[unlearner]

"According to Hawkings, you can detect an event horizon because of the capacity of empty space to spontaneously produce particles and their anti-particles from nothing (which,incidently, is why energy is still conserved). Is that authoratative enough for you?"

Hawkings is authoritative. Where did you find such a quote from him? In your example, you still do not have something from nothing. You have something from something else.

From the link you posted: "Even a perfect vacuum at absolute zero has fluctuating fields known as 'vacuum fluctuations', the mean energy of which corresponds to half the energy of a photon. In other words, even a perfect vacuum contains energy. Here is another quote from your article: "Every field - even the vacuum field - carries energy."

It is debatable whether space itself exists apart from matter. That is why I asked about your position on a bounded universe. If space is a function or extension of the gravitational influence of mass that occupies it, then fluctuations in that space may be caused by this mass.

Find Hawkings or some other reputable quantum physicist asserting they have support for "something from nothing" and I will make my second concession to you. I may not buy their view, but at least you will have demonstrated that your "something from nothing" assertion is not out of the mainstream.

The closest I can find to this is http://www.summum.us/philosophy/dilemma.shtml where it says "Rumor had it that Stephen Hawking, the renowned physicist, was working on a theory that would explain how the universe came from nothing."

Of course there are ideas which attempt to explain how the universe could have begun from nothing. But there is a dearth of support. You simply cannot test it experimentally. So, at best, we are back to your history as science argument. But in this case we have no support for this initial event. Most scientist will say we cannot describe what the universe was like before the Planck Era.

Nothing cannot be simply empty space. You must have the absence of space and time and mass and energy. If you believe that something can come from this nothing, then you are being more a proponent of the supernatural than I am.

[donh]

Nothing cannot be simply empty space. You must have the absence of space and time and mass and energy. If you believe that something can come from this nothing, then you are being more a proponent of the supernatural than I am.

I am not an opponent of supernatural explanations. I am an opponent of supernatural science.

[donh]

Hawkings is authoritative. Where did you find such a quote from him? In your example, you still do not have something from nothing. You have something from something else.

Hawkings' view on this matter is even more radical that it was last time I looked.

This is from a recent Hawkings lecture posted on his web site:

"the universe would start at a single point, like the North Pole of the Earth. But this point wouldn't be a singularity, like the Big Bang. Instead, it would be an ordinary point of space and time"

By now, I expect you've googled up several dozen physics lectures that contain the phrase "something for nothing", a phrase in common use to talk about the fact that quantum particles spontaneously pop into and out of existance everywhere, all the time. The mathematics of NP-PN junctions in transistors, called Ebers-Moll equations, describe this phenomenon analytically. Ask yourself how there can be a current through an electrically impermiable junction, because you and I are communicating with each other through quite a few such junctions.

[donh]

Of course there are ideas which attempt to explain how the universe could have begun from nothing. But there is a dearth of support. You simply cannot test it experimentally. So, at best, we are back to your history as science argument.

Which, lest we forget, after much wrangling, you graciously conceded was, in fact, a valid way to do science.