Nothing isn't stable

Krauss finds something in nothing from ASU News on Vimeo.

I like Lawrence Krauss, I think he's a dedicated educator and a good one, not just because he's smart but because he's funny, human and most importantly acutely skeptical. He's got a new book out at the moment called "A Universe from Nothing" it talks about how something as substantial as a universe could emerge from something we would consider to be "nothing", yes I said "nothing", counter intuitive isn't it but it's an idea that has very, very strong physical evidence. This little video is focused on selling his book so it's short and punchy but if you want more detail on the topics mentioned check out the original talk that spawned the idea for the project in the first place here.

Like most things in nature reality as revealed by scientific enquiry is much weirder than our parochial intuition suggests, in fact our intuitions on most things are usually wrong as they are in this example. So, next time you find yourself thinking about the origins of our Universe and the question "why is there something rather than nothing" comes up you can suggest the (real) answer, as it turns out is that it's because nothing is highly unstable.