A debate on the substance of nothing

Ross Andersen has a superb interview with the theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss at the Atlantic's site. Krauss's recent book A Universe From Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing has, by design, kicked up a controversy. Krauss argues in the book that science is now "addressing the question of why there is something rather than nothing" and that, indeed, recent scientific discoveries in this area "all suggest that getting something from nothing is not a problem." In his afterword to the book, Richard Dawkins writes, “Even the last remaining trump card of the theologian, ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?,’ shrivels up before your eyes as you read these pages." In a New York Times review last month, the Columbia University philosopher David Albert begged to differ, writing that Krauss is "dead wrong." Albert argued that what Krauss claims is "nothing" - in short, "empty space" - is actually something and that, therefore, Krauss's explanation does not "amount to anything even remotely in the neighborhood of a creation from nothing." In the Atlantic interview, Krauss calls Albert "a moronic philosopher." Fun stuff. But important stuff, too. As Andersen writes, "To see two academics, both versed in theoretical physics,...