Abstract

How and why did the Universe come into existence? The main problem with the scientific explanation of the Universe’s existence is that it assumes a certain physical reason of its existence. But any physical cause of the universe must be a part of the Universe whose existence it is to explain. Therefore, every purely scientific explanation of the Universe’s existence is bound to fail. Perhaps no scientific theory can build a bridge between absolute nothingness and the already existing Universe.
It appears that if we change a metaphysical question: why does Universe exist? into a ‘more scientific’ question: in which way did (could) the Universe come into existence?, then we have an opportunity to present a contemporary version of the ‘history’ of the Universe’s origin based on physics. The cosmologist Lawrence M. Krauss claims that it is enough to abandon the metaphysical notion of absolute nothingness and take physical vacuum as a point of departure. For it follows from quantum mechanics that quantum vacuum is not the same as metaphysical nothingness (according to quantum mechanics time and space could have come into existence spontaneously, and perhaps the laws of nature themselves appeared spontaneously), and it is possible that – in the light of contemporary physics – the Universe was created out of “nothing”.