Ethan Seigel, in his Starts With A Bang blog explains how everything comes from nothing.

Bill Gill

Ethan ran foul of more than one or two Quantum physicists with that one.

Read Sascha reply which is the second comment and he is right this becomes chicken and egg argument if you argue that it is because this or that happened you have a different question to answer "Why is anything possible at all".

These sorts of blogs are useful to explain the concepts of how these sorts of things are scientifically possible to the lay person but science does not say that is definitively how it occured.

As a summary of an explanation of how everything may have come from something, i.e. pre-existing space-time, laws of physics, quantum fields, it's a good read. It points out quite well how, as though the supposed event wasn't marvelous enough, we see the inclusion of the misleading word 'nothing' which has been re-defined to mean 'something'.

If all the scientists who write books for the edification of "hitch-hikers" explained as clearly as that what they mean by nothing there would be fewer non-scientists shaking their heads and saying "that aint right". Of corse that might mean that there would be less heated discussion on this kind of forum; so I suppose it's swings and roundabouts, or something.

BTW, what happened to the earlier part of this thread? Is it just me, or has it vanished?

If you mean the earlier thread that we carried on for a long time, I dunno. But this thread is new. I just didn't want to take the trouble to look for the original.

By the way Orac, I was in fact thinking that the idea that Seigel was pushing is still speculative.

Bill Gill