Lawrence Krauss Explains How You Get ‘A Universe From Nothing’

In 2009, Richard Dawkins invit­ed Lawrence Krauss, an inter­na­tion­al­ly-known the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist and author of The Physics of Star Trek, to talk about some big enchi­la­da ques­tions. What is our cur­rent pic­ture of the uni­verse? When did the uni­verse begin? What came before it? How could some­thing come from noth­ing? And what will hap­pen to the uni­verse in the future?

Krauss takes us back to the foun­da­tion­al work of Ein­stein and Hub­ble, then moves us through impor­tant break­throughs in mod­ern the­o­ret­i­cal physics, ones that have helped us unrav­el some of these big ques­tions. Give Pro­fes­sor Krauss 53 min­utes, and he’ll give you the uni­verse … and a few jokes along the way.

This talk appears in our col­lec­tion of 125 Great Sci­ence Videos. And you can down­load many free Physics cours­es from our big col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es.


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Comments (17)
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  • Thanks, Dan. We also just inter­viewed Prof Krauss down in Mel­bourne (Aus­tralia, not Flori­da) where he’s been vis­it­ing the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mel­bourne. The episode is enti­tled “Lawrence M. Krauss: Before and After the Uni­verse”, a part of the Up Close pod­cast series. It can be found here:

    http://upclose.unimelb.edu.au/episode/159-lawrence-m-krauss-and-after-universe

    Sim­i­lar mate­r­i­al, but in an inter­view over about 35 min­utes.
    Cheers.

  • I want to applaud this web­site as the finest cura­tor of free com­pelling infor­ma­tion. You real­ly do a ter­rif­ic job and I am enjoy­ing this lec­ture though it is worth point­ing out that his assump­tions are based on infor­ma­tion that does­n’t trav­el faster than light which is may not be the case with those awk­ward neu­tri­nos recent­ly. Oth­er than that it’s still one of the best expla­na­tions for some­thing from noth­ing though it’s clear lan­guage is being used in a con­fir­ma­tion bias sense and I sus­pect that the idea of some­thing and noth­ing being the only two states is an old par­a­digm of con­cious­ness. Good tim­ing though as I’ve been talk­ing about this ear­li­er.

  • khaled says:

    it is very good

  • william kline says:

    I have a few ideas that might be inter­est­ing but i do not have the math back­ground, nor the edu­ca­tion. Sad­ly when i went to school they did not let kids go at their own pace and inter­ests. So they turned me away from my inter­ests in math and sci­ence. Now i am too old to start school over and learn the specifics of what intrigues me. Any way my writ­ing you in to find help in solv­ing a cou­ple things that i have yet to hear on tv. I watch all the sci­ence chan­nels to the con­ster­na­tion of the peo­ple i live with. I would like to ask if you have any stu­dents that would be inter­est­ed in play­ing a game of 20 ques­tions based on string the­o­ry, black holes, mul­ti-dimen­tions, and oth­er things that i have yet to see on any of the sci­ence chan­nels. I have read many bios on the physi­cists and do not know who to con­tact or who would be will­ing to work with me on this. I have talked with many aquain­tan­ta­nces and they find that my ideas are very inter­est­ing but they lack the intel­li­gence to see my ideas through.if you can help in any way i would appre­ci­ate it.
    Sad­ly i am a 9th grade drop out with an iq of 143. They did not have the free­dom in school to help chil­dren who were high­ly intel­li­gent but extreme­ly bored with the struc­ture of school. But i have some ideas that i believe could lead to a dif­fer­ent view of the cos­mos. I feel that they get so close to the answers then fall short. If they could just jump a few more hur­dles they would get it. Any way if you can help or if you can get a stu­dent to help i would great­ly appre­ci­ate it, any help or leads would be so great­full. Thank you.

  • Kunal says:

    Iam jst a boy of 12th stan­dard ‚from 11th clas i begin 2 read more on the­o­rit­i­cal physics .and …I tru­ly appre­ci­ate ur lec­ture .…ur expla­na­tions are some how sim­i­lar with Richard P.feynman …which i enjoyed the most .…tru­ly com­mend­able…

  • ashutosh kumar pathak says:

    I want know more about uni­verse.

  • Seems its been tak­en down already..

  • Epicurus says:

    the pro­fes­sor’s expla­na­tion of the uni­verse com­ing from noth­ing is “quan­tum fluc­tu­a­tion”
    a quan­tum fluc­tu­a­tion is a tem­po­rary change in ener­gy,
    so, where did these quan­tum fluc­tu­a­tion occur if no uni­verse exist­ed?
    also, where did the ener­gy that fluc­tu­at­ed come from in a non exsis­tant uni­verse?

    • Scott Ferguson says:

      Good point! He seems to claim the fluc­tu­a­tion was in a “field of poten­tial­i­ty” then of course that is not “noth­ing”

  • Epicurus says:

    the ‘big bang’ expo­nents have a prob­lem with time. time,we are told, began with the uni­verse. Now, the arrow of time is not a pas­sive observ­er of change. it is THE mech­a­nism for change. you cant go from state A to state B with­out the mech­a­nism of time
    likewise,you cant go from the state of no uni­verse to the state of uni­verse with­out the mech­a­nism of time. No time no change.
    There­fore the uni­verse could not have arisen form noth­ing in the absence of time.

  • Albert Hollander says:

    I wish to state that I con­cur with Epi­cu­rus (above)argument and the prob­lem it cre­ates to the uni­verse from noth­ing the­o­ry. In oth­er words, laws of physics could not exist in the noth­ing state as they apply only to exist­ing mea­sur­able enti­ties. Time and its man­i­fes­ta­tion as change is a phys­i­cal law (poor­ly under­stood).

  • Joao Carlos Holland Barcellos says:

    The Jocax­i­an Noth­ing­ness can explains why the uni­verse came from noth­ing:
    http://pjpub.org/Abstract/abstract_pet_197.htm

  • Since every­thing in the uni­verse requires a cause, must not the uni­verse itself have a cause, which is God?

    There are two basic fal­lac­i­es in this argu­ment. The first is the assump­tion that, if the uni­verse required a causal expla­na­tion, the posit­ing of a “God” would pro­vide it. To posit God as the cre­ator of the uni­verse is only to push the prob­lem back one step far­ther: Who then cre­at­ed God? Was there a still ear­li­er God who cre­at­ed the God in ques­tion? We are thus led to an infi­nite regress–the very dilem­ma that the posit­ing of a “God” was intend­ed to solve. But if it is argued that no one cre­at­ed God, that God does not require a cause, that God has exist­ed eternally–then on what grounds is it denied that the uni­verse has exist­ed eter­nal­ly?

    It is true that there can­not be an infi­nite series of antecedent caus­es. But recog­ni­tion of this fact should lead one to reap­praise the valid­i­ty of the ini­tial ques­tion, not to attempt to answer it by step­ping out­side the uni­verse into some gra­tu­itous­ly invent­ed super­nat­ur­al dimen­sion.

    This leads to the sec­ond and more fun­da­men­tal fal­la­cy in this argu­ment: the assump­tion that the uni­verse as a whole requires a causal expla­na­tion. It does not. The uni­verse is the total of that which exists. With­in the uni­verse, the emer­gence of new enti­ties can be explained in terms of the actions of enti­ties that already exist: the cause of a tree is the seed of the par­ent tree; the cause of a machine is the pur­pose­ful reshap­ing of mat­ter by men. All actions pre­sup­pose the exis­tence of entities–and all emer­gences of new enti­ties pre­sup­pose the exis­tence of enti­ties that caused their emer­gence. All causal­i­ty pre­sup­pos­es the exis­tence of some­thing that acts as a cause. To demand a cause for all of exis­tence is to demand a con­tra­dic­tion: if the cause exists, it is part of exis­tence; if it does not exist, it can­not be a cause. Noth­ing can­not be the cause of some­thing. Noth­ing does not exist. Causal­i­ty pre­sup­pos­es exis­tence, exis­tence does not pre­sup­pose causal­i­ty: there can be no cause “out­side” of exis­tence or “ante­ri­or” to it. The forms of exis­tence may change and evolve, but the fact of exis­tence is the irre­ducible pri­ma­ry at the base of all causal chains. Existence–not “God”–is the First Cause.

    Just as the con­cept of causal­i­ty applies to events and enti­ties with­in the uni­verse, but not to the uni­verse as a whole–so the con­cept of time applies to events and enti­ties with­in the uni­verse, but not to the uni­verse as a whole. The uni­verse did not “begin”–it did not, at some point in time, “spring into being.” Time is a mea­sure­ment of motion. Motion pre­sup­pos­es enti­ties that move. If noth­ing exist­ed, there could be no time. Time is “in” the uni­verse; the uni­verse is not “in” time.

    The man who asks: “Where did exis­tence come from?” or: “What caused it?”–is the man who has nev­er grasped that exis­tence exists. This is the men­tal­i­ty of a sav­age or a mys­tic who regards exis­tence as some sort of incom­pre­hen­si­ble miracle–and seeks to “explain” it by ref­er­ence to non-exis­tence.

    Exis­tence is all that exists, the non-exis­tent does not exist; there is noth­ing for exis­tence to have come out of–and noth­ing means noth­ing. If you are tempt­ed to ask: “What’s out­side the universe?”–recognize that you are ask­ing: “What’s out­side of exis­tence?” and that the idea of “some­thing out­side of exis­tence” is a con­tra­dic­tion in terms; noth­ing is out­side of exis­tence, and “noth­ing” is not just anoth­er kind of “something”–it is noth­ing. Exis­tence exists; you can­not go out­side it, you can­not get under it, on top of it or behind it. Exis­tence exists–and only exis­tence exists: there is nowhere else to go.

    NATHANIEL BRANDEN
    The Objec­tivist Newslet­ter,

    Edit­ed and pub­lished by Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Bran­den, 

    Vol 1, No 5, May 1962, page 19

    Intel­lec­tu­al Ammu­ni­tion Depart­ment

    Arti­cle is also avail­able at 
    http://tinyurl.com/First-Cause-article

  • Andrew James McQuinn says:

    This is an absolute­ly bril­liant state­ment by Bran­den, and ties in well with the the­o­ret­i­cal sci­ence today of an ongo­ing mul­ti uni­verse. It is mind blow­ing to know using physics that our uni­verse has a mea­sur­able and pre­dictable life span (Big Bang through evo­lu­tion to final­i­ty), but more so, to log­i­cal­ly deter­mine it is like­ly an ongo­ing process with count­less uni­vers­es and count­less begin­nings and end­ings, and that it has ALWAYS BEEN THIS WAY! This is far more breath­tak­ing, yet still makes more sense, than the inser­tion of a mag­i­cal god who has thoughts and pur­pose, who endured an eter­ni­ty of bore­dom pri­or to decid­ing to cre­ate the only uni­verse and only life sup­port­ing plan­et with humans in its like­ness. To do this FOR US, and not even explain it in his love­ly book, that hap­pens to be flawed from cov­er to cov­er.

  • Andrew James McQuinn says:

    This is an absolute­ly bril­liant state­ment by Bran­den, and ties in well with the the­o­ret­i­cal sci­ence today of an ongo­ing mul­ti uni­verse. It is mind blow­ing to know using physics that our uni­verse has a mea­sur­able and pre­dictable life span (Big Bang through evo­lu­tion to final­i­ty), but more so, to log­i­cal­ly deter­mine it is like­ly an ongo­ing process with count­less uni­vers­es and count­less begin­nings and end­ings, and that it has ALWAYS BEEN THIS WAY! This is far more breath­tak­ing, yet still makes more sense, than the inser­tion of a mag­i­cal god who has thoughts and pur­pose, who endured an eter­ni­ty of bore­dom pri­or to decid­ing to cre­ate the only uni­verse and only life sup­port­ing plan­et.

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