There Was Nothing, A Great Void, Absolutely Nothing...

[sandyRoe]

Then there was a big bang and the ejecta was propelled faster than the speed of light to fill the cosmos.
And some would say that my simple faith is far fetched. Is the account of the creation in Geneses any more unlikely than the scientific alternatives?

[beso]

Religion tells us that God always existed. Yet God would clearly have to be the most complex thing in the Universe. To use the watchmaker analogy, the watchmaker must clearly be more complex than the watch.

Science tells us that the Universe began with a single point of pure amorphous energy and then explains every process on the way to the complexity we see today in great detail.

[keyplus90]

“Have those who disbelieved not considered that the heavens and the earth were a joined entity, then We separated them, and made from water every living thing? Then will they not believe?” (Quran 21:30)

[LyndaB]

I'm with sandy. I can't see electricity but I know it's there

[naomi24]

//Things can -- and must -- be able to pop in and out of material existence, entirely spontaneously.//

'Must'? Why?

[Answerprancer]

"...then The Great Architect, he planned and he planned and he gathered it together in the palm of his hand, and a whole lot of nothing was turned into something" (or something like that, it's from memory and by Paddy Roberts)

[sandyRoe]

"Things can -- and must -- be able to pop in and out of material existence, entirely spontaneously."
I'm out of my depth here.

[sandyRoe]

Nothing will come of nothing: Speak again?

[jim360]

Why? It's related to what a Theory of Nature means, really. I think I might have said elsewhere that theories in Physics aren't a list of what forces there are, and what particles there are, and so on, but also about how they interact with each other. And Once you build a theory with interactions between particles it turns out that there are several -- indeed, infinitely many! -- ways in which these particles can spontaneously appear (usually in groups of three or four at once) and then disappear later. This is the "non-empty vacuum" -- and it always appears in any realistic model of the world.

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_state

[naomi24]

Not definite enough so it doesn't work for me. Sorry.

[jim360]

It's been observed experimentally -- see also the Casimir effect,

[Zacs-Master]

As soon as you bodfins explain dark matter, I'll be a whole lot happier.

[Zacs-Master]

Boffins. Bloody autocorrect.

[naomi24]

Zacs, I wondered what a bodfin was ... but didn't like to say. :o)

Night all.

[Zacs-Master]

What are the mirrors made out of?

[jim360]

Well, here's hoping that we can explain Dark Matter one day ZM!

Or, at least, that we can go from knowing what it is to know which of the 50-odd explanations is the correct one. Or perhaps none of the ones we have is right yet?

[Zacs-Master]

So...the mirrors?

[jim360]

What mirrors?

[ludwig]

I'm with you on this sandy. Both explanations sound equally ridiculous to me.

[Zacs-Master]

Erm...the ones in the vacuum in the Casimir effect.