this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2024
59 points (90.4% liked)

Ask Lemmy

27240 readers
2431 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] rikudou@lemmings.world 44 points 1 week ago (3 children)

No one knows, it's unlikely we ever will. There's stuff and that's why you can even ask this question. If there wasn't anything, you wouldn't be able to ask anything. It happened, so now we have to deal with it.

[–] parody@lemmings.world 1 points 23 hours ago

10/10

Love it

[–] credo@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Your last sentence should become some kind of philosophy.

[–] dwindling7373@feddit.it 4 points 1 week ago

Look up Phenomenology.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Sasha@lemmy.blahaj.zone 40 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

Ex physicist here: Fucking no clue, but here's two neat ideas

  1. Because there has always been things. Basically it's entirely possible the universe just kind loops around given enough time, there are a few really interesting ways to do this but the classic one is where the big bang reverses and there's a bug crunch before a new big bang. That's not very likely based on our observations, but there are other more mathematically complex ways to have a cyclical universe, and they don't necessarily require having a defined beginning.

  2. Because nothingness is unstable. Basically, if there's a concept of nothingness, no energy, particles time or space, but it's possible for little universes to occasionally exist and disappear really quickly, then it's possible that our universe suddenly popped into existence, got really fucking big before it could disappear again and then got stuck existing. This is based on the highly advanced area of physics called making a wild fucking guess.

I'd say most likely that we'll have to be satisfied with that not being a question that can be answered. Much in the same way that we can't answer the question of why the laws of physics look the way they do, we can just describe what they currently are.

[–] Earflap@reddthat.com 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

There's a third option: Black holes create new universes through some as yet undiscovered process. Then your existence just becomes a statistical eventuality, as do every other life that you could ever live.

[–] dwindling7373@feddit.it 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

There's a fourth option: every reference to the mystical properties of black holes on lemmy creates new universes through some as yet undiscovered process. Then your existence just becomes a statistical eventuality, as do every other life that you could ever live.

[–] GBU_28@lemm.ee 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] Matriks404@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

It's a mega mind!

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 20 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?

[–] dwindling7373@feddit.it 12 points 1 week ago

You got us!

starts to dissolve

[–] atempuser23@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago

“In the beginning the Universe was created. This had made many people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.” "

Douglas Adams

[–] flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyz 9 points 1 week ago (3 children)

No one knows. I really want to know, but the current understanding takes us back only to the big bang. Not why it happened or why anything exists at all.

The Anthropic Principle is at work here. If nothing existed we wouldn't be here to ask why it exists.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] logos@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 week ago
[–] NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] untorquer@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

The worst part is we're here now and most of us are intrinsically forced to deal with whether we want to or not.

[–] chaosCruiser@futurology.today 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

The universe feels like a pretty whimsical place, so why not? Might as well try it out. If it sucks, you can always let everything crash into a singularity and start over.

[–] Berttheduck@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 week ago

Beat me to it. Why not was my answer to this question too.

[–] ouRKaoS@lemmy.today 6 points 1 week ago
[–] Cephalotrocity@biglemmowski.win 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Because when there's nothing there is literally no meaning. Prior to the Big Bang there was no Entropy, no Time, no Matter or Energy. You cannot really discuss what happened then because it would be nonsense. You can't even ask 'how long before the BB did the nothing exist?' because there was no time, so the answer is like dividing by zero. The BB brought all that into existence so by necessity anything must exist for your question to even have meaning.

To answer your question more directly: because nature abhors a vacuum (even though there was no vacuum before the BB because that would have been a 'something').

[–] dwindling7373@feddit.it 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Prior to the Big Bang there was no Entropy, no Time, no Matter or Energy

Is there a consensus on this or you are just simplifying for the sake of simplifying?

[–] Cephalotrocity@biglemmowski.win 3 points 1 week ago (2 children)

As much consensus as there can be. The BB is defined as being the event that brought everything into existence and so there's no point in debating something that cannot be tested.

[–] dwindling7373@feddit.it 2 points 1 week ago (7 children)

That's what you did. We can't know is very different from "there was no this and this and this prior".

load more comments (7 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] logos@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago

I don’t even think there is a consensus on the Big Bang but if there was, then that’s when time began so “before” that is meaningless.

[–] jaggedrobotpubes@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

Aren't quarks made up of the nothingness, the vacuum of space, somehow vibrating? I feel like that's what smart people have been trying to tell me.

If that's correct, then the nothing is the source of the something.

[–] atro_city@fedia.io 4 points 1 week ago
[–] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Have you heard of the big bang?

[–] HeneryHawk@reddthat.com 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I have. Its the matter and antimatter thing. I wonder who put it there in the first place

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] pruwybn@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Because if there wasn't you couldn't ask this question.

[–] magic_lobster_party@fedia.io 5 points 1 week ago

Now the question has been asked and universe has no longer a purpose. The end stage of the universe is starting now.

[–] IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Because, to maintain "nothingness" the omniverse must balance matter and anti-matter.

Well, that became unbalanced because of random fluctuations.

So theres a pocket of matter and anti-matter didn't annihilate for some reason, I call it "plot armor" reasons, and that separated from each other forming 2 regions of space.

So the region of positive-matter, through randomness eventually formed our universe.

The region of anti-matter probably formed its own anti-verse


Ok I'm bullshitting, I'm not a scientist and I made up the whole thing mmkay? That's my amateur explaination of the universe. Fight me.

But like, philosophically make sense.

How do you get something from 0?

0= [+1] + [-1]

See? That's my mathematical proof.

Its my version of E=MC², but with the creation of the universe and anti-verse.

🤓

[–] rikudou@lemmings.world 3 points 1 week ago (2 children)

There isn't any anti-verse, normal matter won for reasons still unknown, because the big bang should have created an equal amount of matter and antimatter. So plot armour is a good enough explanation for now.

But since there was less antimatter, it was all annihilated.

That still doesn't answer OP's question, though, you can go further - why did big bang create more matter? Why did big bang happen? And if you one day manage to answer that, you'll have to ask why the thing that caused big bang happened?

The question simply doesn't have an answer.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee 4 points 1 week ago
[–] MojoMcJojo@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

Because it can. If it couldn't it wouldn't but it can so it does. Be can do, so do be.

Fuck all this. Let's get a second opinion from the nothingverse, maybe they know something we don't

[–] Shardikprime@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

Blame mesons , they fucked up the matter/antimatter balance in the early universe from being 50/50 to 51/49

As a result, we live

Sufficient to say, this has made a lot of people angry over time

[–] Apytele@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 week ago

because the demiurge thought it would be cool

[–] wheeldawg@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago

The question will probably never figure out.

I'm more about wondering about after everything now. When everything stops expanding and all the energy is gone, does everything collapse and cause another big bang? Has this happened before?

Is this "multiverse" many of us wonder about really just this same universe in different incarnations? Can any of these incarnations really be said to be "before" or "after" each other?

This is the stuff I ponder about recently.

load more comments
view more: next ›