I remain surprised that you saw fit to criticise my account of the contents of Lawrence Krauss’ book without actually having read the book yourself.

The video you watched is of a lecture on the topic that he gave two and a half years ago. It covers only the first two thirds of the book – which was published this year. The video does not contain the information that I provided here that is contained in the last third of the book. Therefore you could have no idea whether the information I provided is correct or not.

I also believe that the comment made to you by Lawrence Krauss was, in all probability, context specific and that he could not have been addressing the additional points he made in the last third of his book.

In all fairness, you should retract your opinion about what I have said here and read the book before commenting further.

No. you have not understood what I am saying. Not even close. Keep thinking on it. maybe you will get it

decay |diˈkā|
verb [ intrans. ]
(of organic matter) rot or decompose through the action of bacteria and fungi : [as adj. ] ( decayed) a decayed cabbage leaf | [as adj. ] ( decaying) the odor of decaying fish.
• [ trans. ] cause to rot or decompose : the fungus will decay soft timber.
• (of a building or area) fall into disrepair; deteriorate : urban neighborhoods decay when elevated freeways replace surface roads.
• decline in quality, power, or vigor : the moral authority of the party was decaying.
• Physics (of a radioactive substance, particle, etc.) undergo change to a different form by emitting radiation : the trapped radiocarbon begins to decay at a known rate.
• technical (of a physical quantity) undergo a gradual decrease : the time taken for the current to decay to zero.

From my understanding (and I have not read Krauss’ book, but I have read others and seen the video) it is the concept that what we generally conceive of as “nothing” (i.e. a “space” completely and utterly devoid of absolutely everything, incuding energy – a “true zero” if you will) simply cannot and does not exist. Why this is the case is interesting. Once again, my understanding is that this is simply a property of space – “true zero” is unstable and thus will constantly be spontaneously generating “virtual” particles.

However, by the statistical nature of quantum uncertainty, there does exist a point in space-time that is completely devoid of everything. In other words, “true zero” does exist. However, we cannot predict when or where or for how long. We do know that it is for a very short time. But that “true zero” does indeed spontaneously generate these virtual particles without the need for outside energy to be added.

To me, that is the concept of “something” from “nothing.”

Now, what will take a section of that statistical “true zero” and allow it to expand into an entire universe? I believe that question is unanswered. But the fact of the matter is that, even if for the briefest of times and completely unpredictable, there existed a “true zero” which spontaneously decayed into “something” which was under the right conditions to then undergo inflationary universe creation. Obviously this scenario (the last part) is rare enough that we don’t see it happening in our solar system, or even our galaxy (so far). But how rare is it actually? Once again, we don’t know. Even if it only happens to be the right circumstances in 1 of 1,000 galaxies, that is still extremely common. And it may turn out that it doesn’t actually happen – but from what I know on the topic, the evidence seems to be pointing us to that as a reasonable conclusion waiting to be empirically verified.

Does that seem like a reasonable understanding based on your interactions with Krauss, Dr. Novella?

After perusing the book again this afternoon, I think I’ve probably overstated this. In fact, the first two thirds of the book follows the video (but with a lot more detail). The last third is not covered in the video, and it is largely this information which my posts have been addressing.