A Cosmological Question

A reader asks:

If the universe was empty at the beginning, then how could something be created from nothing?

Perhaps the best way to answer this question is to define some terms.

Universe = all that there was and now is.
Empty = nothingness, the absence of actuality or potentiality
Beginning = the assumed alpha point on a single ribbon of time
Created = formed, developed, transformed
Something = that which is not nothing

The simplest answer is that all that now is once always existed in some prior form. Concepts such as "beginning" and "now" presuppose the existence of "time". Creation and destruction are nothing more than transformations of that which always has existed, which is energy.

I think your definitions aren't quite as clear-cut as might be imagined. What we usually call "the universe" might be only one of a large, perhaps infinite, number of self-contained universes that make up "the mulitiverse." "Empty" might be confused with "vacuum" which actually is anything but empty. Saying that "beginning" is a point on a single ribbon of time seems to imply that there might be more than one ribbon, which is true, i.e., there might be more than one ribbon. Each universe in a multiverse would have its own ribbon, which raises the question, "beginning of what?" "Created" means "originally formed," not just "formed." How "created" is connected to "transformed" seems less clear. I see no problem with "something."

I might add that we are postulating that the multiverse is bounded space, i.e. that it is possible to surround the multiverse in a conceptual globe, donut, or whatever. Contrarywise, it could be that the multiverse is dimensionless and thus non-createable.

No comment yet on the universe definition. The definition of of empty is a little bit ambiguous, maybe we can add: Quote: Empty = nothingness, the absence of actuality or potentiality at least relative to a concerned thing or the thing in question. There can be emptiness in an ongoing actuality, that is the actuality of the observer.

"Beginning = the assumed alpha point on a single ribbon of time Created = formed, developed, transformed." No comment yet. Good points.

"Something = that which is not nothing." This is superficially clear, but internally ambiguous in my opinion. A question arising from this is that how can you tell there is nothing there? Then, what is the basis of that experience where in you concluded 'nothing'? It seems to me that nothingness is a process, and as a process, structurally it shares a common feature with everything. Nothing then is something. So then, there is an extension of something wherein nothing is included. If we consider something to include processes that we can observe, then something is and can only be contrasted to nothingness by its greater comprehension and extension.