How do we get something from nothing?

How Balance can Create "Something" from "Nothing"

To illustrate the concept of energy balance, let’s consider a hypothetical universe where negative mass exists. In this universe, the earth exerts a repulsive gravitational force on this negative mass. Below is a mechanical balance where the left pan has an equal amount of positive mass and negative mass. The negative mass is placed at the bottom of the left pan, since the earth’s gravity exerts an “upward” force and we don’t want it to fly away.

energy balance

When we balance the masses in this way, we find that both the left pan and the right pan have an equal net weight of zero.

Mathematically we state that the mass in the left pan is equal to the mass in the right pan:

+M – M = 0
The left pan illustrates a possible creation process when equal amounts of positive and negative mass are added at the same time. The sequence of this creation process becomes:

1M – 1M = 0
2M – 2M = 0
3M – 3M = 0
4M – 4M = 0
Etc.

The Law of Conservation of Energy is not violated during this creation process since the total energy of our hypothetical universe is always zero.

We have shown a creation process where positive mass is balanced by negative mass. The universe may also have been created from a wave of positive energy balanced by a wave of negative energy as illustrated in the next picture.

In this view, the universe starts out as a small wave and grows in both positive and negative energy while the total energy is always zero.

Next Section:

A tiny particle with infinite energy