is there such a thing as nothing apart from something?

when you say everything does that include nothing?

if nothing can't be destroyed, does that mean that nothing is conserved?   


since the universe is expanding do you think that everything is becoming nothing? since the density of the universe is decreasing and the volume of the container of the universe is infinite, therefore a constant divided by a number approaches zero as the number approaches infinity.

Quote from: Katia on June 19, 2007, 07:45:26 PM
is there such a thing as nothing apart from something?

when you say everything does that include nothing?

if nothing can't be destroyed, does that mean that nothing is conserved?   


since the universe is expanding do you think that everything is becoming nothing? since the density of the universe is decreasing and the volume of the container of the universe is infinite, therefore a constant divided by a number approaches zero as the number approaches infinity.

Not again!

You asked for it:
NONE of the above...

I think the middle one makes sense, and I'll vote yes on that one. For now.

seriously though, Ah'll be beack...

according to the Taoists, yes. being comes from non-being. then returns to it.

source of origin kinda thing.

yes, it is conserved, according to the Tao doctrine.

Well, it's hard to avoid puns when you do the subject/object thing with 'nothing'...

"nothing is conserved" is as good an example as any. The double-negative (OR NOT!  ) of 'nothing can't be destroyed' has some entertainment value too...

In the conventions of previous threads on here, 'nothing is a kind of something', so #1, gets the NO vote for me.
Or not. 

My real answer is "MU".

Well... according to current thinking, the universe may or may not continue to expand... but it will certainly decay.  All matter will cease to exist some time in the distant future.  Then... all that will be left is "nothing".

Cindi

Per Ell's post:
Vedic sages, millenia ago, posited that source, (or something akin to Higgs' Boson) refers to its object (a Universe, matter, fermion) in an infinite feedback loop, which might be visualized as what you get when you point a video camera into another one and look at the monitor...

zero being the other side of infinity, in maths terms... I like part 3 of the question too.

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Quote from: Cindi Jones on June 19, 2007, 09:18:50 PM
Well... according to current thinking, the universe may or may not continue to expand... but it will certainly decay.  All matter will cease to exist some time in the distant future.  Then... all that will be left is "nothing".

Cindi

I've read different views on that one, "no doubt". The proton has not been shown to necessarily decay... *note my careful wording* Even if 'all matter will cease to exist', that will give 'nothing', HOW?

And the stuff I've been reading indicates the possibility that once this ultimate decadence 'occurs', it will all begin agin, Finnegin... that deaths of Universes always produce births, cycles within cycles...

et cetera
ad infinitum



nota

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Ok, what is our cosmology here? Is it flat? Or, how curved is it? What about Einstein's Lambda, aka The Cosmological Constant (or fudge factor) (which he deemed to be his biggest blunder, but which some believe now to make a lot of sense... {more later})?

And, what if this Universe, the one we know and love, 3 spacial, 1 temporal, our space-time, was once something that might look like zero dimensionality, a point embedded in, say, a membrane of a whole lotta other dimensionalities, that decided to say, 'well, let's get this party started'?

What are the implications of the 'end' of that process? Does it go all the way out there and come back?

NO MORE NOTHING....PLEASE

I got plenty o nothin
and nothin's plenty for me

gershwin bros

nothing is what I want, a true zen saying

frank zappa, dummy up, roxy & elsewhere