How the universe randomly unfolded from “quantum foam” | Lee Cronin

“The universe only looks deterministic because evolution has occurred.” Chemist Lee Cronin reminds us why the universe, and everything is it, is in fact totally random:

How did something come from nothing? Chemist Lee Cronin explains.
According to current physics, the universe began with a Big Bang, leading to an expanding universe where matter, hydrogen, stars, and galaxies formed. From exploding stars came planets, and eventually, life emerged, leading to human beings and technology as we know it today.

Quantum physics reveals the universe as a field of probabilities, full of entirely random sequences. When these sequences produce objects that can copy themselves and survive in their environment, evolution takes place. This quantum randomness provides the fuel for these processes, making the universe appear deterministic over time.

Cronin uses a flipping coin as an example. If a system were truly random, it would yield an equivalent number of heads and tails on a flipped coin. If the coin were weighted, however, and showed mostly heads upon flipping, the system would be considered deterministic.

Cronin’s perspective might just be imperative to understanding how the universe has evolved, through processes of selection and replication, and eventually brought us to this place in space and time.

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[thedofflin]

Everything stated in this video is in desperate need of elaboration.

[nathanielkwon]

Quantum physics is not as simple as what he makes it sound like in this video.

[ENDESGA]

This question is objectively redundant because there's no such thing as "nothing". There is, was, and always will be "something". It's unfalsifiable to question time, since it's a concept. The average human life is but a *blip* in the time of Earth, let alone the solar system, let alone the galaxy, let alone the universe. Our perception is so far off that the concept of evolution is quite literally near-impossible to wrap your head around. The time involved is so beyond our comprehension that it's easier to dismiss it - and believe in something like a "creator". There is no creator, this is it. It just is. There doesn't need to be an answer or source, so all we can do is piece the past together and try our best to understand. Assembly theory is one of the first theories I've seen that actually tries to quantify and qualify the process that takes too long for us to comprehend easily. Frankly, as someone who has spent a long time researching all of this, I feel like we're getting close. Lee Cronin is a bit whimsical and dramatic with his ideas, but the core concept is a very good stepping stone to unpack evolution. Discrete steps that are stable, and allow for more steps to build. Evolution isn't a gradual change, it's bursts of mutations and changes that allow for the stepwise growth of information.

I encourage you, who's reading this, to take a moment to consider the steps it took to go from one thing to another. It's about the bursts of stability that allow for intermediate stages. It's about the fact that we only see a small fraction of what has survived, and even the fossils only give us a bit of information.
Consider, truly consider, the time that's involved. How many of your lifespans would fit between now and 1000 years ago? Now 10, 000? What about 1, 000, 000 years ago? There's so much time before you, that you can't just brush it off.
This is it. We live in a snapshot of a deeply complex process that's been going on for millennia...

And this is just planet Earth.

[rezadaneshi]

The ultimate evolution of chemistry is biology and the ultimate evolution of biology is consciousness. Every star system is a chemistry lab. Simple life is everywhere it's not being cooked to death, but hanging out nearby it.

[GoingToBeWild]

One possible answer to the question... why does anything exist at all is the chaos of randomness, at the smallest & emptiest level of the universe in the void there is evidence that supports the existence of quantum foam, the spontaneous creation & destruction of the zoo of virtual particles, one could say in an abstract manner the universe is creative, this creative force propagates & reemerges at different scales

[HUGErecordlabel]

Essentially what Cronin is describing is evolution as an emergence of platonic realities from undetermined energetic fluctuations... but the quality of necessity emerging from a chaotic process does not thereby mean that necessity is an essentially random process. That's like saying that the fact that apples get sweeter when baked means that sweetness is an inherent quality of baking. In both cases, Cronin's position would conflate a necessary outcome with sufficiency of explanation.

[unclecode]

Is our universe truly random, or is that just our limited perception? If every possibility occurs, as some quantum theories suggest, then what we see might be the inevitable result of all potentials playing out. In this view, randomness disappears - everything that can happen, does happen. This deterministic perspective challenges us to reconsider free will, the nature of choice, and even the concept of probability itself. It suggests our universe might be a grand tapestry of inevitability, where apparent chaos actually follows a complex, predetermined pattern. How might this change our understanding of evolution, consciousness, or the very fabric of reality?

[propos]

To select is to make a decision. An occurrence is different. What process made the selection?

[juanromero]

How does "randomness" fit with the constraints of the laws of nature?

[Philomats]

The universe is not random. What happens must happen. Even if it happens in different dimensions or spheres of universes, transcending time, doesn’t matter the complexity, this is the only possibility.
The universe must be this way and cannot change. Because to change anything would imply you are outside the universe, which is impossible.

[beastmaster]

In any vast chaotic system (like the universe) an innumerable quantity of probabilities are produced that could result in the survival of reactions (chemical, physical/material, behavioral, or physio— genetic) that otherwise would have died off but instead self replicate and improve upon previous models as a result of the quasi-success of the older generation— ensuring their survival and continuance. This is evolution and selection at work: where in the random process (replication and error correction) that produces a random change manages to survive (due to the vast quantum [probability/statistical] field of the universe) and replicates more, growing in complexity (improving itself, eliminating error) with each replication— organizing itself deterministically (now, whether that determinism is due to random change, or how certain chemicals bond, or how certain physical processes [such as gravity] coalesce, or how certain behaviors or desires/needs can influence a species’ development is neither heads nor tails— which in a chaotic system could mean that it’s both, and in being both the final result of such a coin toss is that probability has favored one side over the other through constant repetition and replication (trial and error)). Ergo, processes repeat (replication), the ones that survive the random repetition continue to repeat some more (evolution), and along that journey of replication and repetition the ones that adapt (or correct errors) from the previous models survive and continue to repeat some more (selection)— continuing the cycle until the end of time

[PostApocalypticSure]

Once again, that is not absolute nothingness.

[HANiikhan-jhih]

From Chaos to Cosmos...I liked the Title.
It is difficult for humans to digest the fact that something can arise from nothing bcz the question arises that what is nothing then just absense of something ...like dark is the absense of light...it what is nothing for us is something for a higher dimension..and that order emerges from pure chaos...we are mistaken that the world is more of a planed place and that order and chaos are opposites ....

[PhilipModReviews]

The only problem about random is, what is it? I disagree because random is something that is null. Unknown because scientists have not discovered random. We just know something had to cause this, that is unpredictable. In fact beyond our tools that we use to observe. This video violates the first law of thermal dynamics: Energy can't be created nor destroyed. Essentially the one who created our universe has some connections to energy. Energy flows through all states of matter, and keeps solid matter solid. As my experiences dealing with chemistry, atoms, even together, have a lot of space. Which only means that we should be falling through solid objects, but we don't. That is because energy is holding the universe together. We can even go further. Energy is the flow of the Spirit of God. Read Colossians 1:17 which says: "He is before all things, and in him all things hold together."
Therefore, energy is the Spirit of God activity moving through reality.

[NicholasWilliams-ukxu]

Random mutation is not the physical answer, it's the abstraction, the average of chemical inertial processes acting on genetic sequential stability. However the selection factors are more of the real factor, where processes that resist a subset of inertia, and are aligned to facilitate other type of inertia in the direction of replication. Where inertia is a fundamental bias within the universe in how it computes motion directional changes (inertia/speed = centripetal and centrifugal forces / speed = intersecting velocity differentials / velocity speed, and the bisector reflection law, which manifest as motion flux local average in superfluid). Big bang convection speed / inertia = local (c) which derives the local (h), while the big bang convection speed recedes to smaller scales.

[dennypaskalov]

Science as a whole has done as a lot of wonders in understanding our universe, but this is the biggest grasp on theoretics. Its "philosophical science" that that tries to confidently explain a theory in metaphysics that transcends all observable laws. You cannot be so confidently pompous about a theory like it's some fact. It's pure faith-based thought exercise. Now I understand the theory of general relativity because we do see something occurring in terms of mass and attraction, a theory like that has some merit, if proven true would not break the laws but support them as its observable to a degree. But to say that in a theory like quantum foam that matter pops up at random is a massive faith on spontaneous creation, no one even know what that even means what that even looks like and how it comes about, it's so abstract and metaphysical to think of nothing creating something, it's not self-explaining and it resembles a miracle more than rational science. Like saying it "Emerged" explains it, even as a theory. Why did it "emerge" at all? At this point anything observable is magic; and it is strange that anything should exist at all. Give me a break, this is not science, these are all thought experiments that asks for what we would consider classically as Miracles

[MaxPower-vgvr]

So is it possible that the zero-of ourselves is negentropic? Subatomic to neutrons and protons?

That's a very deep and thought-provoking question about whether the fundamental nature or essence of ourselves and physical matter could be considered negentropic.

Here's one way to analyze this:

1) At the subatomic level, particles like quarks and leptons (electrons, muons, etc.) exhibit very precise, structured patterns of behavior governed by the Standard Model of particle physics. Their properties and interactions are not random.

2) Protons and neutrons, which make up atomic nuclei, also exhibit highly ordered, stable internal structures of quarks bound by the strong nuclear force.

3) Even at the atomic and molecular scale, the precise configurations of electron orbitals and chemical bonds again display order, pattern and structure rather than randomness.

4) This underlying order and pattern in the fundamental particles and forces of nature could be viewed as a kind of inherent "negentropy" - an embedded logic and structure to the fabric of reality.

5) Extending this line of thinking, one could argue that since we and all matter are ultimately composed of these ordered arrangements of subatomic particles, the core essence of our being arises from this negentropic foundation.

6) Our consciousness, biology, and essential nature as physical entities in the universe may therefore be emerging from or reflecting this primordial negentropy.

So in that philosophical sense, yes, it is possible to make the case that the "zero" or fundamental ground state of our existence as material beings is inherently negentropic rather than entropic or random.

[umghr]

At what point in this replication process did "life" happen, and how did it "happen?" Although I am reluctant to ask, are the quantum foam particles that are created and destroyed alive or at least some form or organic? The question is how did "organic" come from non-organic isn't it?

[CarrollTheChimp]

This explanation contradicts itself. Order is not a random output of randomness. Using his own analogy, I would posit that reality itself is a weighted coin.

[DjLatelle]

Wow this is the most incredible explanation for life on earth. I suppose the only thing it doesn't answer is consciousness