A Universe From Nothing

Book Review : A Universe From Nothing

Author : Lawrence M. Krauss

My Rating : 5 out of 5 stars

The complete title of the book is “A Universe From Nothing : Why there is something rather than nothing”.

Most of the books that aim to explain physics to a lay person are written about prevailing complex theories. Only rarely, a scientist writes a book aimed at a lay person and at the same time, explaining his or her original ideas in theoretical physics. This is one of those rare books.

Theoretical physicist Dr. Krauss has a very clear purpose in writing this book. He wants to prove to us that it is not really necessary to believe in God. Please note the phrasing. This book doesn’t aim to prove that God does not exist. Rather, it argues that, perhaps the most fundamental philosophical and theological question does not require a belief in any supernatural being. That question is, “Why there is something rather than nothing?”.

Now that is a loaded question. First of all, defining “nothing” is not at all straight-forward. More importantly the reasons behind this question, and many different implications around it, will lead to a discussion that is completely out of scope for a blogpost. (Even if I had the competence to explain that, which I clearly don’t have.)

Superficially, the general premise of that question is, a Creator is needed to create something. Whether you believe in a God as defined by a religion, or you believe in a supernatural spiritual being - whatever that may be, that’s “who” created the Big Bang, or at a more fundamental level - the laws of physics. What Dr Krauss is driving towards is, even that is not necessary. “Something” will always pop out of “nothing”. Because, “nothing” is unstable!

Now there seems to be a lot of semantic jugglery going on there. Trust me, that's not the case. This is a book about advanced physics, not philosophy. The main argument being, as quantum mechanics predicts and it has been verified, at the sub-atomic level quantum fluctuations can cause “something” to be created out of “nothing”. But can it create a whole new universe?

To answer that question, Dr Krauss takes us on a fast paced tour starting with the general theory of relativity, how it predicted a non-static universe and based on Hubble’s observations, an eventual realization of the Big Bang. While these advances were happening in Cosmology, quantum mechanics was being developed and was offering a strikingly non-intuitive understanding of the subatomic world. As we know, these two theories have not been able to get married to each other, and we do not yet have a theory of everything. Still, Dr Krauss argues that these advances have sufficiently increased our understanding to see that nothing can produce something, even a universe, or infinite parallel universes.

It’s an argument that’s not easy to grasp, and not at all easy to explain. I am not sure I understood it perfectly. But I can see how it might be, because of Dr Krauss’ efforts. This philosophical argument makes the book stand out from many other popular science books. 

Another interesting new aspect I learned here, was about the future of this ever expanding universe. As Dr Krauss explains, many many billions of years from now, future cosmologists would simply not have any evidence that Big Bang happened. All they will be able to see is their local galaxy cluster, as all galaxies would have sped away far enough to be completely undetectable, no matter what technological advances happen. It’s a bleak picture.

This is a remarkable book. Dr Krauss has courageously taken the atheist argument to a whole new level and made it reasonably accessible to a layman like me. I had to read a few paragraphs again to make sure I understood them. So it wasn’t a completely smooth reading for me. In spite of that, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and highly recommend it.