Griffin and Tyrrell

The mystery of nothing

OUR BEST scientists describe the material world as a set of unseen ‘probability waves’ that appear to collapse into particles only when we observe or measure them. This applies to everything from the smallest known particles, quarks, to all the matter raging in the zillions of nuclear furnaces that we call stars. Quantum particles, the smallest physically realizable units of matter, are constantly appearing and disappearing, but where do they go? Even more mysterious, why and how do they always reappear in a different place? (In quantum physics this disappearance and reappearance is known as oscillating.)

     When physicists say that the Universe came from an infinitesimally small, infinitely hot, infinitely dense, something – the singularity – where did the singularity come from? They don’t know. Why did it appear? They don’t know. Is it an eternal occurrence? They don’t know. When physicists say the singularity came out of 'nothing', that too is an insufficient explanation, unless they can explain how both energy and information can arise from nothing. (Our book explains what nothing really is.)

    When scientists use the term ‘singularity’ to explain where the cosmological Big Bang came from, they are using what is known as a holding term: they can’t yet explain it. (The word ‘God’ is also a holding term in this sense.) How matter and consciousness arose from nothing are deep, critical questions for physicists because physics cannot develop further without answering them. Consequently they are questions for all truth seekers.
 
     You can read our answers to these questions, including the explanation for what the 'nothing' is that physicists say existed before 'something' first appeared, in our new book, Godhead: The brain's big bang.