo…this is getting some nice air time over at MetaFilter too. The more I think about this, however, the more I realize that the question hasn’t really been answered. OK, spacetime came forth due to some obscenely improbable quantum fluctuation which occurred in ‘nothingness.’ Well…how did this fluctuation even ‘know’ to occur? This new theory would beg that some sort of system/existence occurred before our own. And now we’re back to square one.
Comment by Marc | 4/25/2002