cuffy,
:Actually physicists are addressing it, its the theme of Hawkins new book. Most of the real work is not to be found in the popular press however. Be careful not to confuse what science doesn't know yet with what can't be known.
They can address it all they want, but even in your reference to Stephen Hawking (I read his first book, btw), he stated that mathematics cannot answer everything in that area.
Let me give you an example: some scientists believe the laws of gravity when completely understood, will provide the answers, but that begs the question "where did gravity come from?" The stuff from the tiny batch of stuff that banged and spread that matter throughout the Universe? Where did it come from? Science has been consistent in saying that matter/energy can neither be created nor destroyed, just transformed from one into the other. But matter MUST have existed for the big bang to occur.
So, then we might ask, not just who made it but when was it made? But time did not exist before the moment the big bang did its bang. Einstein's laws prove that mathematically, just as Newton's laws worked perfectly on this planet. But some of Newton's laws don't work at all in time/space.
Given the fact that the big bang stuff did exist, how could it have existed at all just by itself, and why? And WHY did it decide to bang? And where the did space/universe(s) come from to give it room to bang?
Multiple universes or dimensions, which are part of string theory give one explanation, but it still begs the questions about where did THEY come from in order to be able to produce the material that came from the big bang? Also, string theory requires ONE dimensional strings that manifest themselves with more than one dimension in other dimensions. Science has never been able to manifest a one-dimensional object, because it cannot exist in our universe. The thinnest string you could ever imagine, say one that is 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 billionth of a micron STILL has two dimensions.
This stuff would normally give me a headache, so instead of taking aspirin, I just take comfort in the solace that whoever/whatever made/got that stuff and set all that stuff in motion is unknowable in science. EVER. Why do I say that? I say that simply because it's untestable, which will forever make it a hypothesis.
Newton provided some of the answers. Einstein provided some of the answers. Hawking provided some of the anwers, as did Tesla and Fermi, and many others.
I'm content knowing that some things just cannot be solved through science or any other logical method. The great mysteries surrounding the "theory of everything" will not be discovered by humans.
Farkel
