Something From Nothing?

Not really, because there aren't necessarily any boundaries to the universe. There aren't "edges" to the universe, on the other side of which we might imagine some place "outside" the universe. We say that the universe is expanding because we observe celestial objects moving away from eachother in all directions, however this quite possible without requiring an "outer edge" to the universe, nor a center to it.

Space and time are not separate, and it is space-time that expands, not just space taking time to expand. I'd say that this hypothesis is about as possible as that the universe rests on the back of a giant turtle. In other words, almost anything is possible, but your hypothesis is not consistent with the data we've collected so far. Listen, I too believe that consciousness is what "powers" the universe, but it is still meaningless to speak about "outside the universe," expecially if you want to call it "nothing" and "conscious thought" simultaneously. As far as I can tell, "conscious thought" is not "nothing."

Dark Matter If Omega were greater than 1, we would expect so, however the data indicate that Omega is about 0.05 according to our observations so far. Generally the universe is theorized at once monistically and wholistically, meaning that the universe is considered as the single set of everything which exists. Everything that exists must therefore exist within the universe by definition. More recent multiverse theories propose that what we presently identify as the universe might in fact be just a small patch of space-time amongst (infinitely?) many more similar patches. In those theories, they occasionally speak of our universe being contained by a larger multiverse, however I've always disliked that twist of definitions.

Suppose there exists some algorithm that underlies the entirety of the human propensity to acquire mathematical beliefs on the basis of proof. That is, suppose the entire notion of proof has been formalized into a single definite and specified algorithm. This algorithm would be such that when given a selection of mathematical formulas that code arithmatical propositions, it will output a 1 (for humanly believable on the basis of proof), or a 0 (not humanly believable) in a finite time. Call this algorithm A.Since this algorithm must be able to model elementary arithmetic, we know that we can construct a Gdel proposition for which A will not return an output value at all in a finite time as long as A is consistent. Since we as humans can know the Gdel statement to be true, yet since algorithm A cannot return an output in a finite time for that statement, we can conclude from this contradiction that A does NOT in fact entirely underlie human mathematical reasoning, and that no such algorithm can.That is a brief synopsis of J.R. Lucas' (and more recently, Roger Penrose's) argument against the computability of human reasoning. It rides upon 3 assumptions that cannot all be simultaneously true. Namely:

Pick at least one of these to be false, because at least one of them must be.This post is largely excerpted from bits and pieces of Yesterdays Algorithm by William Seager, and I highly recommend it. In that paper the author covers the vulnerabilities of this argument a bit more thoroughly. Basically, the argument doesn't show that human A.I. is strictly impossible, but that it is impossible to know if it has ever been truly acheived. In other words, we could try and try to build an artificial human intelligence -- and we might even succeed -- but we would never really know if we had actually accomplished it.

lol... actually I don't know if the argument has much to do with the uncertainty principle, and in fact there might be a resolution to this computational dilemna "hiding" somewhere in the uncertainty principle and quantum computing. All of that's still pretty speculative at this point however, but I think it's important to note that the argument defines computation classically and that there is a real difference between classical computation and quantum computation -- none that I know of that would immediately resolve our intractible triad, but like I said... it might be possible.