The essence of the idea is that what’s here (i.e., this universe), in total, sums to totally nothing (i.e., zero) – exactly as it did before there was anything here. That’s a little of what I mean in the title of this book by “Zen of Zero”; later in this chapter I’ll give you more “hints” of what I mean – but I won’t complete my explanation until I get to the Z-chapters, one of which is entitled “Zen of Zero.”
Now, Dear, if your immediate response to my suggestion [that “what’s here (i.e., the universe), in total, sums to totally nothing (i.e., zero)”] is to conclude that I’m saying that there’s nothing here, then my response would be not only “Gimme a break” (i.e., be a little kinder) but also “Be a little more patient: I may be dumb, kid, but I ain’t that stupid!”
Seriously though, Dear, think, first, about how much electrical charge exists. You can charge your comb by combing your hair (as the plastic in your comb strips electrons from your hair, because of differences in the way electrons are bound in the molecules of plastic vs. in the molecules of your hair), but I assume you know that, when combing your hair, you didn’t create any electrical charge – you just separated the charges. That is, in total, your comb plus your hair has exactly the same electrical charge as it had before you commenced combing, summing exactly, in total, to zero electrical charge.
Similarly for all processes by which humans manipulate electrical charge, from making batteries to powering enormous power-transmission lines: we only separate charge; we never create it; in total, the electrical charge always sums to exactly zero. In fact, that’s a “general principle” of physics (called “the conservation of electrical charge” and based on an enormous number of experiments): electrical charge can never be created or destroyed, or equivalently, the net amount of electrical charge produced in any process is zero.
Further, I doubt if there’s a single physicist who would disagree with the concept that, in total, the electrical charge of the universe sums to exactly zero – although it’s rather difficult to test if that hypothesis is correct! In any event and in summary, what always seems to happen with electrical charge is that the “original zero” (charge) is just separated into exactly compensating positive and negative components.
This case of separating electrical charge will, perhaps, give you a first hint of why I use the term “the Zen of Zero” – although it’s only the slightest hint. The hint is this: the idea that electrical charges can’t be created but only separated is consistent with the Ancient Chinese idea of yin and yang, defined as follows [Footnote #1: Copied from
http://barbaria.com/god/philosophy/zen/glossary.htm]
Yin and Yang: Principle of polarity in Chinese cosmology, in which the opposite poles eventually blend and become one another in a cosmic connectedness.
Now, Dear, it would take me longer to explain to you why, similarly, there appears to be, in total, no momentum in this universe. Maybe in your physics course you’ve already seen that momentum is always conserved during collisions in isolated systems (i.e., the total momentum is constant). If so, then I trust you’ll consider it obvious that, if before the Big Bang the total momentum of “the universe” was initially zero (which seems to be a totally obvious assumption, if there was nothing present!), then the total momentum in the universe must still sum to zero.
In the case of energy, maybe the idea that the total energy of the universe must be at least a constant won’t seem too foreign to you if you’ve seen the first “law” (or better, the first “principle”) of thermodynamics, which states that energy (similar to electrical charge) can only be changed from one form to another; it can’t be created or destroyed. That this constant value for the energy would be zero then follows, if initially (before the Big Bang) the energy was exactly zero (i.e., if the universe was created from nothing).
And let me add that, Dear, that if the above idea (that the total energy of the universe is zero) seems “weird” to you, given that you can see so many things whizzing around with so much kinetic energy, then prepare yourself for learning about even “weirder stuff” in later courses in physics. Thus, from Einstein’s work, mass is actually “solidified positive-energy” (according to his E = mc2) and from Dirac’s work, “space” or “the vacuum” is actually “brim full” with “negative energy” (which led to his prediction of “anti-particles”, i.e., “holes” in the negative-energy “vacuum”, and to his being awarded the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics, along with one of the founders of quantum mechanics, Erwin Schrödinger).
But such details aside for now, if you can (at least for now) accept at least the possibility that, currently and in total, there’s no charge, momentum, and energy in our universe, then maybe you can begin to see what I mean by suggesting that there’s nothing here – and it must have been always so! Yet, if you don’t like the above demonstration, then maybe it would be helpful if I showed you the same idea using the simplest possible mathematics.
Thus, the challenge is to try to understand how ‘something’ could have arisen from ‘nothing’ – or stated differently, how ‘nothing’ could have yielded ‘something’. Mathematically, the question is: How could ‘nothing’ (i.e., zero = 0) lead to ‘something’, say represented by the symbol S?
Well, the answer to that question is obvious: 0 = S + ( – S ), i.e., nothing can obviously be separated into something plus its negative. Alternatively, with A = (pretty much Anything), B = Bosons, C = Charge, D = Dark Matter, E = Energy, F = Fermions, G = Gluons, H = Hadrons, I = (I dunno!), …, then “nothing” can be separated into any number of “things”:
0 = (A – A) + (B – B) + (C – C) + (D – D) + (E – E) + …
From this, I suggest that we humans experience “something” in this universe because the different parts (that sum to totally nothing) are separated. For example, the mass of all us humans is “merely” a particular arrangement of various “chunks” of positive energy, via Einstein’s E = mc2.
Thereby, Dear, the suggestion is that, “in the beginning”, there was totally nothing, nowhere, and with no time. And let me add that I expect that this original “total nothingness” still exists “outside” our universe, i.e., there’s totally nothing “there” – which is a meaningless statement, because without any momentum or energy “there”, then there is no “there”! This original “total nothingness” or “the original zero” had at least two options: sit there (nowhere!) and do nothing “for ever” (which is meaningless, since there was no time “there”) or “start bubbling” or “fluctuating” – which, when you study quantum mechanics, you’ll find that this “bubbling” is what Nature (at least in our universe) actually does!
[Footnote #2: Another hint about the Zen of Zero, Dear, can be derived from the difficulty of using familiar words to try to describe totally foreign concepts, such as “total nothingness” or “the original zero” or (hint, hint, “the Tao”, pronounced “Dao”). As (perhaps) Lao Tzu wrote (perhaps in about 600 BCE) in the book Tao Te Ching (“The Book of the Way and Virtue”): “The Tao that can be spoken of, is not the true Tao; the name that can be named, is not the true Name.”]
There is (or was), however, a critical proviso for these “bubblings” or “fluctuations” in the original “nothing”. Any fluctuation could occur (consistent with what I call not the “quantum mechanics” but a more general “zigblat mechanics” of zero) provided that, when “the total nothingness” fluctuated, sampling all “states” available to it, then always-but-always the total “positive” of anything created (such as energy, spin, charm, color, or whatever “quantum numbers” or “zigblat numbers” it “created”) was exactly balanced by corresponding “negatives”, in total summing exactly to zero, i.e., provided that always, in total, there was still totally nothing.
At least one of these fluctuations, however, apparently “broke the symmetry”, maybe permitting at least one “chunk” of positive energy to “condense” into a “particle” that “refused” to “rejoin” with its negative-energy counterpart. Once that happened, “all hell broke loose”, causing the Big Bang. That is, with the Big Bang, enormously more positive energy “solidified”, creating our universe, starting time, and so on.
Incidentally, Dear, as far as I can make sense of the data, our universe seems to be still exploding into the “total nothingness” that “exists” outside our universe. It may be, however, that “other verses” (multiverses!) have also created themselves “out there” in that “total nothingness”. But even if so, I don’t know of any reason why these “other verses” would be anything similar to ours, including even having the same “dimensions”. Other verses may even be “right here”, in different dimensions – in which case “here” would be a meaningless concept!
And though I wouldn’t be surprised if the patience of a certain grandchild is being “sorely tried”, I want to add a few comment about the importance of symmetry and about what symmetry might have been broken, leading to the Big Bang.
To begin to appreciate the importance of symmetry, Dear, first realize that any mass (such as a car) never “possesses” any absolute momentum or (kinetic) energy in the same way that it “possesses” a certain number of atoms. Thus, even though you may be driving along in a car at 50 mph relative to someone standing on the road, yet relative to your sitting in the car, its velocity, momentum, and kinetic energy are zero. Nonetheless, even in your “stationary car” you should take extreme care, because a barricade “sitting” on the road in front of you (relative to someone standing on the road) would have an enormous amount of momentum coming right at you! That is, Dear, bodies don’t “possess” any absolute velocity, momentum, or (kinetic) energy, only relative values of these “things”.
In fact, if stationary and moving observers are to agree that in any collision (e.g., between a car and a barricade) momentum and energy are always conserved, then according to a 1915 demonstration by a brilliant but relatively unknown scientist Emmy Noether (whose name rhymes with “mother”), it’s necessary that space and time have (or space-time has) “translational symmetry”, i.e., all descriptions of nature are independent of location and velocity of the observer. This “translational symmetry” is one of many “invariances” found in nature (and given such names as charge invariance, Lorentz invariance, and gauge invariance).
One symmetry that was expected but was found to be violated, however, is “parity”, the discovery of which led to the award of the 1956 Nobel prize in physics to Lee and Yang. It’s common to compare “parity” to left-handedness vs. right-handedness (which doesn’t seem to be symmetric in humans!), but actually, parity is related to the found-to-be-preferred direction along which a particular radioactive nucleus emits its decay products. All of which I mention solely to be able to say: perhaps the original symmetry that was broken was parity – which then would explain not only why the Big Bang occurred but also why you’re right handed!
But potentially to confuse you still further, let me say that I doubt that it was nonconservation of parity that was the original “symmetry breaking fluctuation” in the “original nothingness” that led to Big Bang. Instead, I’d have a tendency to put my money on the possibility that some “chunk” of positive energy (maybe the fundamental chunk of energy in string theory) “got hooked on itself”, or “tied in a knot”, or bound with some other chunk of positive energy (the original “homosexual bond”!) and was thereby unavailable to “mate” with it’s negative counterpart, which then broke the symmetry. And I make the suggestion that it was a “chunk” of positive energy that broke the symmetry solely from the result: look around you to see how much solidified positive energy (i.e., mass) now exists!
And if I’ve managed to totally confuse you with the above, Dear, then I would recommend that you just totally ignore it! On the other hand, if you are left with the general idea that your old grandfather suggests that the universe created itself from total nothingness, then that much will be quite adequate for now.
Footnote #3: And on the third hand (!), Dear, if after you earn your Ph.D. in physics and want to talk about the Big Bang being caused by a collision of a couple of the infinite number of (mem-)branes in eleven-dimensional space, then my first response would be “You talk; I’ll listen” and maybe my final response would be “Why don’t you tell me about the rest of it ‘when I’m older!’?”
But if you also picked up some idea that everything in the universe still sums to exactly zero, exactly as it did before the Big Bang, then so much the better. Then, maybe you won’t conclude (when your old grandfather suggests that there’s nothing here) that even he’s barely here – not to suggest that you won’t reach that same conclusion, but at least that you’ll base your assessment on different evidence!
Besides, Dear, if you’re beginning to think that your old grandfather has “really gone around the bend”, I’d point out to you that, subsequently, I’ve found myself to be in good company. For example, in his 1974 article entitled “Is the Universe a Vacuum Fluctuation”, which I found only recently but which was published in Nature in 1974 (vol. 248, pp. 396 -397), Edward P. Tryon (Department of Physics, City College of New York) demonstrated from available data that the total energy of our universe appears to be zero, “to within a factor of order unity”, depending on his assumption of the mass density in the universe.
In his paper, Tryon mentions that P. Bergmann earlier presented “a more sophisticated argument” that our universe must have exactly zero energy. Further, near the end of his paper, Tryon concludes the following [to which I’ve added the italics and some notes in “square brackets”, such as these!].
If it is true that our Universe has a zero net value for all conserved quantities [such as electrical charge, momentum, and total energy], then it [our Universe] may simply be a fluctuation of the vacuum [i.e., the original “zero” or “total nothingness”], the vacuum of some larger space [which stretches the meaning of the word “space”] in which our Universe is imbedded. In answer to the question of why it happened, I offer the modest proposal that our Universe is simply one of those things [that] happen from time to time.
Another example is the following quotation from p. 129 of the 1988 book A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking (who holds the same chair at Cambridge University that Newton held). In this quotation, I’ve again added the italics and some notes [in square brackets].
… that… raises the question of where the energy [in the universe] came from. The answer is that the total energy of the universe is exactly zero [although maybe Hawking should have written something similar to “seems to be exactly zero” or “theoretically must be exactly zero” or even “by the first principle of thermodynamics must remain zero, if initially zero”].
The matter in the universe is made out of positive energy. However, the matter is all attracting itself by gravity. Two pieces of matter that are close to each other have less energy than the same two pieces a long way apart, because you have to expend energy to separate them against the gravitational force that is pulling them together. Thus, in a sense, the gravitational field has negative energy. In the case of a universe that is approximately uniform in space, one can show that this negative gravitational energy exactly cancels the positive energy represented by the matter. [I assume that, with his use of the word “exactly”, Hawking is referring to Bergmann’s theory rather than Tryon’s calculation.] So the total energy of the universe is zero.
Now twice zero is also zero. Thus, the universe can double the amount of positive matter energy and also double the negative gravitational energy without violation of the conservation of energy… During the inflationary phase [of the early universe], the universe increases its size by a very large amount. Thus, the total amount of energy available to make particles becomes very large. As Guth has remarked, “It is said that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. But the universe is the ultimate free lunch.”
In the above quotation, the fellow that Hawking quotes, Alan Guth, is in the Physics Department at M.I.T. and is famous for his “Inflationary Theory” of the universe.
In fact, still another example is from a recent paper coauthored by Guth and published in a Special Section of Science entitled Einstein’s Legacy (on “the centennial of Albert Einstein’s most important year of scientific innovation”).
[I’ll omit the long quotation, which deals also with string theory.]
And if you could generally follow all the above, Dear (although it certainly isn’t necessary for purposes of this book!), then maybe there are a couple of other advantages for you.
For example, maybe you won’t be so surprised (as otherwise you might be) upon reading statement in news reports such as the following (from a Reuter news story by Jeremy Lovell dealing with the 2006 annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science and with the Large Hadron Collider to be opened in 2007 at CERN); in this report, the physicist Brian Cox of Manchester University is quoted as saying:
It could be that there is a whole new universe a millimeter away from our heads but at right-angles to the three dimensions that are here.
As another example, from the above you might gain another hint of my meaning for “the Zen of Zero” (namely, about the influence such thoughts can have on our experiencing life). In particular, there’s Einstein’s tremendous comment:
Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, [then] wearing stripes with plaid comes easy.
I’d even suggest that, if you can perceive that our universe might be nothing (which is now something) expanding into nothing (which is not yet something), then you’ll gain an entirely different outlook on life – which could be labeled as the Zen of Zero!