Do laws of physics come from nothing?

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I have recently come across a book by physicist Victor Stenger, The Comprehensible Cosmos, where he claims that the laws of physics look like they come from nothing. He says that all physical laws can be derived from the sole assumption of gauge invariance/symmetry and that the state of nothingness is invariant/symmetrical under all possible gauge transformations, thus necessarily containing all the laws. He calls the laws of physics "lawless laws of the void", which arise not from any plan but from the very lack of a plan. This might be the answer to the old philosophical question of why is there something instead of nothing. I am just a curious layman so I can't quite assess the idea in Stenger's book and I would like to know what you think about it.
On Victor Stenger's website there is an article that contains mathematical appendices from the book, in which he derives the laws of physics from gauge invariance:

http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/Nothing/Laws.pdf

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@litewave,

I think this author thinks that everything comes from nothing. . If that's the case, then of course he would think that the laws of physics come from nothing.

I read somewhere that he calculated a 64.7% chance that "nothing" would turn into "something", implying that "nothing" is unstable.

Other than that, I don't know much about this.

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@rosborne979,

gage theory comes from functions as a different form of each other, like 2 versions of X (x and X'). In effect hes saying that the math of the measure shows that there must be "something" there to mesure the differences as defined in the equation,(no matter how the coordinates are translated, because gage theory states that all physical equations are the same no matter how their coordinates are screwed with.)

My understanding is admittedly, imperfect because everything Ive done with particles is in the fields of isotope age dating and sensing of particle decay.

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@litewave,

The professor has withdrawn his previous derivation of that theory from the main scientific database:
http://eprintweb.org/S/authors/All/st/Stenger/2

Quote:

physics/0207047 (July 2002)
Where Did the Laws of Physics Come From?
Victor J. Stenger
Received. 11 July 2002 Last updated. 21 May 2004
Abstract. This paper was withdrawn by the author.
Categories. physics.ed-ph physics.pop-ph
Subject. Physics Education; Popular Physics
Comment. This paper has been withdrawn

I looked at the .pdf file you linked, though, and see not much new in what he calls "gauge invariance": that's just another name for invariance under transformation of coordinate systems. There are many types of coordinates transformations, the simplest being this type:

http://galileo.phys.virginia.edu/classes/252/lorentztrans_files/image070.gif

The mathematics involved aren't in doubt, the physical interpretations Stenger attempted to draw from them are.

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@High Seas,

Why are quantum mechanical laws gauge invariant then?

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@litewave,

Quantum mechanics are Lorentz-invariant; mathematically that's a special case of invariance. Lorentz invariance means the laws of physics are the same for all observers. For instance, the speed of light in a vacuum is constant no matter who is measuring, but that's only as long as the measurer stays in an inertial frame of reference. Sorry have a deadline for a project and don't know when I can answer more questions but if you do a search for Lorentz invariance you'll get many more results, including fascinating recent news:
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/40834

http://images.iop.org/objects/phw/news/13/10/33/space1.jpg

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@High Seas,

Quote:

The mathematics involved aren't in doubt, the physical interpretations Stenger attempted to draw from them are.

Why is his physical interpretation in doubt?

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@litewave,

Litewave - if you read the link I posted, you will know why, but here's a very brief explanation: the author you quote uses time as taking both positive and negative values (and imaginary, depending on your frame of reference) but there are constraints on time, per se, imposed from outside mathematics: it only goes forward.

Quote:

The most mysterious aspect of time is the direction of time or the Arrow of time:

* Why is time moving forward and not backward?
* Why is it impossible to reverse time, like pressing a rewind button on a video player?
* Why do we get older every day and cannot rewind our lives?

The basic laws of physics are time reversible, and the mystery is from where irreversibility comes, if not from physics? This is expressed by the famous Nobel Laureate of physics Richard Feynman in his lecture notes on physics as:

Where does irreversibility come from? It does not come form Newton's laws. Obviously there must be some law, some obscure but fundamental equation, perhaps in electricty, maybe in neutrino physics, in which it does matter which way time goes.

Newtonian and quantum mechanics formally are reversible: Reversing all velocities at final time will bring a system back to its initial state. The assumption is that there is no friction or viscosity. If there was friction
in the motion of a planet around a star or an electron around an atomic nucleus, the motion would come to a halt. So there can be no friction and without friction the basic equations of physics are formally reversible.

http://knol.google.com/k/the-direction-of-time#references

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@High Seas,

PS really must leave posting, so found another article that may make the preceding explanation clearer:

Quote:

Such a conjecture might hold if the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is shown to be correct, Maccone says. This scenario proposes that the universe is actually made up of a multitude of parallel universes, one for every physical possibility.....The link between the time asymmetry of the second law of thermodynamics and our knowledge of the world "has been discussed before, but in a very informal way"

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327234.700-quantum-amnesia-gives-time-its-arrow.html
Happy 2010.

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Do laws of physics come from nothing?

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