A Universe from Nothing

Lawrence Krauss
summarised by
Philippe Pittoli

ABSTRACT

This book summaries what we know about the universe, how it began and how we managed to learn this.

This document is a summary of the book, ordered by chapters. Since not everything is explained in trivial terms
in the book, I’ll try my best to provide explanations for a few concepts along the way.

Check out for newer versions: https://t.karchnu.fr/doc/universe-from-nothing.pdf

And if you have questions: karchnu@karchnu.fr

Lastly compiled the 22/6/2022 (day/month/year, you know, like in any sane civilization).
Status: preface, chapters 1 & 2 are almost done (maybe require some extra info and polishing, but not much).
Chapter 3: WIP. Annexes are WIP.

laws of nature really are fundamentals.

Preface
Krauss introduces the concept that maybe the universe could
The preface is about what simplistic ideas we have of come from nothing. And nothing is something rather odd, and
the creation of the universe, mostly religious ones. Religion we don’t actually have experienced it so we can’t make much
argues for an infinite regression that could only be solved by assumptions on it. First we thought that nothing could be a
some magic being that conveniently appears to be infinite and simple quantum vacuum but now we know that a vacuum (a
eternal so our universe doesn’t have to. Theologians and space without any material entity) isn’t really nothing since
religious people are a bit mocked for their many, many there are still space and time applied to it. Even then, we
dishonest arguments to keep their beliefs. For example, the know that space and time can spontaneously appear. Since the
Intelligent Design concept, which not only requires to ignore a concept of nothing isn’t by any mean trivial to understand, the
lot of what we actually do know about life on earth, but also book (Krauss, 2012) will explain it in details later.
serves as a magic all-in-one concept without any consistency
to reject evolution. Invoking a god to explain how stuff 1. a cosmic mystery story: beginnings
appears is intellectually lazy and is at best irrelevant.
Contrary to the book, I describe things
chronogically in the summary. Some pieces of
Science is our best effort to understand our universe, and it information (such as dates, explanations, events),
follows three key principles1 : absent from the book, are added for the sake of
completeness.
• follow the evidence wherever it leads;
• theories should be tried to prove wrong as much as we try to 1514 Nicolaus Copernicus suggests an heliocentric model.
prove them right;
• experiment is the only truth, not beliefs nor mathematical Planets move around the sun.
elegance of a model.
Science can make people uncomfortable since it changes how Between 1609 and 1619 Johannes Kepler publishes his laws
we view the world, and this happened quite a few times in of planetary motions, which fixes a few problems with the
history. With recent discoveries, one may even wonder if the view of Copernicus on the matter:

1. The following definition really is simplistic and only covers the general
idea behind science. Do not take it for an absolute definition.
A Universe from Nothing Page 2 1. a cosmic mystery story: beginnings

• Planets move around the sun in ellipses. A generation after we understood the sun has elements we
• The Sun is not near the center but at a focal point of the don’t have (as much) on Earth4, helium is isolated on Earth.
elliptical orbit.
The spectrum of radiation of stars provides their
• Neither the linear speed nor the angular speed of the planet composition, temperature and evolution.
in the orbit is constant, but the area speed (closely linked
historically with the concept of angular momentum) is 1908-1912 Henrietta Swan Leavitt discovers a relation
constant. between the brightness of Cepheid variable stars and their
pulsation period.
Another way to express the same thing, with a direct citation
from the book: The light spreads out uniformly over a sphere whose
• Planets move around the sun in ellipses. area increases as the square of the distance (this is called
• A line connecting a planet and the Sun sweeps out equal the inverse-square law). Thus since the light is spread
areas during equal intervals of time. out over a bigger sphere, the intensity of the light
observed at any point decreases inversely with the area
• The square of the orbital period of a planet is directly
of the sphere.
proportional to the cube (3rd power) of the semi-major axis
— TODO: find out who and when this was discovered
of its orbit (or, in other words, of the "semi-major axis" of
the ellipse, half of the distance across the widest part of the
ellipse). Observing the pulsation period of a Cepheid indicates its
true luminosity. Also, the observed brightness of stars
1665 Isaac Newton uses a prism to see the sunlight disperse goes down inversely with the square of the distance to
into the colors of a rainbow. He manages to obtain this result the star. Therefore, comparing its known luminosity to
by only letting the light of the sun enter a room by a small its observed brightness gives us the actual distance to the
hole in the window shutter. His conclusion: the white light star.
contains all these colors.
Starting in 1912 Slipher observes the spectra of light
Sunlight contains a spectrum of colors. coming from nearby stars and distant spiral nebulae5 are
almost the same. The difference is a shift of the same
1784 first observation of Cepheid variable star, which are wavelength in the absorbed lines.
stars whose brightness varies over some regular period.
1916 A. Einstein publishes his work on the general theory
(around) 1815 a scientist2 analyses the dispersed light: some of relativity. This work is about gravity, space and time, and
colors aren’t there. His conclusion: some materials in the explains not only how objects move in the universe, but also
outer atmosphere of the sun are absorbing the light of certain how the universe itself might evolve. Amongst many uses of
colors or wavelengths. Known materials are tested to see what this theory, the orbit of Mercury can be predicted more
are the colors they absorb, which includes: hydrogen, oxygen, accurately than before with Newton’s theory of gravity. This
iron, sodium, and calcium. fixes a small difference between observation and theoretical
results6.
Materials may "absorb" some part of the solar
spectrum. Different materials, different parts of the However, the theories of Newton and Einstein are both, at
spectrum. some point, inconsistent with the observations. Gravitation is
thought to be an attractive force: objects should then always
1842 Christian Doppler discovers the Doppler Effect. collapse into each other. Also, the scientific community still
thinks the universe as static, eternal and composed of a single
Doppler Effect: a wave coming at you will be stretched if galaxy (our Milky Way) surrounded by a vast, dark, infinite
the source is moving away from you, or compressed if empty space. And without accurate knowledge of the
the source is coming toward you. distances with observed stars, nor better images, this idea
seems consistent with the observations.
1868 a scientist3 observes two missing lines in the yellow
part of the solar spectrum. This doesn’t correspond to the 1917 Mount Wilson 100-inch (2.5 m) Hooker telescope, the
effect of materials we know on Earth. His conclusion: these
4. Yeah, not even a date, again.
absorbed colors must be the result of an element that doesn’t 5. Nebulae that we will soon find out they are actually entire galaxies.
come from Earth. This element is then named helium. 6. The planet doesn’t come back to its initial position after an ellipse
2. His name is not given in the book. around the sun. There is a slight precession of the perihelion of
Mercury: 43 arc seconds (only of a degree) per century.
3. Again, not named in the book.
A Universe from Nothing Page 3 1. a cosmic mystery story: beginnings

world’s largest at the time (from 1917 to 1949). It will soon elements.
help to discover many things. For example, to prove the
Andromeda nebula is external to our galaxy (1923, Edwin Life on Earth is, literally, made of stars.
Hubble), that the Universe is expanding (1929, Hubble and
Milton Humason) and to measure both its expansion rate and A supernova (the explosion of a star) occurs once every
the size of the known Universe, to find evidence for dark hundred years or so per galaxy. The last one in our galaxy was
matter (1930s, Fritz Zwicky), etc7. in 1604.

1923-1924 with the period-luminosity relation and the Rare events, such as supernova, happen constantly at the scale
measurement of Cepheid variable stars, Hubble determines of the universe. Therefore, each night with a good enough
that the distance with some Cepheids are too great to be inside telescope, you can expect to see a supernova.
our Milky Way8.
Type 1a supernova (a certain type of exploding star) accurate
The universe contains other galaxies. luminosity can be infered by the duration they shine. Their
observed brightness provides their distance (with the inverse-
1925 Hubble publishes his study on spiral nebulae, where square law), which also determines the distance with their
he identified Cepheid variable stars in them (including the galaxy. Then, the redshift of the light from the stars in the
nebulae we currently know as Andromeda). galaxy indicates its velocity. Finally, comparing the velocity
of the galaxy and its distance allows us to infer the expansion
1927 Georges Lemaître is the first person to suggest the rate of the universe.
universe is expanding. This is his conclusion after solving the
Einstein’s equations for general relativity. Galaxies are more and more distant from each other, this is the
general trend. In some cases, two galaxies may collide, but
1929 Hubble remarks that galaxies are moving away from that is rare (again, rare events happen all the time).
each other. More importantly, the more distant, the faster the
velocity. The relation is linear: a galaxy twice more distant is Independent estimates of the age of the oldest stars in our
moving away twice as fast. galaxy are consistent with the rate of the universe’s expansion.
The Big Bang is consistent with all the different ways we
The universe is expanding. observed our universe, with independent methods.

1930 Georges Lemaître proposes that the universe began in 2. a cosmic mystery story: weighing the
a very small point, which he called Primeval Atom9. universe
This chapter presents the thoughts of the
scientific community while unravelling some
Random facts: current state of knowledge mysteries about our universe. This includes how
galaxies and clusters of galaxies are working, dark
The expansion of the universe started 13.72 billion years ago. matter, gravity, nature of matter in our universe,
etc. This chapter also is about the excitment felt
by L. Krauss as a young scientist, and his
Our galaxy is one of the about 100 to 400 billion other perspectives in the 1980s. Finally, the chapter
galaxies in the observable universe. describes how a picture of a 5 billion light-years
away galaxy tells us about the distribution of mass
within a cluster of galaxies (and how our universe will
Over 200 million stars already exploded within our galaxy, end, probably).
providing us the material resources necessary for life on Earth.
How will the Universe end? Since the Universe isn’t static,
Big Bang created light elements in massive quantities, such as there are three main possibilities. The first one is the Big
hydrogen. No nuclei heavier than lithium were produced Crunch: the Universe will collapse, creating a reverse Big
during the initial universe expansion (too hot). Heavier Bang. In the second case the Universe will almost stop
elements require the stars to be created (by their massive expanding. Last possibility, the Universe will continue to
gravity), and their explosion to be dispersed across the galaxy. expand at a finite rate. To answer this question, we use the
The universe expansion explains the abundance of light theory of general relativity and we need to know the total mass
of the universe.
7. We now make ten times bigger telescopes and hundred times bigger in
area.
First, the nature of the universe
8. Hubble identifies a first galaxy (NGC 6822) in 1925, then the
Triangulum galaxy (M33) in 1926, and Andromeda (M31) in 1929. Gravity shapes solar systems as well as galaxies and
9. This isn’t accepted by the scientific community right away: actual clusters of galaxies. But the apparent gravity force cannot be
observations were provided by Edwin Hubble beforehand.
explained only by visible objects, such as stars and planets.
A Universe from Nothing Page 4 2. a cosmic mystery story: weighing the universe

For example, the movement speed of stars (and hot gas) within The first possible geometry of our universe could be closed. It
our galaxy isn’t explained only by the sum of gravitational can be described as a three-dimensional sphere. A way to
forces of other stars, gas and planets. picture it is to imagine looking far enough in any direction and
see the back of your head. In this case, the general relativity
Also, the mathematical formulas leading to the explanation of tells us the energy density of the universe is dominated by
the abundance of light elements (hydrogen, helium and matter like stars, galaxies and this dark matter, and will end in
lithium) in the universe10 give an approximation of the total a Big Crunch. The second is the open universe. The universe
number of protons and neutrons must exist in the universe. will continue to expand at a finite rate. Finally, the flat
Problem: there should be twice the amount of material we can universe, which expands but slows down with time without
see in stars and hot gas11. Second problem: even then, this ever stopping. This requires the "dark matter" to be 100 times
isn’t even remotely near enough material to explain the mass more massive than visible matter14.
of galaxies. Invisible matter should represent ten times the
mass of visible matter. So, this dark matter cannot be only Back to the main track: weighting the universe
made of neutrons and protons.
How to get the density of mass in the universe? The largest
The Universe is mostly made of matter we don’t gravitationally bound objects are superclusters of galaxies that
understand. can contain thousands of galaxies (or more). These are so
massive, most of galaxies are within a supercluster.
Identifying this dark matter Measuring the weight of a supercluster (which also includes
its dark matter) and then estimating the density of
Maybe this dark matter is made of a particle that can be superclusters in the universe leads to weighting the universe.
identified through calculations or educated guess for example.
This way, new experiments could be proposed to detect this How to get the density of mass of a supercluster? In one
dark matter, and learn more on what appears to be the main word: gravity. Gravity bends space, so bright objects behind
component of the universe. Later, to that end, we built something massive (such as a galaxy, or a cluster of galaxies)
machines on Earth to recreate an environment where these can be seen. So, gravitational lensing is a thing. Also, Fritz
particles could be created (see the Large Hadron Collider). Zwicky analyzed as early as 1933 that galaxies in the Coma
We also created dectectors, deep in mines to avoid cluster were moving so fast they would have quit the cluster
perturbations from all sorts of cosmic rays. unless the cluster was 100 times more massive than the sum of
the masses of the stars. Therefore, the speed of galaxies in a
The job of physics is not to invent things we cannot see to cluster can be some sort of metric to estimate the density of a
explain things we can see, but to figure out how to see what cluster, too.
we cannot see.
Note: at the time, little was known of black holes,
— Lawrence Krauss
red dwarves, neutron stars, etc. A good chunk of
the missing mass actually comes from these objects,
with little to no light emissions. And some
Knowing the abundance (and the nature) of dark matter is emissions are infrared, which isn’t easily visible
important to know how the Universe will end. Two on Earth, so we waited orbital telescopes to observe
possibilities are given in the book to make this calculation. them.
First, in case this "dark matter" was created during the Big
In 1998, the physicist Tony Tyson shows that the mass of a
Bang, then its abundance could be estimated by ideas from the
cluster mostly comes from between the galaxies. He used
forces that govern the interactions of elementary particles.
magnified images of a distant galaxy from the Hubble Space
Second, by reusing some ideas from particle physics12.
Telescope to calculate its mass. The mass was computed with
a mathematical model of the cluster of the galaxy, using laws
More about general relativity
of general relativity, and calculating a lot of paths15. Finally,
Einstein general relativity predicted that space is curved once the model produced an image matching the observation,
in the presence of matter or energy. This leads to our universe the model was used to determine the mass of the cluster. The
having different possible geometries depending on the total result was, as stated before, that the mass of the cluster mostly
density of mass in the universe13. comes from between the galaxies, not from stars or hot gases.
More precisely: there is 40 times more mass between the
10. TODO: explain these formulas.
11. Some of the non observed matter is contained in planets, since it is hard 14. TODO: the difference between Big Crunch, flat and open isn’t clear at
to see something that doesn’t produce light. all. This probably needs some polishing.
12. In both cases: the chapter doesn’t include an explanation of what these 15. From what is actually written in the book, this seems almost like an
ideas could be. That’s kind of a bummer. exhaustive computation. An evolutionary algorithm maybe? Too bad
13. This isn’t explained further in the chapter how the general relativity there isn’t much details: Krauss said the model was based on general
actually indicates that. Second bummer. relativity but the actual algorithm (to some extent) could have been
interesting to learn.
A Universe from Nothing Page 5 2. a cosmic mystery story: weighing the universe

galaxies than within, which is 300 times more mass than Random facts
within stars alone with the rest of visible matter in hot gas
around them.
Observer
More on dark matter
[...] more recent observations from other areas of
astronomy have confirmed that the total amount of dark
matter in galaxies and clusters is far in excess of that
allowed by the calculations of Big Bang nucleosynthesis.
Dark matter must be made of something that isn’t normally Massive
object
on Earth nor in stars.
— Lawrence Krauss

Magnified Magnified
Dark matter should be all around us, including basically distant distant
object object
everywhere on Earth. It should be comprised of an elementary
Distant
particle (or several particles) and experiments are done to object
detect it. As already said: deep in mines and with the LHC.
Since it doesn’t interact electromagnetically (therefore, it
doesn’t absorb, reflect or emit light), we assume that its Gravitational lensing
interactions with normal material are extremely weak. Dark
matter could, for example, traverse anything. Therefore, it
will be difficult to detect. Removing most of the cosmic rays According to Zwicky, gravitational lensing can be useful for:
of the equation is necessary and this is why the dark matter • testing the general relativity;
detection is expected to be made deep in mines. The LXC
also has a great chance to detect dark matter, by recreating • using galaxies to magnify distant objects;
what is thought to be an environment near the conditions of • determine the mass of a galaxy or a cluster.
the early universe. This is done by smashing protons together
with an incredible energy. Direct observation is not necessary, Anecdotes
an imbalance between the energy used to smash protons and
Einstein became famous mostly because he predicted
the result could be an indicator that something emerged from
sunlight curving around the Sun during an eclipse in 1919. It
the experiment.
wasn’t because of its famous mathematical equation in 1904:
The book is from 2009, since then the LXC actually E = mc 2
produced results. However, at the time of this
writting (october 2021), still no direct
confirmation that dark matter actually exists.
Einstein predicted that gravity could help see objects beyond
Conclusion other objects, through lensing. Gravity bends space, so bright
objects behind a massive object can still be seen. This is
Even if dark matter isn’t observed, gravitational lensing practical: objects can be seen by gravitational lensing via
still provided the clusters’ mass. This is confirmed by galaxies or cluster of galaxies. However, Einstein thought at
independant estimates of the clusters’ mass. For example, the the time that his prediction was useless since he only thought
X-rays emissions of a cluster are related to the temperature of of star by star lensing.
its gas, which itself is related to the cluster’s mass. And the
final result is: the total mass in and around galaxies and 3. Light from the beginning of time
clusters only is 30 percent of the total amount of mass needed
This chapter introduces a more reliable way to
for our universe to be flat. Even if the invisible matter is 40 determine the geometry of the universe, thanks to
times more massive than visible matter, this is still way less the cosmic microwave background radiations.
than required for our universe to be flat. Trying to measure the universe weight by gravitational lensing
galaxies and clusters is fundamentally flawed. This could only
So we are living in an open universe, expanding forever... or provide a rough approximation in case the weight actually
maybe not! came from somewhere within clusters. In case the weight of
the universe comes from between clusters, then our method
Yes, there is a cliffhanger at the end of the doesn’t work.
chapter. Stay tuned, kids!
Another involves observing cosmic microwave background
radiations (CRBR) and actually measure see the curvature of
A Universe from Nothing Page 6 3. Light from the beginning of time

the universe.

Measuring the geometry of the universe

Before trying to explain how to measure the curvature of
the universe, let’s try to answer a simpler question.

How to measure the curvature of a world in two dimensions?

To be defined or to finish.

Cosmic Microwave Background Radiations

Somewhere around 300 000 years after the Big Bang,
the universe became cold enough to emit radiations. To be
defined or to finish.

Gravity is propagated at the speed of light.

A Universe from Nothing Page 7 I. events

I. events
• 1665, Isaac Newton
• 1784, first observation of Cepheid variable star.
• 1908-1912, Henrietta Swan Leavitt discovers a relation
between Cepheid variable stars’ brightness and period of
their variation. And this leads to knowing the distance
between these stars: we now can make wild approximations
on astonomic distances between us and stars.
• 1916, general theory of relativity, a decade-long struggle to
create a new theory of gravity by Albert Einstein.
This work is also about space and time, and explains not
only how objects move in the universe, but also how the
universe itself might evolve.
• 1925, Hubble publishes his study on spiral nebulae, where
he identified Cepheid variable stars in them (including the
nebulae we currently know as Andromeda).
• 1925, Mount Wilson 100-inch Hooker telescope, the
world’s largest at the time.
• 1927: Lemaître shows that the Einstein’s equations suggest
an expanding universe.
• 1930: Lemaître proposes an universe beginning in a small
point he called Primeval Atom.
• 1933: Zwicky concludes that the Coma cluster is about 100
times more massive than the sum of the masses of its stars.
A Universe from Nothing Page 8 II. vocabulary

II. vocabulary
• perihelion: point of an orbit where the object (e.g.: a planet)
is the closest from another object (e.g.: a star).
• aphelion: opposite of perihelion, point of an orbit where the
object is the farthest from another object.
• precession: change in an angle over time. This can be the
angle of the ellipse formed by the orbital journey of a planet
(apsidal precession). Or this can be the movement of the
rotational axis of an astronomical body, whereby the axis
slowly traces out a cone (axial precession). Finally, the
precession can be a change in the plane of the orbital course
(nodal precession), which can be caused by a third
gravitational object.
• nebulae: fuzzy thing (or cloud) in latin. Galaxies were
named this way before we understood what we saw.
• Cepheid variable: star whose brightness varies over some
regular period, indicating a change in diameter and
temperature.
• Doppler Effect: a wave coming at you will be stretched if
the source is moving away from you, or compressed if the
source is coming toward you.
• Nuclei:
A Universe from Nothing Page 9 III. people involved

III. people involved

• Johannes Kepler: known for the first heliocentric model.
• Isaac Newton:
• Christian Doppler: australian physicist, known for the
"Doppler Effect".
• Albert Einstein:
• Georges Lemaître: physicist and preist, first to suggest that
the universe was expanding in 1927.
He started as an engineer, then was a decorated artilleryman
in WW1, switched to mathematics, and priesthood in early
1920s. Then moved to cosmology and first studied with Sir
Arthur Stanley Eddington before moving on to Harvard and
receiving a second PhD in physics from MIT.
• Arthur Stanley Eddington: astronomer.
• Henrietta Swan Leavitt: Harvard College Observatory
"computer". Discovered the relation between Cepheid
variable stars’ brightness and period of variation.
• Edwin Hubble: former lawyer, became astronomer. Made
the first observation of the expansion of the universe.
• Harlow Shapley: discovered the Sun wasn’t at the center of
the Milky Way, and that our galaxy was much larger than
we previously thought.
• Vesto Slipher: astronomer, he measured the spectra of light
coming from several galaxies.
• Fritz Zwicky: astronomer, analyzed in 1933 that galaxies in
the Coma cluster were moving so fast they would have quit
the cluster unless the cluster was 100 times more massive
than the sum of the masses of the stars.
• Tony Tyson: physicist. Discovered the mass between
galaxies through images from the Hubble Space Telescope.
A Universe from Nothing Page 10 IV. Random explanations

IV. Random explanations

TODO: explain how we measure stuff with
telescopes (resolution, focal, arcsecond unit,
etc.).

Diffraction: behavior of waves when reaching an aperture.

Aperture, where light can pass through

Main visible light source, very bright
Empty space, very little light
Halo, thin light

Circular diffraction

References
Lawrence Krauss, a Universe from Nothing, Simon & Schuster
(2012).