Physicist Lawrence Krauss Explains How Everything Comes from Nothing

in Physics, Video - Science | January 17th, 2012 8 Comments

Last fall, we fea­tured a talk by the hot-shot the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist Lawrence Krauss, “A Uni­verse from Noth­ing,” which answered some big enchi­la­da ques­tions: What is our cur­rent under­stand­ing 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?

The lec­ture gave a snap­shot of the think­ing laid out in Krauss’ new­ly-released book by the same title: A Uni­verse from Noth­ing: Why There Is Some­thing Rather than Noth­ing. The book just hit the stands, and right now it’s #51 on the Ama­zon best­seller list. Not bad for a text that delves into the com­plex mys­ter­ies of dark mat­ter, quan­tum mechan­ics and cos­mol­o­gy.

In case you missed the orig­i­nal lec­ture, we have post­ed “A Uni­verse from Noth­ing” below for your view­ing plea­sure. (It has racked up over a mil­lion views on YouTube.) And you can catch the video trail­er for Krauss’ new book right above. Find more great physics videos in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es and Great Sci­ence Videos.


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Comments (8)
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  • chilangado says:
    January 19, 2012 at 10:20 am

    i post­ed a com­ment here and it was delet­ed. why?

    Reply
  • gerdi says:
    January 22, 2012 at 2:34 am

    obvi­ous­ly too objec­tive. — all com­ments have been delete. http://www.opensopa.com

    Reply
  • Miguel Rodas says:
    June 10, 2012 at 6:40 pm

    I real­ly enjoyed this one too:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMGKEGrlwJM

    Reply
  • James says:
    June 14, 2014 at 10:55 am

    I had that the­o­ry years ago, it’s all log­ic. No mat­ter what every­thing must come from some­thing. Thus, some­where down the line some­thing must come from noth­ing. Noth­ing is still some­thing oth­er­wise we would­n’t be able to clas­si­fy it so the next ques­tion becomes, where did that nothing/nothingness come from? Is it real­ly noth­ing or just what we clas­si­fy it as?

    Reply
  • Andrew says:
    October 5, 2015 at 5:14 pm

    I don’t think Krauss real­ly answers this Ques­tion. When he talks about how our uni­verse comes from noth­ing. This noth­ing he refers to is a quan­tum vac­u­um. In this “quan­tum vac­u­um” under one of a dozen inter­pre­ta­tions of quan­tum mechan­ics, par­ti­cles pop in and out of exis­tence. The prob­lem with this explaina­tion is a quan­tum vac­u­um isn’t “noth­ing” it exists in emp­ty space, and needs time for par­ti­cles to pop in and out. And both space and time began at the Big Bang.
    He does­n’t even begin to explain how an event can occur, like the Big Bang, when time does­n’t exist.

    Reply
  • JLopez says:
    October 5, 2015 at 7:05 pm

    Krauss is bril­liant!!!

    Reply
  • Bob says:
    September 18, 2018 at 9:20 pm

    You are an athe­ist and do not believe in GOD! Every­thing you say is geared to prov­ing that GOD does not exist. On judg­ment day then you will know the truth!

    Reply
  • Scott Davis says:
    July 21, 2020 at 5:19 am

    “Bril­liant” as in noth­ing real­ly means some­thing. Am I more bril­liant if I say some­thing is some­thing?

    Reply

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