Big bang and "before".

[Silverrida]

I personally believe the Big Bang could not have occurred unless time existed first based on cause and effect. Time is the medium through which cause and effect, a governing principle of our Universe, works. Without time, to action of expanding would be impossible.

[Lex]

May 19, 2010 10:37:50 GMT -5 Silverrida said:

I personally believe the Big Bang could not have occurred unless time existed first based on cause and effect. Time is the medium through which cause and effect, a governing principle of our Universe, works. Without time, to action of expanding would be impossible.

It initiated time. It was possible.

Also, please note that time is a concept relative to the observer.

[Nakor]

Well, the big bang's actual occurrence needed time, but that time could have begun at the point the big bang began, or at any point during the singularity's existence. What could not have happened was the big bang starting, then time starting, then the big bang continuing. If time started with the big bang, it started at the very moment it began, so Silverrida is roughly correct in saying that the big bang could not have existed outside of time; it's just that time could have started the very moment the big bang began.

The topic generates quite the headache eh?

[Silverrida]

May 19, 2010 12:21:38 GMT -5 Lex said:

May 19, 2010 10:37:50 GMT -5 Silverrida said:

I personally believe the Big Bang could not have occurred unless time existed first based on cause and effect. Time is the medium through which cause and effect, a governing principle of our Universe, works. Without time, to action of expanding would be impossible.

It initiated time. It was possible.

Also, please note that time is a concept relative to the observer.

One thing can not "initiate" another thing unless there is a way to show that one thing came first and one thing came second. This separation is what we know as time. It could have occurred near simultaneously to the existence of time, similarly to what Nakor said, which would need to have previously always existed (unless you believe in a deity which throws all this out the window), but it needs to be there for anything to actually occur.

Nakor, I disagree as you are saying that time needed to be brought into existence, or it began, with your idea, and to be brought into existence also needs time as a medium where as always existing only needs time as a human concept.

[Ryan]

I don't think that Nakor is saying that time needed to be brought into existence, but is instead saying that if the big bang initiated time, then they both started simultaneously.

Unfortunately, language is a terrible concept to discuss the ideas that are here, because they center around time. I think Nakor's idea wasn't so much that time had to come into being, more like it was possible that it happened along with a big bang.

[Nakor]

Indeed so. Incidentally, not all cause-and-effect pairings require time. Normal force is a good example of this -- for every action (cause) there is an equal and opposite reaction (effect). The reaction this statement refers to is "normal force" (when you push against a wall, normal force is the force the wall puts back on your hand), and occurs simultaneously with the force you're applying. Therefore this particular cause-and-effect relationship can occur without time (to the best of our understanding of it).

[Phat]

May 18, 2010 2:24:00 GMT -5 Ryan said:

I'm gonna have to side with Nakor on the whole "it's rational because we either imagined it or it is true"


Surely I can imagine irrational things, like flying pig, or cold flame - that does not make them any more rational.

Perhaps you could clarify what you meant, phat?

Now you put me on the spot! To me, (an)eternally existing creator is more logical than eternally existing creation.

That still begs an answer to the question of where ________came from.

OK, imagine that I created a robot. I gave him a brain, programmed him to think and question then turned him on. After a few days, he came up to me and asked where I came from. In fact, he said that I HAD to have come from somewhere.
But how can he know?

(sorry...im foggy right now...cant carry this argument logically just yet. Maybe after a few replies.)

[stephen5000]

I've noticed that many discussions about the Big Bang degenerate into nonsense, as people mix up the philosophical discussion of cause & effect with the general science discussion (which most people don't know very well).

Isn't cause & effect a specific way of looking at time; one that may not be appropriate when we talk about the space-time of cosmology?

[Nakor]

Very true. But then language again gets in the way. Also, most of us (all of us?) are not scientists.

Phat: That is because you are considering the universe to be a creation. There's no evidence of this. You're saying that an eternally existing universe that was not created is less likely than a universe that was created by a eternally existent creator for which there is no evidence. Occam's razor again.

Moreover, we're kinda hazy on the whole eternal thing. It may not be eternal at all. In fact, it seems rather likely that any particular universe isn't (for example, the heat death theory), though if there are multiple universes then there may be an eternal chain. (Similar to how no human is immortal, but assuming nothing managed to drive us to extinction -- and ignoring the fact that evolution would change us over time -- humanity could live on forever.)

[Ryan]

One of the reasons that humans would say that something is eternal or infinite is simply because there is no evidence that it will end or that it has a limit.

The universe in practicality is not eternal, we just have no reason to say it will end, we cannot put the end on a time-table and so we don't. We can say that it began, and we cannot say anything about 'before' if there was 'before' simply because there is equally no evidence about the 'before'.

[stephen5000]

But then, there's a limit to how much evidence we humans can get about the nature of the universe.

[Ryan]

yes, that rather goes without saying. We are limited by time and resources. Eventually we will die out.

[Silverrida]

May 20, 2010 23:01:38 GMT -5 stephen5000 said:

I've noticed that many discussions about the Big Bang degenerate into nonsense, as people mix up the philosophical discussion of cause & effect with the general science discussion (which most people don't know very well).

Isn't cause & effect a specific way of looking at time; one that may not be appropriate when we talk about the space-time of cosmology?

Cause and effect govern everything we see and know. It is a universal law and can be applied everywhere. It is one example that Stephen Hawkings uses to show that humans traveling back in time is impossible; the effect has the ability to come before/in itself effect the cause of that effect.

[Ryan]

stephen is correct though. While cause and effect govern everything, you cannot apply it to show that time exists prior to the big bang. Cause and effect does not depend entirely on time, and therefore cannot be used to show anything about it.

Since humans use time as a measure, and since time is 100% relative, it is possible that time actually is not something that exists in nature, but is simply a construct that humans use to explain phenomena.

Point in case - the number 2 does not actually exist as a construct of nature, but as a construct of human mechanics.

[Nakor]

I like to think that as we advance to more and more fundamental physics (like quantum and string) we will be able to better understand mathematically how these particles would have acted even in situations that we can't reproduce. If we know the fundamental particles everything is made of, and we know exactly how they operate, then we could theoretically determine how they would have operated within a singularity, even if we can't reproduce the singularity to demonstrate our findings. (Much like we can't reproduce the big bang, but we still proved it happened with applied physics, chemistry and mathematics.)

Mind you, I have to imagine we are a very, very, very long way from that being feasible. But I have to imagine it's possible.

[The Monster]

I believe the universe's origins must have started from somewhere; as to what that is I have no clue. Sure I can view a bunch of theories and hypotheses and get a general idea as to how it happened and how it works, although in the end I am left with a lot of unanswered questions (what created/started the big bang? what had influenced it? what's outside the borders of our universe?

Which leave nothing but speculation at the moment to conclude this mystery, unless mankind produces/discovers something new.

[Ryan]

one day....

[evethor]

Oh much mind blowing information here.
Bring it on I say.