A universe from nothing - Lawrence Krauss - Barf

[Michael Mozina]

I got talked into ordering Krauss's book "A universe from nothing" and I'm just starting to read it. I'll do a full report on his book once I'm finished, but I'm already tempted to simply toss Krauss's book into my wood stove so at least I get a little heat and I get something useful for my money. Admittedly I only paid $6.78 for a hardcover copy of the book on Amazon (including shipping) and my purchase of a used copy is ultimately supporting the Goodwill rather than Krauss, but it's an excellent example of getting what you pay for. I'd say that his book represents everything that is wrong with astronomy today.

Krauss begins in the preface by wearing his atheism on his sleeve like a badge of honor. it's clear so far that his desire to redefine and misrepresent the term "nothing" is simply motivated by his strong emotional desire to explain how we got here in the absence of God rather than because of any sort of honest scientific effort to explain the big bang theory. I don't really care if one is an atheist or a theist, but such a preference shouldn't be the primary motivator of redefining and misrepresenting various terms to suit oneself. The fact of the matter is that you can't get "something from nothing" and the big bang model does not require such a ridiculous thing.

Krauss also engages in selective misrepresentation of historical fact with respect to Edwin Hubble and his actual beliefs as to the cause of redshift. Krauss also blatantly engages in astronomer's favorite "bait and switch" routine with respect to the real cause of Doppler shift, namely moving objects, and his misrepresentation of the belief that Doppler shift somehow supports his metaphysical "space expansion" claim (which it doesn't).

He's also apparently emotionally motivated to support the concept of a "flat" universe, not because it's necessarily flat (which I actually think it is), but mostly because he believes that: "a flat universe is the only mathematically beautiful universe." His attraction to mathematical beauty seems to be his driving motivation.

He's constantly misstating the facts by overstating things about the big bang concept like "all evidence now overwhelming supports" the model, while conveniently ignoring all of the failed tests of exotic matter theory in the lab, the observation of "mature" and massive galaxies where none should exist, h-alpha lines from galaxies where they shouldn't be visible in the LCMD model, etc.

He makes a really big deal about necleosysnthesis predictions being "one of the most famous, significant, and successful predictions telling us that the Big Bang really happened" and claiming that those predictions are "bang on" with observation. He then later conveniently 'assumes" that any missing mass must *necessarily* be exotic in nature because without making that assumption about the exotic composition of dark matter, the nucleosynthesis predictions no longer work right. So essentially nucleosynthesis predictions are only significant and successful and "bang on" if one makes a host of prior assumptions which cannot be supported by the facts.

I haven't gotten that far through the book yet, but already I'm bored and dismayed. It's very clear that Krauss has a strong anti-religious bias and he has an agenda that is driven mostly by a strong emotional attachment to "mathematical beauty", and his desire to promote atheism. rather than being motivated by actual scientific fact. I'm certainly not impressed with what I've read so far. I'll keep you posted.

[Zyxzevn]

I have seen the mathematical beauty in many other cases too:
The whole super-symmetry model is based on it.

It appears to me that the mathematical beauty is more important than being in line
with reality. So instead their belief convinces them to change our observations
and adapt them to the "beautiful" model that they want.

It started with the clock-work of the orbits of the planets, which were already
known by the old cultures. They were convinced that the maths was divine
and that this controlled everything that we did.
The push for perfection was so great that a Greek sect believed that everything
was divisible in natural numbers. So they thought that PI and sqrt(2) were fractions.
See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sKah3pJnHI
When someone proved that sqrt(2) was not a fraction, they killed him.

This same problem is now occurring in astronomy: the beautiful clockwork of mathematical idealism
fails in reality.
We can see observations that falsify the models.
Even proof that the maths is wrong in some parts.
(Like black holes are based on Newton's gravity, not Einstein's.)

This all breaks the belief of these astronomers that have committed their whole life in
supporting this mathematical ideal.
And just as 2000 years ago, they attack the people that confront them.
With bans in this case.
People never change.

[Michael Mozina]

It's clear from a glance back at history that mathematics acts to both convince and confuse in the field of astronomy.

Look of the whole Ptolemy vs. heliocentrism controversy. Aristarchus of Samos came up with a relatively accurate explanation for the heliocentric movement patterns of celestial objects in our solar system, including the correct order of the planets, 1800 years before Copernicus was eventually given credit for the idea, but the Ptolemy "faithful" were too enamored with the mathematical accuracy and intricacy of Ptolemy to accept the obvious problems with their model.

Likewise the mainstream clung to Chapman's mathematical models over Birkeland's *working* (in the lab) models of the aurora until satellites in space finally convinced them to abandon Chapman's models long after Birkeland was already dead.

Dr. Scott and Anthony Peratt have offered the mainstream mathematical models based on pure empirical physics to explain the movement patterns and the mass layout patterns of galaxies, yet the mainstream still desperately clings to gravity-centric explanations which require mythical forms of invisible matter to work properly.

Dr. Scott's Birkeland current model is of course a "better" explanation of the rotation patterns of galaxies and entirely consistent with all the evidence to date, but like Aristarchus of Samos and Birkeland, he'll probably be long dead and buried before the mainstream *finally* recognizes the role of EM fields in space and gives someone else the credit.

I find that I can only stomach a few pages of Krauss's book before I have to put it down and do something else for awhile. The one sided, egotistical, overly simplified and the over confident claims that he constantly makes are enough to make me want to hurl. It's like listening to someone extol the magnificent and wonderful mathematical virtues of Ptolemy all over again. Krauss' comments about the CMB for instance are so overly simplified that it's painful and sad. Nowhere does he bother to mention the fact that Eddington predicted the average temperature of space to within 1/2 of one degree of the correct temperature without evoking the concept of a big bang at all. Nowhere does he mention the fact that the early BB estimates of the background temperature of space were off by more than a whole order of magnitude either.

It's just a 'lead them down the primrose path' presentation that shows no signs of honest doubt or scientific conservatism. It's just sad IMO. It's no wonder that someone else gave that ridiculous book to the Goodwill already. I won't be keeping it either. It wasn't worth the $6.78 I paid for it even with the free shipping.

I don't mind an honest and introspective presentation even if it comes to the wrong conclusions, but Krauss's book is anything but honest or introspective.

As you note, he's like everyone in astronomy. He's simply fixated on a 'beautiful mathematical universe' concept and he interprets all of the evidence through that same "pretty math" filter. The same is true of SUSY theories. They can't understand why the universe is more complex than they expected and it doesn't obey pretty and nice mathematical formulas.

[neilwilkes]

And I wager that he also has no problem with the truth that the BB model also requires massive violations of the laws of Thermodynamics too - and will insist that the Universe is a closed system in the next breath without realizing the one utterly contradicts the other.
One of the biggest problems I think we face is the insistence on the purely mechanistic closed system approach, with everything magically coming into existence at once with entropy ruling from that point onwards. It's faith, not science.

[Michael Mozina]

And I wager that he also has no problem with the truth that the BB model also requires massive violations of the laws of Thermodynamics too - and will insist that the Universe is a closed system in the next breath without realizing the one utterly contradicts the other.
One of the biggest problems I think we face is the insistence on the purely mechanistic closed system approach, with everything magically coming into existence at once with entropy ruling from that point onwards. It's faith, not science.

Krauss's faith in a "flat" universe apparently all stemed from his belief that only a flat universe is "beautiful'". At the time he first wrote about the possibility he apparently didn't have a whole lot of evidence to support it. Originally his assumption about a flat universe was based on the concept of virtual particles in 'space' providing the necessary energy required to make it flat, and he briefly addresses the 120 order of magnitude problem associated with trying to predict the energy content of space from QM and VP content. I stopped again when I got to the Chapter entitled "The free lunch at the end of the universe". Apparently astronomers have no problem at all with grossly violating conservation laws of energy and dreaming up weird ways to misrepresent the concept of 'nothing'. I can only take so much of Krauss' silliness at any one sitting, so I'll keep you posted as I get further through the book. Suffice to say it hasn't impressed me much so far.

The book is actually pretty light reading since it includes no math, but as I mentioned before I can't seem to stomach very much of it at any one sitting, so it's taking me awhile to get through the book. I'm about half way through it and thus far I've seen no hint whatsoever that suggests that Krauss or anyone else even briefly considered Hubble's preferred model for redshift rather than simply "assuming" that expansion did it. I should point out that an infinite and eternal static universe is also "flat", even though Krauss never mentioned that possibility. The whole book is based on the premise that the expansion interpretation of redshift is correct, and mathematical "beauty" is the most important aspect of astronomy.

[Zyxzevn]

Inflation is flat, just like a flat tire.

[nick c]

"In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded" Terry Pratchett

[Michael Mozina]

"In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded" Terry Pratchett

That's pretty much Krauss's bizarre argument in a nutshell.

[Zyxzevn]

"In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded" Terry Pratchett

That's pretty much Krauss's bizarre argument in a nutshell.

Well it is very logical, because there was no space and no time.
So there was no matter either.

And because it is a singularity, we get 0/0 and we can get anything out of it and
still claim that it is mathematical correct.

And what we get out of it is an infinite universe with a finite beginning.
But that is impossible in chance, so we have infinite amount of
parallel universes to make this a possibility.
Thankfully we have a non-working quantum interpretation to make this seem justified.

Then to confirm our model, we use a background radiation that is not visible deep in space.
But use the local earth's radiation to fill in the blanks. This gives us a careful manufactured
perfect black body curve. And bang: there is our evidence.
Except that ionized hydrogen does not create black body curves when cooling down.
Only condensed matter does that. That is because hydrogen has clear separate electron bands,
which is the signature of hydrogen. And condensed matter has continuous bands, which produces
a continuous spectrum in the shape that can resemble the black body curve.

Then we only look at the red-shift of stars and such. And declare that it comes only from
movement.
First we ignore all experimental evidence which shows that plasma can cause redshifts.
And observations of stellar objects that show no change in clock speeds with distance (like pulsars).

And this could work, would we NOT use an inflation model.
The funny thing about inflation is that it adds energy in the form of space.
This means that light does not redshift, because space is added,
not speed or energy that is removed.
Inflation makes light travel for a longer distance. So no red-shift.

But nevertheless this is all undeniable proof, because we say so.
And if you say otherwise, you are stupid.
Because where else would the universe come from.

[Michael Mozina]

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/book ... rauss.html

Krauss seems to be thinking that these vacuum states amount to the relativistic-­quantum-field-theoretical version of there not being any physical stuff at all. And he has an argument — or thinks he does — that the laws of relativistic quantum field theories entail that vacuum states are unstable. And that, in a nutshell, is the account he proposes of why there should be something rather than nothing.

But that’s just not right. Relativistic-quantum-field-theoretical vacuum states — no less than giraffes or refrigerators or solar systems — are particular arrangements of elementary physical stuff. The true relativistic-quantum-field-­theoretical equivalent to there not being any physical stuff at all isn’t this or that particular arrangement of the fields — what it is (obviously, and ineluctably, and on the contrary) is the simple absence of the fields! The fact that some arrangements of fields happen to correspond to the existence of particles and some don’t is not a whit more mysterious than the fact that some of the possible arrangements of my fingers happen to correspond to the existence of a fist and some don’t. And the fact that particles can pop in and out of existence, over time, as those fields rearrange themselves, is not a whit more mysterious than the fact that fists can pop in and out of existence, over time, as my fingers rearrange themselves. And none of these poppings — if you look at them aright — amount to anything even remotely in the neighborhood of a creation from nothing.

FYI, at the level of QM, that NY times critique sums up Krauss' lame and utterly bogus argument very nicely. Krauss simply redefines the term "nothing" to suit himself, unethically so. The author of that review has limited article space so he doesn't attempt to dismantle his full 'magic' show, but he thoroughly dismantles the QM side of his argument.

The Krauss Magic show begins and ends with his inconsistent misuse of various misleading terms, his arbitrary assignments of energy states, and his misrepresentation of the total energy of a system as it is defined by GR (E=MC^2) and fixates on simple potential energy as it’s defined by Newton. It’s all done with a specific intent, specifically to confuse the reader and to misrepresent the scientific facts.

For instance, on page 95 Krauss describes the early universe as “hot, dense and in thermal equilibrium”. By its very *definition* “heat” implies a *net positive* kinetic energy. Heat is typically associated with a positive kinetic energy of particles. When we talk about the temperature of a plasma, its temperature is directly associated with the plasma particle speed/velocity and its corresponding kinetic energy. His chosen terms of “hot” and ‘dense’ implies that we start with a large number of fast moving particles compressed into a relatively small region. Thermal equilibrium implies that this compact region is not losing or gaining any of its existing kinetic energy or “heat”, so he’s clearly describing a net positive energy state.

Krauss basically misdirects the reader by trying to hide/ignore the fact that he started with a hot compact universe which contains net positive kinetic energy by definition, and to which he added a “bubbling boiling brew” of quantum energy, and he added more energy still in the form of inflation. He never had “nothing”, he always had a net positive *something*, in fact he had three net positive somethings which he had added together and falsely describes as a “quantum nothingness”. He even keeps referring to "Newtonian" definitions of *potential* energy in the expanded state only so he can try to ignore the whole E=MC^2 aspect of GR theory, as well as the energy required to generate expansion, when describing the total energy state of the universe.

The whole book is a deceptive piece of crap IMO. It was obviously intended to promote his particularly egotisitcal brand of evangelical atheism rather than describing actual science. His whole claim about "nothing" is utterly wrong at the level of physics. The purpose of the book is misdirected at religion and even the religious leaders he's talked to about his bogus claims have correctly busted his show as the NY Times article points out:

Krauss, mind you, has heard this kind of talk before, and it makes him crazy. A century ago, it seems to him, nobody would have made so much as a peep about referring to a stretch of space without any material particles in it as “nothing.” And now that he and his colleagues think they have a way of showing how everything there is could imaginably have emerged from a stretch of space like that, the nut cases are moving the goal posts. He complains that “some philosophers and many theologians define and redefine ‘nothing’ as not being any of the versions of nothing that scientists currently describe,” and that “now, I am told by religious critics that I cannot refer to empty space as ‘nothing,’ but rather as a ‘quantum vacuum,’ to distinguish it from the philosopher’s or theologian’s idealized ‘nothing,’ ” and he does a good deal of railing about “the intellectual bankruptcy of much of theology and some of modern philosophy.” But all there is to say about this, as far as I can see, is that Krauss is dead wrong and his religious and philosophical critics are absolutely right. Who cares what we would or would not have made a peep about a hundred years ago? We were wrong a hundred years ago. We know more now. And if what we formerly took for nothing turns out, on closer examination, to have the makings of protons and neutrons and tables and chairs and planets and solar systems and galaxies and universes in it, then it wasn’t nothing, and it couldn’t have been nothing, in the first place. And the history of science — if we understand it correctly — gives us no hint of how it might be possible to imagine otherwise.

I'm really glad that I didn't spend much on this book (<7.00) or support Krauss financially in any way with my purchase of a used book from the Goodwill. I still feel slimed and I feel like I wasted my time even reading such an unethical and irrational misrepresentation of physics, but I don't mind supporting the Goodwill.

[Brigit Bara]

Now we must find Michael Mozina a book to cheer him back up! (:

[Michael Mozina]

Now we must find Michael Mozina a book to cheer him back up! (:

Indeed.

[Zyxzevn]

"In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded" Terry Pratchett

Does this mean that the universe is female?

[celeste]

And still, even at Thunderbolts, we are not willing to go far enough.
If we want to disassociate the Edison who screwed over Tesla, the Einstein that stole ideas from his wife, the Lawrence Krauss that appears here https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/22/scie ... sment.html , from their ideas, we lose.

There are those who search for the truth, and those who lie. The ideas never fall far from the tree, IMHO.

Notice we don’t have those issues when dealing with the far past. I.e., we accept that the Catholic Church that burned people at the stake, may have not been entirely forthcoming with evidence for a heliocentric universe. Yet we want to (because of our own arrogance, really), think that our modern ideas are so well founded, that they are immune from such ugly biases. This is not at all true.

[Cargo]

I don't accept the Catholic Church any more then the Satanic Cult. Thus perceived bias based on religion, or race, can be removed. And I think all time [space-\o/] is in question, both the last 100, and 10,000 years. Just ask the American Indian. There's 30,000 yrs of knowledge and observation in there, by some studies.