What is nothing?

Question

many billions of years ago there was no earth, or universe, so can you imagine what was there?, was there just nothing, if so what is nothing?Also we don't know how far our universe goes does it just go on and on without any stop, if there is an end , it can't just be nothing, as what is nothing?

Answer 1

hard to know cause there always has to be something, even if its just all black like space theres still something :S:S

Answer 2

0

Black

An absence of stuff

Lets see if the dictionary can do better:

‘Nothing (n) no thing; not anything; nothingness; a zero; a trifle; a person or thing of no impotance of value. *adv in no way, not at all'

Well that was helpfull, lets see if Wikipedia can do better:

'Nothing is the lack or absence of anything. Colloquially, however, the term is often used to describe a particularly unimpressive thing, event, or object.'
'In physics, the word nothing is not used in any technical sense. A region of space is called a vacuum if it does not contain any matter. But it can contain physical fields. In fact, it is practically impossible to construct a region of space which contains no matter or fields, since gravity cannot be blocked and all objects at a non-zero temperature radiate electromagnetically. However, supposing such a region existed, it would still not be "nothing", since it has properties and a measureable existence as part of the quantum-mechanical vacuum.'
'The concept of "nothing" has been studied throughout history by philosophers and theologians; many have found that careful consideration of the notion can easily lead to the logical fallacy of reification. (If one does not believe that nothing is no thing.) The understanding of "nothing" varies widely between cultures, especially between Western and Eastern cultures and philosophical traditions. For instance, emptiness, unlike "nothingness," is considered a state of mind in Buddhism (See Nirvana, Mu, Enlightenment). Existentialism and Heidegger have brought these two understandings closer together.'

There ya go, forget the dictionary, ask Wikipedia!

Answer 3

Look up the cosmological argument. It has some good stuff on this type of thing... although it sways more towards God etc.

Consider the Kalam cosmological argument for example:

1.) Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence.
2.) The universe began to exist.
3.)Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence.
4.) Since no scientific explanation (in terms of physical laws) can provide a casual account of the origin of the universe, the cause must be personal (explanation is given in terms of a personal agent)

This is just one of many arguments, and remember, this is just one view.

Answer 4

Black, hole, endless etc. do not adequately represent nothing. To the extent that we can explain them, they possess a meaning, a tangibility. Nothing is what we have no word for, because we have never experienced it and it is outside of our absolute imagination. Our only insights are: the Bible or God on one hand and a scientific assumption that a lineally progressing world must have a starting point. God knows what is nothing; and science insists that whatever we cannot perceive is nothing. The positions are not as opposed as they seem. Whatever is non-existent to you is nothing. As such love can be nothing to some people, peace can mean nothing; faith can be blank and eternity can be an endless hole.

Answer 5

In Steven Pinker's book "How the Mind Works" he stresses that the human mind is is very limited organ in a certain sense. I mean it shouldn't surprise us that it can't answer a lot of cosmic questions, it was designed to solve a finite set of tasks on a particular planet. It says "our minds evolve by natural selection to solve problems that were life and death matters to our ancestors not to commune with correctness or to answer any question we're capable of asking. We cannot hold 10,000 words in short term memory. We cannot see in ultra-violet light. We cannot mentally rotate an object in the 4th dimension and perhaps we cannot solve conundrums like free will and sentience..."

I would also add your question to that list as well :) Although I have been hearing that scientists are getting closer to answering that very question and that the new Large Hadron Collider will help them.

Answer 6

Nothing is the lack or absence of anything. "Nothing" and "zero" are closely related but not identical concepts. The term "nothing" is rarely used mathematically, though it could be said that a set contains nothing if and only if it is the empty set, in which case its cardinality (or size) is zero. Nothing differs from zero in the way that zero is something, a finite amount which is defined.

Answer 7

There has been no beginning in the sense that at one time there was no timeNor can there be an end to time (in our concept)
As we recoginise 4 dimesions: length, breadth,height, time so it must be that there is a further dimension (or more)
As we are encapsulated within those 4 dimensions we can only speculate about something which is beyond our ken.
But we do find ourselves doing just that, don't we?

Answer 8

Nothing is an absence of something.... If there was a "big bang" then where did the explosive force come from. There must surely have been such an intensity of "nothingness" that it had to "burst out" into something....

Answer 9

That is a good question. One of the theories on the cause of the Big Bang was that the absolute nothingness of the Universe caused an "accretion" of "nothingness" so profound that it exploded into matter. (My limited understanding of a highly complex subject)

Answer 10

You are scaring the life out of yourself - its something we do not know, probably will never know, in this life time anyway.

Just enjoy today, before you know it, it will be years ago, and then bang! Its a subject you cannot deal with anyway, so move on and concentrate on stuff you can deal with alter and manage. And have a good life!

Answer 11

Nothing is a bottomless bucket without any sides. Before you ask I threw the handle away.