"Periodic" Cosmological models without a Big Bang are not new. They are easily extracted form the usual equations under certain conditions and it's one of the typical exercises you do in an intro do cosmology class.
What seems to be new here is that this specific model seems to explain something that has yet to be well understood. This is a big win for this model but it can easily mean that it happens to capture part of real mechanism in that specific aspect while making unrealistic assumptions elsewhere (like the possibility of there not having been a Big Bang).
It will be interesting to see how this model affects our current understanding of the universe. It might be a complete change, or just an incremental one. Odds are on the latter one but the former makes for much better blog posts... ;)
Good to know! If a periodic model is a potentially viable way of looking at things, could it be squared with thermodynamics? Specifically, the constant increase in total entropy.
very difficult for entropy to stay constant in a closed system. And surely universality (all-encompassing, there-is-nothing-else) means closed system? Or are we looking at open and closed in the wrong way; if the universe is periodic, could entropy decrease with order 'warping in' from a different point in time (future or past) if time happened to fold or loop over itself to feed into the back of it?
> And surely universality (all-encompassing, there-is-nothing-else) means closed system?
Not necessarily. The question isn't really settled. It seems quite complicated when you get to those scales. E.g. just as an analogy, in general relativity even energy isn't really conserved. (See http://math.ucr.edu/home//baez/physics/Relativity/GR/energy_...) So I don't know whether we can say anything definite about entropy.
"making unrealistic assumptions elsewhere (like the possibility of there not having been a Big Bang)"
I'm not sure I agree with this line. Copernicus made the "unrealistic assumption" that heavenly bodies and motions were not spherical, and Galileo made the "unrealistic assumption" that earth wasn't the center of the Earth.
This type of thinking hampers scientific progress.
Yeah, and George Smith made the "unrealistic assumption" that the moon was made of cheese, and John Doe made the "unrealistic assumption" that dogs communicate telepathically...
While there are certainly a handful of "unrealistic assumptions" that have lead to scientific breakthroughs, giving credence to an idea simply because it is unrealistic is... well... unrealistic.
I don't know if I'd say they made unrealistic assumptions. Geocentrism failed to make accurate predictions and required a whole slew of tricks to reconcile the problems. Heliocentrism was "unrealistic" because the church disagreed with it, not because it disagreed with observations.
It also took approximately 300 years for common opinion to shift from a Ptolemic universe to Heliocentrism. We're on a much shorter time scale for the Big Bang theory, and it's very well acknowledged the theory has problems.
Galileo's problem wasn't that he made an "unrealistic assumption", it was that he couldn't explain the lack of visible parallax. (It turns out the answer to that was that we didn't have good enough equipment.)
"Shu's idea is that time and space are not independent entities but can be converted back and forth between each other. In his formulation of the geometry of spacetime, the speed of light is simply the conversion factor between the two."
This is already true in Special Relativity. This MIT TR article is so shallow it shouldn't be linked to.
I'd rather put it in a more general way: people shouldn't post things they don't understand. As Maro shows below: anyone with some of understanding of the matter can immediately poke huge holes in it. It's pure speculation, which is why it doesn't belong here. The same holds for a lot of ArXiv papers in certain sections.
It's not censorship, it's just a social seperation of professional concerns. Non-physicists have no chance in hell to understand arxiv papers, in fact most physicists don't have a chance in hell to understand arxiv papers, even the ones from their own field. (I'm saying this as a physicist.)
In this case, the MIT TR writes about a bleeding edge, unpublished paper written by a non big-name physicist that will most likely be discarded and never be talked about in 6 months.
The author is from a "Institute of Statistics" and the paper was written in Word with double-space formatting. That means the author is probably not a physicist, and non-physicists have a very low chance of being able to grasp the problems with current models and propose better ones, not to mention accounting for all the astro observations coming out every day.
Looking at the actual paper as somebody with a cosmology background, what he's saying is:
1. Let's take the classical Einstein equations
2. Let's see what happens if c, the speed of light, is not constant, but a function of time c(t)
3. Hm, but to not break the original equations let's also make G be a function of time G(t) such that c(t)^2/G(t) is fixed
4. Hm, but then in the derivations, where there are derivatives wrt. to time new dc/dt and dG/dt terms appear
5. and so on
There is no new physics in this paper, it's just a routine derivation with a twist. The TR blogger is probably not a physicist and/or has not read it, he just pushed out some generic bullshit about space and time.
There's no point in talking about this paper for non-professionals. First, professionals have to reach concensus whether this makes any sense and is compatible with observations (the former part is easier, the latter takes longer and more people). Once a result passes these tests, then it makes sense to tell people about it.
If the TR wants to push out some sciency newsitem, they could for example talk about recent Higgs data from the Tevatron, which is bleeding-edge fresh but fairly uncontroversial, as it is a measurement and has gone through the Tevatron team:
Reply to scott_s (for some reason I can't reply to the comment): I agree, total seperation is not good. It's not good if all the physicists involved are pure academics, because it allows for sub-optimal incentives to dominate. I believe the good model is fOR physicists with no academic incentives (positions, grants) to also take part in the discussion, eg. somebody working at Morgan Stanley or doing a startup. This model would be similar to programmers donating their time to open-source projects. (The academic counter-argument which easily wins out today is that if you're not working in the field, you don't understand the issues and don't have a say.)
As a fellow physicist, I agree with you on all counts (except I believe the TR blogger is actually a physicist as well, used to write on www.arxivblog.com). The arXiv is far from the best source of actual scientific developments, but it sure is a great source of 'This idea just might change everything we knew about science!!' blog posts. I'm not sure if I can recall any examples of where this kind of theory has been developed into something more legitimate.
Not that there isn't newsworthy stuff posted to the arXiv, and not that it isn't worthwhile, thought-provoking and fun to read these papers and these ideas - you should just have an idea of where it's coming from, and where it's likely headed...
> Non-physicists have no chance in hell to understand arxiv papers
You mean "archive physics papers": mathematicians are usually non-physicists and sometimes understand the arxiv math papers. I used the arxiv for months before I found out it had physics papers too (and that in fact it was started for physics papers).
What on earth are you going on about? Saint-loup suggests arxiv papers should not be talked about on [HN] and you start ranting about censorship?
You are dealing with censorship when an entity uses his authority and power over you to prevent you from saying or hearing certain things. There are usually ideological reasons to prevent freedom of speech and information. We are not dealing with any of that here. At most, we are dealing with a democratically, self-imposed, self-maintained censorship, whose origins are not ideological in nature.
I think perhaps my dictionary is different to yours.
What I'm talking about is this: The web is a wonderful place, originally built to share academic documents, but which has blossomed into so much more. Government documents and many other things are now shared on the web, and discussion and openness is rampant.
Now I hear the suggestion that academic documents should be limited in some way - that they should only be discussed on "academic" websites, whatever that might mean.
This statement to me is analogous to "Government white papers should only be discussed on Government web sites" and reminded me of the recent Australian censorship to prevent "unnecessary premature debate".
I don't like Saint-loup's suggestion at all. If it's a social suggestion that we shouldn't talk about such things, then leave the conversation - don't try to shut it down. If it's a serious suggestion about controlling the conversation, then it is a censorship proposal.
No-one is blacking out words here, but what is the problem with discussing these papers? I asked for a reason, and Maro's very nice response seemed to indicate that it was justified as the material can't be understood by mere mortals. I don't think that's enough of a reason.
I understand that you don't like my response. I don't think I was ranting. I just really like the openness of the web and abhor any attempt to control it. If you don't like the conversation, move along.
The feeling you get when you read about something computer-science or software-engineering related in mass media ("oh my god those idiot journalists can't get anything right") is probably very similar to what a physicist feels when she reads discussion by non-physitics.
Thanks, but I understand their point, I just disagree with it. I agree with you about the feelings, but I think that trying to restrict their speech is the wrong way to go about it. That's my position, unpopular as it may be.
There is a difference between "academic stuff should be discussed on academic sites only" and "government stuff should be discussed on government sites only": unlike government sites, everyone can open an academic site (if we define "academic site" by the choice of topics and moderation policy instead of by being endorsed by a brick-and-mortar university (I would e.g. call LtU an academic site)).
I think the "continuum" part of this term is not generally understood. I would expect most people think of the relation between space and time to be like the relation of X and Y on a planar graph: two distinct continuous dimensions, with no real way to convert between them.
Without to much of a technical knowledge in the area (plenty of interest just not to the paper reading level) I have been sceptical of dark matter as an undetectable equation balancer. Any good research into dark matter that I should read that puts forward a better case than balancing equations?
Another problem we have, is that we have one point of observation into the unimaginably big universe. Given our limited view overfitting the data to support some model is likely.
The present theory concerns the elimination of dark energy, not dark matter. The existence of dark matter has been demonstrated beyond any doubt through observations of a collision between two galaxy clusters. In a nutshell, the clusters were mostly made up of high-energy plasma, and when they collided almost all of the plasma remained at the point of collision due to electromagnetic interactions between the gases. However, the dark matter in the clusters, which was previously difficult to observe independently, passed through the point of the collision (that is, through each other) as though nothing had happened. The electromagnetic interactions trapped the visible baryonic matter in one spot while the dark matter drifted off into space, allowing us to observe it independently via the effects of gravitational lensing.
I will have to think about this theory for a while since it contradicts something that I have accepted for a long time (big bang). I'll be visiting my Dad in a few weeks, and I will enjoy getting his take on this (he is a physicist and a member of the national academy of science).
I do like that it fits better with conservation of energy, and I was never comfortable with using dark matter to explain away inconsistencies between the big bang model and some observations.
It will be interesting to see how much traction tis new theory gets in the next ten years or so.
Especially in high-energy physics and in (I think) cosmology, the community is small enough that the arXiv is basically the primary means of communication. Peer review is everyone looking at the article and talking about what they mean. Published journal articles become more of a way to "keep score" to help outsiders make hiring decisions.
The myth of the Flat Earth is the modern misconception that the prevailing cosmological view during the Middle Ages saw the Earth as flat, instead of spherical.[1][2] During the early Middle Ages, virtually all scholars maintained the spherical viewpoint first expressed by the Ancient Greeks. By the 14th century, belief in a flat earth among the educated was essentially dead. Flat-Earth models were in fact held at earlier (pre-medieval) times, before the spherical model became commonly accepted in Hellenistic astronomy.[3]
Very interesting. I was one of those people with the misconception. How did the ancient greeks think that we were glued onto the planet? Gravity was something Newton defined? Am I having another misconception?
The prevailing model of the universe at the time was a sphere with the Earth at the middle. In this model, the term "gravity" and "weight" meant something like "the natural level of this object".
Rocks had "low" weight, thus falling to the ground and fire had "high" weight, thus rising to the sky. Being composed of "earth" and "water", we stuck to the surface of the Earth because that was our natural place.
A lot of this model was carried over into Medieval science, but it changed over time to adapt to new discoveries, until it finally broke around the time of Galileo & Copernicus.
C.S. Lewis wrote a very interesting little work on the Medieval worldview called The Discarded Image that goes into some of this. He was writing mostly as a literary historian, but covers the scientific understanding to the extent that it informed literature. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Discarded_Image
Very interesting. Reminds me of Paul Steinhardt's Ekpyrotic model that proposes our universe is the result of two colliding three-dimensional worlds: http://wwwphy.princeton.edu/~steinh/npr/
For anyone who actually read the paper, if there is no big bang and no beginning, what does this model imply about the universe 14B years ago?
I've never accepted the big bang as an explanation for the beginning of the universe. It's an explanation of how the universe ended up in it's current state, but still doesn't explain how all that matter came to be in the first place.
This new theory I can at least kind of wrap my head around, there is no beginning and no end... i don't know why but it makes more sense to me.
I may get downvoted for this, but the Big Bang Theory is a great example of "scientific faith", the prevailing existence of faith amongst people claiming to be scientifically rigorous. People who make the absurd claim that it is meaningless to speak of what happened "before the Big Bang" because there was no "before."
I've spoken with, and heard many professors speak of the Big Bang Theory as accepted fact, when in fact it is not, and not only that, but it has very serious, fundamental problems:
- It flies in the face of logical reasoning. Something cannot come out of nothing.
- The point above actually has a physical law. It's called the First Law of Thermodynamics, and the Big Bang Theory is in stark violation of it.
That's not to say it's completely invalid. There could have been a Big Bang, in fact it's very likely there was, but that doesn't mean it was the "start" of anything, other than rapid expansion, or, converting into mystical terms, a reincarnation.
The Universe will always be here. It has always been here. It cannot go away. It is indestructible and everlasting. The mystics understand this, and so does anyone who understands basics physics.
Physicist here. Although I am not really a "cosmologist," I have studied cosmology, and have spent a lot of time pondering the the big bang because I think it is interesting, and because so many people like you misunderstand it.
The universe did not come from nothing. Consider the following two claims:
* The universe has a finite age.
* The universe has always existed.
Both of these claims are true. It might seem that if something has always existed, it must have existed for infinitely long. No so. At every time in history, the universe has existed, even though the age is finite.
Your intuition might disagree. But recognize your intuition has been developed under very peculiar circumstances on the surface of the Earth. You should be skeptical of your own intuition when studying things outside of your usual experience. In this case, human intuition says two things:
* There was always something before.
* There was always something 5 minutes before.
In ordinary human life, both claims are true. That's what your intuition says. But for the universe as a whole, only the first claim is true, and the second claim is false. Even though it is true that there was always something "before" (for any time you give me, I can divide that time in two and give you an earlier time), it is nevertheless not true that there was always something 5 minutes before (pick 4 minutes after the big bang, and 5 minutes earlier than that is simply undefined [1]).
Big Bang theory is a self-consistent, meaningful mathematical theory. It does not fly in the face of logical reasoning. Rather, it is a spectacular case-in-point of the power of logical reasoning to describe and explain the universe.
Your second point is that the Big Bang disobeys the first law of thermodynamics, which is the conservation of energy. False. You are assuming there was a period of time when there was no energy, and then suddenly energy came into being. That's not what happened. The energy has always been around, for all time, and thus the first law is not violated.
[1] It so happens that "negative time", or even time t=0, is equally as meaningless as Elephant Time or Verb Time. They are all undefined.
"It so happens that "negative time", or even time t=0, is equally as meaningless as Elephant Time or Verb Time. They are all undefined."
I'm very curious about the assertion that t=0 is meaningless. Is this the conclusion of a line of reasoning, or is it an axiom assumed in order to make the theory work?
It looks like the latter to me, but that may just be because I'm not familiar with the literature and concepts.
In the standard theory, t=0 is a "singularity." Energy density becomes infinite, for example, at t=0. What that really means is that t=0 is undefined in the same sense that 1/0 is undefined.
Consider the function 1/x. For all positive x, 1/x is defined. As you approach x=0 from the right, 1/x approaches infinity. Same thing for the density of the universe. But the point 1/0 itself is undefined, even though the limit is well defined from the right. Likewise, t=0 itself is undefined, even though the density is well defined for all times greater than t=0.
I wouldn't really consider this an "assumption." It is actually a consequence of assuming that the universe is expanding in accordance with the law of gravity and that energy is conserved. The only way to do it is to construct a "metric" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedmann%E2%80%93Lema%C3%AEtre... ) where a bunch of parameters are undefined at t=0, but well-defined thereafter.
Thanks for the explanation. I think part of my confusion arises from the (apparently) mistaken idea that t=0 is equivalent to "the first moment of time." But it looks like t=0 is closer to "before the first moment of time". In a certain sense, that's a contradiction, because you can't have "before" time, but in another sense it's the only way to speak of that which (logically, not necessarily chronologically) precedes time.
Would you say that's a decent summary, given that I'm translating from scientific terms to more philosophical terms?
> Thanks for the explanation. I think part of my confusion arises from the (apparently) mistaken idea that t=0 is equivalent to "the first moment of time." But it looks like t=0 is closer to "before the first moment of time". In a certain sense, that's a contradiction, because you can't have "before" time, but in another sense it's the only way to speak of that which (logically, not necessarily chronologically) precedes time.
Yes, I think that's right. It's more accurate to say that there was no first moment rather than that t=0 was the first moment. Reconciling that with the fact that time is nevertheless finite is an important part of understanding the big bang.
To put it mathematically, the set of points of time is open on the left end. The set of times is this: (0,\infty). And not this: [0,\infty)
Edit: By the way, when I say that time is "finite", I mean finite from now into the past. Not finite from "start" to "finish". The standard cosmological model with dark energy have time being infinite from "start" to "finish"
I understand perfectly well your point of view, you don't need to lecture me on it, I've heard it many times before, as I alluded previously.
The universe did not come from nothing. Consider the following two claims:
* The universe has a finite age.
* The universe has always existed.
Both of these claims are true.
This is a perfect example of the reasoning I described, thank you.
Here's the other bit:
[1] It so happens that "negative time", or even time t=0, is equally as
meaningless as Elephant Time or Verb Time. They are all undefined.
I understand this concoction you've formulated, but it isn't very convincing. There's absolutely no evidence that this interpretation of the word "always" is true, and further, it's a violation of Occam's Razor. It would be simpler to take "always" literally, but you are in fact, through what amounts to simple verbal trickery, changing its meaning.
You can state it's "meaningless" to speak of t=0, but you provide zero backup for this, other than it satisfies your fantasy.
You can state it's "meaningless" to ask what happened X minutes before the Big Bang, but again, this is only in the service of satisfying your fantastical theory.
Meanwhile, back in the Universe and the realm of Logic, it's very meaningful to ask what happened at "t=0", because such a state did exist. It even existed in your Big Bang Theory, which states there was an "initial state."
It is highly improbable (if not provably impossible), that such an "initial state" is realistically feasible, and it certainly violates Occam's Razor. Your "initial state" has no explanation. You in fact vehemently object to any attempts at an explanation, deriding them as "undefined." This is faith in its purest form.
Sorry, but I think you are a very religious man and don't realize it. Thank you, however, for the wonderful illustration of my point, I can use it as a historical example of the problem. :-)
Smugness doesn't constitute an argument. For any statement you make, I can respond "Ha, I knew you'd say that, how naive and predictable!" I can also add "I perfectly understand your position" despite giving no one any reason to believe this is true.
If our physicist friend didn't provide "backup" for his points, it's probably because he's just trying to set you on the right track. You can't reasonably expect someone to lay out the experimental results of every test we've ever run that has led us to assert TBB. And if you're going to persist in claiming that you understand the theory anyway despite all evidence to the contrary, I really doubt it would make any difference.
I am curious how you became so very confident that you are an enlightened genius and all physicists are naive and irrational fools. Especially since physics arrives at it's theories by empirical evidence whereas you seem to arrive at yours by proclaiming inapplicable truisms.
You said: it certainly violates Occam's Razor. Your "initial state" has no explanation. You in fact vehemently object to any attempts at an explanation, deriding them as "undefined." This is faith in its purest form.
Occam's Razor says to go with whatever the simplest model is that accurately predicts everything, not just the simplest model.
The Razor is a rule of thumb. If you have multiple theories / models that all accurately explain all observed phenomena, then they're all correct. In fact, since they make the same predictions, they're all equivalent. Occam's Razor basically says "don't waste time with theories that accurately explain the world but also make unfalsifiable / meaningless predictions."
To those downvoting me, you're welcome to speak up. This is a game of logic, and I was hoping that this community could keep the religious knee-jerk reactions down to a minimum. :-\
FWIW, I did not downvote you. But you still do not seem to comprehend the fact that the standard theory assumes time is finite. In order to disprove such a theory, you cannot just assume that time is infinite, because you are assuming the conclusion. If you convince me that you actually understand this, I will continue responding to you.
I know, HN doesn't allow downvoting of responses. :-p
But you still do not seem to comprehend the fact that the standard theory assumes time is finite.
Really? I thought I was very clear in demonstrating that I understood this through and through, hence the accusation of faith. I did not simply use an assumption that time is infinite as disproof, in fact I did not disprove BBT at all in my response, but merely gave reasons why I thought it was extremely unlikely to have a start.
You sound like a crackpot. You don't sound like you understand physics. You also sound cranky. If you want to have a discussion, you should stop using grandiose language.
Yes I do, though shouldn't that line of reasoning be another strike against some of the tenants of the BBT? If you have an infinitely dense object that represents everything, time shouldn't pass, so how could anything have ever gotten anywhere?
"The Universe will always be here. It has always been here. It cannot go away. It is indestructible and everlasting. The mystics understand this, and so does anyone who understands basics physics."
While I'm sure that many mystics have held the idea of an eternal universe, it isn't as universal as you seem to suggest. Virtually all the mystics in the Christian tradition have held that the universe had a beginning. St. Thomas Aquinas is one of the more prominent examples: http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1045.htm
That's a valid point, not everyone labeled a "mystic" holds the same viewpoint. I don't consider Aquinas to be a mystic though. :-p
I should have been more specific, but it's rather difficult to be specific w.r.t. definitions of who is a mystic and who is not, it will likely lead to needless debate. :-\
I just hope that those who have studied a bit of comparative religion (and eastern religions specifically) will know what I'm referring to.
Well, I'm not sure if he would meet your criteria for being a mystic, but Aquinas is reported to have had experiences typically labeled "mystical," such as visions of Christ and a deep interior perception of God.
Not trying to argue, but many people don't know that aspect of Aquinas's life. :-)
However, I did not commit it, I never asserted "true mystics" or anything along those lines. I in fact admitted that my choice of words was poor, and that I was having difficulty choosing a better description.
If science has taught us one thing, it's that almost always, what once looked like a solid theory, is found to be way more subtle and complex in a later stage.
In addition to this, it's almost impossible to prove something in physics. You can use deduction to support your theory, but you can't prove it in the same way that you can formulate a mathematical proof. That's why it's called a theory: because it's not a proven fact.
However, to make claims like "the universe will always be here, it has always been here, it cannot go away" because otherwise it would violate the first law of thermodynamics is just as bad. The second law of thermodynamics has been haunted by Maxwell's demon for at least a century, and although it does appear to be safe at this point, I wouldn't be surprised if all of this would be proven to be more complex in the future.
So, while you're correct for doubting the big bang theory for too much scientific faith, you might as well put a lot more doubt in other areas as well. A lot of physics is built around faith.
I would take issue with this, at least when speaking of "faith" as "a belief that is not based on proof". For example, the belief that a god created the world in 7 days is based on faith since there is no evidence to support your belief. On the other hand, belief in the big bang is supported by some evidence.
I meant faith as in, "I have faith in the economy". I think we all know that proofs are a central part of every field of science.
But history has shown that a lot of laws were discovered to be wrong (or incomplete) in the past. Things like the laws of gravity by Newton come to mind. People had a lot of faith in those laws, we're able to send rockets to the moon based on those calculations, but still Einstein managed to show that everything is a lot more complex with his theory of relativity.
I would really emphasize "incomplete" here. Newton's laws fully accounted for the phenomena they sought to account for, and gravity really does work like Newton said it would work on the level that Newton was talking about it. The idea that there were things under the surface giving rise to this phenomenon probably would not even have surprised Newton.
I have to upvote you here, not particularly because I agree with your sentiments, but because of the relative depth and ability that you express them.
Even if you are 100% wrong, this type of questioning and reasoning is the essence of what it means to be a "hacker" and should be encouraged on this site.
It flies in the face of logical reasoning. Something cannot come out of nothing.
That's not logical reasoning, that's merely a fact derived inductively from everyday observations.
The point above actually has a physical law. It's called the First Law of Thermodynamics, and the Big Bang Theory is in stark violation of it.
Again, the first law of thermodynamics is a "law" which describes everyday experiences within our own universe at the present epoch. But Big Bangs are not everyday in-universe events.
The Universe will always be here. It has always been here. It cannot go away. It is indestructible and everlasting. The mystics understand this, and so does anyone who understands basics physics
That's just an unjustified assertion, and it doesn't really solve anything. Oh, and I'm sure that "the mystics" disagree on these things, as there's plenty who will tell you the universe was belched out of the belly of a giant porpoise. (If you ask them where the giant porpoise came from, they will get angry.)
How and why the universe started, and why we have this universe rather than any other, are two of the trickiest unsolved questions there are, but the Big Bang is the most sensible theory we have at the moment.
That's not logical reasoning, that's merely a fact derived inductively from everyday observations.
No, it's simply definition.
Again, the first law of thermodynamics is a "law" which describes everyday experiences within our own universe at the present epoch. But Big Bangs are not everyday in-universe events.
I've heard this one too, and if there ever was a weak objection to something, this is it. It amounts to: physics is worthless.
as there's plenty who will tell you the universe was belched out of the belly of a giant porpoise.
Your ignorance is showing and it's embarrassing. The mystical experience is remarkably consistent.
What do you mean by this? To my mind, some definition of "the mystical experience" may be internally consistent, but I highly doubt what you're hinting at makes any testable claims.
Your statement is not true, and the link you provide does not support it.
The spontaneous creation of particle pairs is not at all an example of "something from nothing", but simply an illustration of "something from something". Vacuum energy is not nothing. That should be obvious.
A proper understanding of what "nothing" means would prevent misunderstandings such as this from coming up. Nothing is literally, nothing. Non-existence. In other words, by definition, you'll never find it.
Research always implies not knowing... If it's already known, there is no need to research it.
However, it also implies wanting to know. The consequence of your comment seems to be that we should not research because we will never know and that goes against the entire body of knowledge collected by Humanity over the last 10,000 years.
So you're the kind of guy who admits he doesn't know, and then doesn't do anything about it. That's fine.
But there are people who readily admit they don't know, but will do research to find a solution. You're not in that category - that's okay - but at least realize that most entrepreneurs/hackers are in the latter camp.
What seems to be new here is that this specific model seems to explain something that has yet to be well understood. This is a big win for this model but it can easily mean that it happens to capture part of real mechanism in that specific aspect while making unrealistic assumptions elsewhere (like the possibility of there not having been a Big Bang).
It will be interesting to see how this model affects our current understanding of the universe. It might be a complete change, or just an incremental one. Odds are on the latter one but the former makes for much better blog posts... ;)