Something from nothing

In Deanna Olfert’s letter of March 29 she makes it clear that she doesn’t share Gwynne Dyer’s optimism that we Earthings almost certainly share our existence with countless other life forms in the universe.

I agree with Mr. Dyer, and I hope that I live long enough to witness the confirmation of what would be the most wonderful and important discovery that we have made.

I think that Ms. Olfert has made a serious factual error when she says that nothing can come from nothing. Cosmologists were fairly sure that our universe evolved from the Big Bang in which everything we now observe was formed from a singularity in space.

And then in the 1960s two American radio astronomers discovered the cosmic microwave background — a type of radiation that permeates all of space and is the remnant of the Big Bang. Not only does it prove the Big Bang happened, but it can pinpoint it as having happened 13.72 billion years ago.

If Ms. Olfert insists that it is impossible to have anything arise out of nothing, I would suggest that she read Lawrence Krauss’ book, A Universe from Nothing – Why There

is Something Rather Than Nothing. Dr. Krauss presents elegant and irrefutable evidence that not only can something spontaneously form out of nothing, but that in fact it must do so. David Fowler Wainfleet