11Prompt

From Einstein’s special theory of relativity we come to know that matter and energy are equivalent. Matter is concentrated energy and energy is diluted matter. Again from GTR we come to know that space, time and matter are so interlinked that there cannot be any space and time without matter. Similarly there cannot be any matter without space and time. So we see that all these four are interlinked; we cannot think of any one of these four entities singularly, isolatedly. Whenever we will think of energy, we will have to think of matter.

It can be shown in some indirect way that the net energy of the universe is zero. For this, we will have to first determine as to whether the universe has a beginning in the past, or whether it has an eternal past. I think that there is a consensus among scientists that the universe is not past-eternal, but that it originated from a big bang 13.8 billion years ago. So we can say now that the universe has a beginning. Now there are only two options that can be taken into consideration while discussing the beginning of the universe. We can ask: 1) did it originate from nothing?

Concepts in Vedanta Applicable to Scientific Explanation of Consciousness by Syamala Hari

The Mirror & Its Reflections by Steven E. Kaufman

When scientists say that the universe can simply come out of nothing without any divine intervention, they think of the universe in terms of its energy content only. In the book ‘The Grand Design’, page 281, scientist Stephen Hawking has written that bodies like stars or black holes cannot just appear out of nothing, but a whole universe can. The message is very clear from this: The total energy of a whole universe is zero and that is why it can come out of nothing; but stars or black holes will fail to do so, because their total energy is not zero.