According to prominent mathematicians, if you divide zero by zero you get the set of real numbers.  A mathematician set me that precise problem and I got the set of real numbers by a slightly dodgy method.  He confirmed to me that I had the correct answer, and also confirmed to me my suspicions that my method was not rigorous enought.  He then told me a rigrorous method:
Plot a/b on the y-axis versus b on the x axis where a is (presently) a constant.
You get a hyperbola.
Now, limit both a and b to zero.
the hyperbola approaches the axes as you do so, until you are left with a number line from which you can select any real number.

Try it.

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Besides which, you can only apply the out of nothing comes nothing in an extant universe.  This “nothing” is not nothing at all.  Suppose you were to isolte a part of the universe we lived in in a sealed box, within which there were no objects.  You might say there was nothing in it.  However, there is a universe outside it and therefore you have a universe, not a universe and nothing.  Nothing would be anticommutative in this way:
Starting with absolutely nothing, add stuff:
nothing + stuff = stuff.

however, in the sense that x + y = x +y,
If there is nothing to which is subsequently added stuff, this does not equal nothing plus stuff.
If you have stuff, you don’t have nothing.

Starts singing Billy Preston; Nothing from nothing leaves nothing, you got to have something if you want to be with me…

i like that song

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Aha, what I am saying there is if we have a universe and nothing else, we have a universe.  What we don’t have is no things at all (nothing).  Further, in that boxed off section of the universe time is still ongoing since there is the potential for that box to be destroyed or opened at some point if there was the potential to construct that box at some time.  So there is potential for events to hapen later in that box so there is still a continuity of time in that box - as opposed to there being nothing in that box.  Also, you would have to limit the size of the box to zero in order to enure that there was no space in there (space is a thing).  But these last are redundant given that if you have two things (a universe and a box containing neither objects nor energy, you have two things as opposed to nothing (no thngs at all) and the third thing is the you that has these other two things, however I was including you in the universe so it’s only two things really (one if you count the box as being in the universe).

zarcus - 27 August 2007 11:16 AM

‘Something’ is only ‘something’ because it is observable.

This is not correct; it confuses epistemology with metaphysics. It’s true that we can only know about things if they are observable (and observed). But that has nothing to do with whether they exist or not. There could very well exist things that are unobservable. For example, if there are parallel universes there would exist things that are not observable.

How does that relate to whether you can have nothing and something simultaneously or not.  If you have things that are not observable then you almost certainly have things (that are not observable) - you don’t have no things (that are not observable) therefore you simultaneously don’t have nothing.

narwhol,

what youre saying is that nothing is an abstract concept that doesnt apply to the universe?

dougsmith - 27 August 2007 11:35 AM

There could very well exist things that are unobservable.

Shh, the creationists might hear you…

Dougsmith
But that has nothing to do with whether they exist or not. There could very well exist things that are unobservable. For example, if there are parallel universes there would exist things that are not observable.

‘Nothing’ can not exist, only in concept. ‘Nothing’ is ‘something’ in a stable state. Therefore, ‘Nothing’ does in fact exist, but we can not observe it, so it can not be ‘something’.

So “something” is the solid form of “nothing?”

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morgantj - 27 August 2007 11:52 AM

zarcus - 27 August 2007 11:48 AM

‘Nothing’ is ‘something’ in a stable state.

Is this similar to saying “something is the solid form of nothing?”

Yes!

:grin: