"Contrary to what ancient Christian theologians hypothesized, the universe was not necessarily created from a pre-existing something.

I was recently reminded of this while watching a captivating two-hour British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) documentary, Everything and Nothing: The Amazing Science of Empty Space, first released in 2011.

Program host Jim Al-Khalili, an Iraq-born British theoretical physicist, University of Surrey professor and author, explains in the documentary that modern quantum research indicates nothing can indeed birth something. Naturally. Spontaneously. Without divine assistance.

Yet this idea is not new, just vastly more provable today than in earlier epochs.
Al-Khalili explains in the documentary that experiments in quantum physics—the science that investigates the material behavior of atoms and even smaller entities—shows quantum bits of material spontaneously popping into and out of existence in a sterile vacuum. Ex nihilo.

It is a strange-sounding phenomenon but infers cosmic consequences. Al-Khalil says quantum behavior is Big Bang theory writ infinitesimally tiny—powerfully supporting the ex nihilo hypothesis.
Our growing understanding of the infinitely teeny-tiny quantum realm is a major achievement that follows a long line of scientific advances

Read more at [patheos.com]