[extropy-chat] Nothingness and that Infinite Chain of Causes thingy.

[scerir]

From: "A B" 
The reason that I insist that a Multiverse exists, 
is based on the observations that our Universe 
is approximately 15 Billion years old. 
If Nothingness behaves as I suggest, 
then the first "something" [the first 
Universe if you like] should be infinitely 
(or nearly infinitely) old.


According to Vilenkin there must have 
been a beginning (an initial singularity) 
to the inflation of spacetimes
http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9312022
http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9403004
According to Guth the above is likely
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0301199
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0101507
But according to Aguirre & Gratton
http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0301042
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0111191
it is not so obvious that there must 
have been a beginning of time, it is
possible there is a 'background' spacetime
(your 'nothing', or 'nothingness') 
developing bigbang-like regions, or
universes, each having its own time arrow,
something that also Schulman thought
http://www.arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/9911101