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According to modern physics, the total energy of our universe is in fact zero, with matter and radiation contributing to "positive" energy, and gravity and othe
by dmitrybrant 7y ago
According to modern physics, the total energy of our universe is in fact zero, with matter and radiation contributing to "positive" energy, and gravity and other quantum effects contributing to "negative" energy. This is actually the reason we're able to say that our universe could have arisen from nothing, since only a universe with zero total energy can do that.
Therefore, by Occam's razor, we don't need another "mirror" universe to balance out this one.
- pgt 7y agoI had never considered it like that, but it feels true. Do you have some reference material for the statement that gravity and quantum effects are “negative energy”?
- dmitrybrant 7y agoIt's not difficult to derive why the gravitational potential energy must be negative.[0] For the cosmological implications of this fact, there's Lawrence Krauss's book "A Universe from Nothing", also "The Inflationary Universe" by Alan Guth, and Stephen Hawking touches on it in "A Brief History of Time." [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_energy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_energy