

Mathematics of Eternity Prove The Universe Must Have Had A Beginning - kenhty
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/27793/

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jbert
I've found one useful way to think about the question "what was before the Big
Bang" is to ponder "what is North of the North pole"?

Don't stretch the analogy too far - I'm not suggesting that spacetime is
topologically shaped like that - but to me it's a useful example of a co-
ordinate system which seems locally euclidean going whacky at/near the
boundaries.

Roughly, "But there has to be something _before_ the big bang, you just go
back a bit further in the same direction!" == "But there has to be something
North of the pole - you just go a bit further in the same direction!"

~~~
ccozan
The problem is that you an use words like "go" and "direction" in a situation
where they make sense. In the incipient phase of the Universe the space-time
did not exist as we can perceive it with our brains, themselves based on
physical and chemical properties of the mature Universe - so would be
impossible to "imagine" that there is no "north" because there is no direction
available.

Kant deducted that our conscience and brains are born with the sense of space-
time and we cannot override this. The only way in which we can access this
ideas is only through highend mathematics and AIs that just need to do a job,
but not to explain to our limited brains how.

~~~
dredmorbius
Kant may have deducted that, but he's talking about a neurobiological
phenomenon born from evolutionary pressures in a very limited environment.

Michelson–Morley mesured, and Einstein explained, how speed of light, not
time, is constant through the Universe. To the point of questioning
simultaneity.

If we've already got non-constant time, then the concept of a time origin
prior to which there is no sensible physical description is at least
plausible, if not something I can, spacial geometric puns pardoned, wrap my
brain around in the same sense that there's a limit to "northness" on a
spheroid.

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iwwr
"A universe from nothing" by Lawrence Krauss presents the possibility of a
universe without a beginning, even one containing "nothing", yet still be
compatible with present cosmology. My general impression is that by "nothing"
he means "averaged out, zero energy" and with a set of laws (quantum
mechanics) that can generate fluctuations. Out of these fluctuations you can
have particles of various energy arising (which normally live short lives and
decay back into nothingness).

But given enough time you could have a large enough fluctuation that generates
a big bang, followed by very long inflation and cooling. Equally so, you could
have a fluctuation that winks all the known universe into a void, suddenly and
without warning.

~~~
sek
The question would be then what the beginning of quantum mechanics is. They
are also laws and why do they exist? The question "why" is probably wrong
here, that implies a reason where we will never find one. These thoughts that
we are a product of nothingness with fluctuations make me really feel weird.
There is probably an eternity outside of our universe, something that we have
to accept and that there is no reason for it.

~~~
cristianpascu
The question "why" does not necessarily point to a purpose, although we can
not 'a apriori' exclude that possible purpose from being there.

You could see it as two folds answer: either the laws and this "nothing"
simply exists, or something else created them.

There's really no need to keep asking "what, then, created the creator", for
simply things are the way they are and not necessarily as in the explanation
we find satisfactory. It could be that the Universe has no creator (I
personally find it highly improbable), it could be that it has one creator, or
N. I can't be absolutely certain and we can't really check. All we can do is
have an opinion/belief about it.

~~~
mangodrunk
>There's really no need to keep asking "what, then, created the creator", for
simply things are the way they are and not necessarily as in the explanation
we find satisfactory.

The same thing could be said for anything and why wouldn't you just stop at
the universe instead?

>It could be that the Universe has no creator (I personally find it highly
improbable)

How is this improbable? Do you have evidence or something that would lead you
to such a claim? Also, what do you mean by "creator"?

>I can't be absolutely certain and we can't really check. All we can do is
have an opinion/belief about it.

How do you know this? Isn't that a claim of certainty that you said we don't
have. If we don't have evidence or any logical reasons for something, then
guesses aren't sufficient explanations.

~~~
cristianpascu
As I said, I have an opinion/belief. If I had evidence, it would be more than
an opinion. But it's not.

As for the certainty, no one so far has created a test, not even
theoretically, to discern between a created and an uncreated thing. At least
I'm not aware of any.

Still, epistemologically, beliefs can be shown to be true, although they are
not justified. Sometimes it's pure luck, some other times it's insufficient
justifications.

When I say it's improbable, it's a statement of belief. Not my intention to be
persuasive.

~~~
derleth
> As for the certainty, no one so far has created a test, not even
> theoretically, to discern between a created and an uncreated thing.

It's simple: Demonstrate the existence of the creator.

> As I said, I have an opinion/belief.

Why?

~~~
cristianpascu
If you prefer Mercedes to BMW, and a total stranger comes to you asking
"Why?", would you feel obliged to answer?

~~~
slurgfest
Is this really a matter of trivial preference like that?

~~~
cristianpascu
I don't it's trivial. It's a matter of life and death. But _my death and my
life_. It's not that I don't have an answer, but I don't like feeling
interrogated. :)

~~~
mangodrunk
This isn't an interrogation, but you said some things which I think deserved
critique. Just because you have an opinion doesn't make it so, nor is it
something that should be respected. You don't have any legitimate reasons to
say these things so you hide behind opinion as if because it is an opinion
it's above scrutiny.

------
Jun8
You can read John Rennie's excellent answer to this question
([http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/24018/how-can-
som...](http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/24018/how-can-something-
happen-when-time-does-not-exist)) that always comes up during discussions on
time.

~~~
joering2
it was a good read, I +1 you.

what literally gives me a headache if I think about it for longer than 45
seconds is this question how come something could exist before anything
existed. It had to exist, otherwise what existed after that wouldn't be
created. But it was, and our universe and we are a prove of it. It feels like
an almost perfect crime that we are a result of, if you can follow my thought
here. I dont care how many billion of years in past I have to dig into. I dont
care how many billions of lightyears I need to travel. At the end, at some
point, there must be an end. Whats after it? Just think of it, for a moment.
It exists right now in this second. Sure you wont see it in your lifetime, or
experience it, but taken out time and distance from this equation, you would
be there and experience it. Awesome stuff...

------
andrewcooke
this builds on an earlier theorem, which i haven't looked at (and probably
wouldn't understand anyway) which apparently makes rigorous the intuitively
attractive idea that if you trace back in time something that is getting
bigger then at some point you reach zero.

the reason oscillating universes are caught out by this is that (apparently -
this is all just my impression on a quick skim, having never understood things
much and leaving astronomy - not even astrophysics - decades ago) even though
they oscillate, they need to get systematically bigger to work around some
problems with entropy.

another model they considered is a universe that "just sits there" like a
seed, forever, until (randomly) deciding to grow. and that has problems with
quantum mechanics (which you can imagine - how can something be stable for an
infinite amount of time?).

one problem is that it's a paper that really only attacks current models. they
don't _prove_ that no other model could be thought up.

you could also argue another weakness of the paper is a reliance on our
notions of basic physics (quantum and statistical mechanics) holding true even
in the distant past. but then, what else can you do?

------
nooneelse
Creation of something from nothing seems rather functionally equivalent to
destruction of a something into nothing with time reversed. Is there any known
process or way to take something and destroy it utterly into nothing? If not,
then what would make such an utter destruction possible given a reversed
direction of time?

Except as an abstraction, it seems to me that no one has any real experience
of nothing. As an empiricist, that gives me quite a bit of pause when anyone
starts making claims about nothing (myself being no exception).

------
OzzyB
This is _my_ theory.

After watching Steven Hawking's series on The Universe, he talked about Black
Holes and how they keep growing and growing; sucking in more mass and getting
denser and denser, whilst at the same time amasing more gravity.

i.e. the more mass something has, the more gravity it exerts, the more mass it
attracts -- a viscious cirle.

So my theory, don't laugh, is that the universe if cyclical. After a Black
Hole has consumed everything, including other Black Holes etc. it explodes and
all that mass gets released creating the universe as we know it. And so on and
so on over a _gazillion_ years.

Is that absurd?

Edit: Many thanks for the informative replies...

~~~
ComputerGuru
Isaac Asimov has a brilliantly-written, chilling (indeed, to some, downright
terrifying) very short story on this very topic:

<http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html> "The Last Question"

I won't spoil it for you. But go read it.

~~~
OzzyB
Wow, oh wow, that was absolutely fantastic. Cheers!

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ck2
I'm a fan of the white-hole theory (big bang is opposite side of a super
massive black hole in another universe)

~~~
VMG
Theory or "idea"?

~~~
ck2
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_hole>

_White holes appear as part of a solution to the Einstein field equations
known as the maximally extended version of the Schwarzschild metric_

We may be one of a processes of cosmological natural selection:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fecund_universes#Fecund_univers...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fecund_universes#Fecund_universes)

~~~
kstenerud
Alternatively, the Red Dwarf explanation:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxWN8AhNER0>

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lelf
Paper: <http://arxiv.org/pdf/1204.4658v1.pdf>

------
ThomPete
The question is not whether the universe had a beginning but rather how many
times.

~~~
twiceaday
Big bang is not certain. Yes the cosmological background radiation is evenly
distributed, and yes Hubble law makes accurate predictions, but these aren't
proofs. I watched a documentary recently on this subject and most theoretical
physicists surveyed did not believe in the big bang.

~~~
dekz
I'd be interested in the documentary if you could provide a title!

~~~
twiceaday
It's called "Horizon: What Happened Before the Big Bang?".

