Something v. Nothing

Why are we here?

Why does anything exist?

How did matter win the war with antimatter?

The Qualitative Research Group at Northwestern University concludes, “the energy we encounter and use everyday has always been with us since the beginning of the universe and always will be with us. It just changes form all around us. That is called the law of conservation of energy.” The Big Bang Theory suggests that this energy began almost 14 billion years ago, so it had a beginning, we think, so why no ending? Why can’t energy fade and die out?

The US Energy Information Administration claims that “energy is neither created nor destroyed.” Then where did it ultimately come from? It exploded out of nothingness at the singularity we call The Big Bang? From what I can tell, quantum mechanics offers no better explanation. Looking at the subatomic scale we still see particles reacting to energy fields that seem a universal constant. 

I’ve followed Dr. Roger Penrose for years and I believe where he ends up is with infinite “big bangs,” claiming that the last one 13.8 billion years ago was the last in a series. Others conclude that we are merely one universe within a countless multiverse. Still, some philosophers assert that we are merely a dream of Universal Consciousness, questioning our physical existence at all. Is our physical reality even real? 

Where I see physics, math and science fall short is in the realm of the paranormal/supernatural/metaphysical/spiritual. Academia has yet failed to quantify anything beyond the boundaries of the physical realm. In other words, they have quantified through mathematics the so-called laws of nature, things that are measurable even subatomic particles. But, there again, all of these concepts, including astrophysics, are human constructs. Quantum mechanics is just a concept to help humankind explain what we can observe and measure at the subatomic level. But, there again, things beyond this physical realm seem to exist all around us, concepts like the fifth or sixth dimensions, consciousness or spirituality, that our science, our logic and reason fail to explain or even to prove. 

Does spirituality exist at all? What are souls? Where does consciousness reside? Science cannot tell us. Not yet, anyway. We live in a very exciting time with science stretching our understanding of the cosmos.

It started with with the Hubble space telescope, and what it found to be the “Hubble constant“ where the expansion of the universe appears to have happened faster near the Big Bang than we had previously thought. Currently, the James Webb space telescope has been shedding more light on the problem and has verified the Hubble constant. Scientists believe we may need to rethink physics altogether. We need to find new ways to explain what we are discovering at a very rapid rate.

That’s why I say it’s such an exciting time because of the new discoveries thanks to our technology. But we may never have the answer to the why questions that we are seeking. It could be that the answers are bigger than our intellect and ability to reason. Maybe it will take a higher evolved type of human in the distant future to gain the understanding or possibly create a new technology that explains the unexplainable. For now, humankind is left with questions that cannot be answered.

UPDATE: When I wrote this over two days, I had Euclid in my notes, but failed to mention it. This European Space Agency-led project has the audacious goal of mapping the known universe. The current mosaic of the night sky, impressive as it is, only covers a minuscule percentage of the whole, thus far. But the HD images, along with Hubble and JWST images, will help us gain new understanding of the cosmos.