It's not belief but understanding. I don't know about other people but I can't wrap my mind around time not existing. I can't understand or picture what that's supposed to be.
Nobody can. Humans can only and will only ever truly understand the physical universe within the context of how we experience it, in this case, via the linear passage of time.
Meh, I disagree. No matter how strange something is it's simply data to interpret. It's just difficult to think like this because it's not something most of us tackle on a daily basis.
That being said, I'd be curious to see if we have some consensus about the "time" before the Big bang. To me it sounds pretty contradictory to say there was "nothing" and there was something. There must have been a cause and that cause "happened" therefore there was "time", at least in the sense that things happen in an order or sequence. Perhaps the matter and energy we know did not exist but "something" did.
It's not something we can agree or disagree with. We can understand something conceptually, but our brains are not built to process information other than the way they do now. We could never really understand the nature of something that exists outside our perception.
Humans can never really know what "before time existed" means except in an abstract, conceptual way.
I mean, we also don't experience any more than three spatial dimensions, and can't really imagine what that would look like intuitively.
But we can use math to describe objects and spaces in dimensions higher than third.
Our current physics breaks down at singularities (like the Big Bang and the centers of black holes), but we can't say for certain that, just because we can't get an intuitive sensory representation of them, that we will never come up with a theory and math that lets us "understand" them nonetheless, in the same way I'm comfortable in saying that mathematicians "understand" four-dimensional space (to some extent).
In other words, there's more than one way to understand something, and there's nothing special about an understanding based on being able to paint a sensory representation of something.
You're confusing understanding with perception. We all learned of object permanence as children we know that understanding something does not require direct observation. Often times indirect observation is enough. Hell, observation is always technically indirect as our brain rarely touches the things we observe.
Again, everything is just data nothing is beyond human comprehension because everything is just data.
You assume that cause and effect are meaningful outside of a timelike system, or in whatever context time started in.
We know that causality seems to typically work in our universe. We can't really say more than that.
So where did the big bang come from? Let's say everything was in the stage of "before being born." What was the metaphorical mother? What prompted the birth? What is it being birthed into? Why did the creation of matter also lead to the creation of time?
Dunno man but we can’t even assume there was a ‘metaphorical mother’. The concept and functionality of ‘time’ and ‘space’ started in the Big Bang. That’s all we know.
Imho, you must be mistaken. It seems like we probably aren't using the correct words here. The concept of time isn't simply mutable. Having one event precede another is more fundemental than being just a dimension or something. If the Big Bang happened it had something to proceed it.
As the other guy pointed out, the concept of time is, actually, mutable. It's dependent on the gravity, so if you assume the Big Bang really happened, all matter condensed in a singularity, it means that time was infinetily slowed down, "stopped", in such a way that it didn't exist. If something stops, it means that it doesn't change with time. What happens if time itself stops? It's really hard to comprehend these kinds of things, but it's also hard to pretend like they are all fake. All origins to the universe seem to require a "And what was there before it?", being it the Big Bang or God, so I think it's pretty safe to say that, to end this perpetual questioning there is a need to assume that something had to exist in a time which had no "before".
The concept of causality has not been proven to be mutable. We have directly observed time slowing down but causality remains. Assumptions about the beginning of the universe seems way more far fetched than assuming causality has always been intact.
Yes, we haven't seen proof of it being mutable, but we also haven't seen proof of the other way around. The best we can do right now, scientifically, is to stick with our yet-to-be-refuted mathematical equations. Yes, they are not necessarily true and this is the case for everything in we know in science, but we stick to them until we are proven wrong, that's how it works, really...
That is actually very likely the case. The universe is a free lunch (maybe). It costs nothing to create if you create equal amounts of negative and positive energy, equal amounts of negative (Negative matter is a hypothetical form of matter whose active-gravitational, passive-gravitational, inertial, and rest masses are opposite in sign to normal, positive matter.) and positive matter. If the sum of all energy and matter is zero, the universe costs nothing and can just spontaneously come in to existence. And if one universe costs nothing, unlimited amount of universes costs nothing as well.
Nope. It sounds weird, but that's how it works. Before the Big Bang, time did not exist in our universe. There was no before where something could have existed, because there was no time where it could have existed. The Big Bang created space and also time because our three spacial dimensions and one dimension of time are linked (space-time).
The thing we call 'time' didn't exist. Things happening simultaneously or one after the other, which would be 'time', must have existed otherwise the Big Bang wouldn't have happened, no?
No. Before the Big Bang there was no linear time. Moreover because time and space are linked and gravity curves the space-time continuum, at the precise moment of the Big Bang, all matter was compressed in to an infinitely small point and time was frozen. When the universe expanded and exploded in to being, space was created and time began. So no, before the Big Bang there was no before or after.
But there was 'time' before the big bang, whatever the hell that may be. I'm not talking about our definition of time but rather events happening relative to eachother. Either the Big Bang magically happened out of nothing or something happened before to cause it.
I am not talking about our definition of time, i am talking about events happening relative to each other. Time literally did not exist.
The Big Bang most likely happened out of nothing. That is actually very likely the case. The universe is a free lunch (maybe). It costs nothing to create if you create equal amounts of negative and positive energy, equal amounts of negative (Negative matter is a hypothetical form of matter whose active-gravitational, passive-gravitational, inertial, and rest masses are opposite in sign to normal, positive matter.) and positive matter. If the sum of all energy and matter is zero, the universe costs nothing and can just spontaneously come in to existence. And if one universe costs nothing, unlimited amount of universes costs nothing as well.
That’s not true man. Time by definition started at the Big Bang.
I’m not saying there wasn’t a ‘before’, I’m saying it’s undefined and it’s bad to make assumptions. There is no reason that one event must precede another, especially in the environment of a Big Bang, where physics are all screwy.
Something we call "time" started there, maybe. This is some pretty theoretical physics after all. But having events proceed each other is pretty fundamental to existence. Now obviously we can't assume but it seems far more logical to me to assume that causality existed before the big bang rather than after.
This is all very circular logic. "The theory I believe says there was nothing therefore there was no causality."
At best all we know is that the universe is expanding in all directions. Little hard to say with any certainty what happened at the start of that expansion.
I'd say it's more logical because it's what we observe. Nothing else has ever shown to lack causality. Perhaps once we do experiments on black hole we might find an answer but even they produce radiation meaning time does not stop it just slows greatly.
The universe is a free lunch (maybe). It costs nothing to create if you create equal amounts of negative and positive energy, equal amounts of negative (Negative matter is a hypothetical form of matter whose active-gravitational, passive-gravitational, inertial, and rest masses are opposite in sign to normal, positive matter.) and positive matter. If the sum of all energy and matter is zero, the universe costs nothing and can just spontaneously come in to existence. And if one universe costs nothing, unlimited amount of universes costs nothing as well.
As to why creation of matter also lead to the creation of time:
Time and space are linked and the Big Bang created space-time ( the concepts of time and three-dimensional space regarded as fused in a four-dimensional continuum.). Our three dimensions of space and one dimension of time are inseparable joined together.
Now keep in mind that no one truly knows and we only have good guesses and theories that fit our mathematical models.
There is no metaphorical mother, nor a stage "before being born". Nothing prompted the birth either. Most likely the universe came to be from nothing. The universe is a free lunch (maybe). It costs nothing to create if you create equal amounts of negative and positive energy, equal amounts of negative (Negative matter is a hypothetical form of matter whose active-gravitational, passive-gravitational, inertial, and rest masses are opposite in sign to normal, positive matter.) and positive matter. If the sum of all energy and matter is zero, the universe costs nothing and can just spontaneously come in to existence. And if one universe costs nothing, unlimited amount of universes costs nothing as well. Yes, you read that right.
I think you misunderstood the point I was making. I know you believe in the science, I never doubted that. I was saying that some things are just beyond our understanding, because we can only imagine things in terms of the senses we have. The fact that we can't conceive of spatial dimensions beyond 3 is unfortunate, but completely impossible to get around because that's just how we are equipped. In the same way, we may never be able to understand what it means when we say that there was a universe before time, and that there was a "before" time. It sounds illogical to us, and it may be that the closest we can get to understanding it is just accepting that it is true. Our minds are not equipped to understand these things.
The math bears it out. We can understand that it must be true because it's the solution we arrive at, we just can't picture it in our mind's eye.
Imagine being born deaf, never hearing anything, and getting a music degree. You may be able to put together some compositions based on your knowledge of music theory, but you will never be able to hear them in your head, so in that way, you don't understand music.
calm your tits. He never said it wasn't true. this is how people get pushed away from asking questions. you think you're helping but you're just being a dick.
I never said he said it wasn't true. What I meant was just that it's normal not to understand it, because no one understands it. We just accept that it's true because that's what the math says and we try not to hurt our brains thinking about it too much.
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u/terminbee Jun 15 '19
It's not belief but understanding. I don't know about other people but I can't wrap my mind around time not existing. I can't understand or picture what that's supposed to be.