The Glade 4.0

I definitely like the striving for answers part. I find physics extremely interesting. The problem comes when the inevitable clash with religion comes in. So while I have no problem with Hawking or anyone else believing they know how the universe began, it annoys me when he claims to have somehow proven it and does so in the context of a modern day Galileo while claiming there is no god. It's just silly and unnecessary.

Quantum physics in indeed very weird. Neils Bohr famously commented that anyone who isnt shocked or insulted upon first hearing about quantum mechanics hasnt understood what has been said. Einstein of course famously said that God doesnt play dice with the universe and had legendary debates with Bohr, arguing over quantum mechanics regularly. I'm not suggesting Quantum Mechanics is wrong or right, I am suggesting that to use it as a cop out answer of "that's how the universe was created" is just that, a cop out. Add to that "and so there is no god." is obnoxious on top of it.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

1) The second law of thermodynamics contains the implicit assumption that it can be broken.

2) Entropy itself is a property of matter based on temperature, which is also a property of matter. Prior to the Big Bang, there is nothing. As matter is anything which is not nothing, we have no entropy and so entropy, like time, has no meaning. Just as "before the Big Bang" has no meaning, because there is no time and no universe to exist, entropy calculations involving a span of time that includes the Big Bang are also meaningless. The second law of thermodynamics that we know only holds after the net negative entropy that you find problematic. It could be possible that we discover a law of conservation of entropy, whereupon the net negative entropy stemming from the Big Bang is eventually canceled by all of the thermodynamic processes over the lifespan of the universe, but that's hard to take data for as it involves the universe ending.

3) Speaking of the possibility of a law of conservation of entropy, entropy is often referred to as the arrow of time. We know time to proceed forward because of entropy. Suppose the Big Bang is the positive charge at the center of this electric field:



Our universe is the one where time flows forward in the +x direction. Could there be another universe that exists on the other side of the Big Bang in which time flows backwards in the -x direction, one in which entropy would always have to decrease with each thermodynamic process? Their sudden net positive entropy from the Big Bang would be just as problematic as our sudden net negative entropy (which would be equal in magnitude). Only, they aren't two separate universes. They are one universe, and both move in opposite directions along the same time axis. It's not such a bizarre notion. We can easily wrap our brains around moving backwards through time. Harder to conceptualize is the notion of time flowing "up" or "down," but the t→it transformation accomplishes exactly that, so it's hardly something that has never occurred to us might be possible.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Leonard: "This from the man who had to invent 26 dimensions to make the math work."
Sheldon: "I didn't invent them, they're there!"
Leonard: "In what universe?"
Sheldon: "In all of them, that's the point!"

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This is true, but not what "observable universe" means in this context. "Observable universe" means the universe starting from the Big Bang moment, which it is conceivably physically possible to observe, including even those parts that will remain outside observation because of the time and distance involved.

If we're going to say that not just the physical aspects of the universe, but time insofar as time is part of the universe started at the moment of the Big Bang, anything "prior" to that or outside which caused it will remain forever unobservable because it exists outside the context of the physical laws which allow us to do the observing in the first place. Ok, maybe possibly there might be a way to get around that, but there is not only no evidence of such a means, but no reason to even think that such a means might possibly exist.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."