Lol
I don't believe this is a meaningful way of speaking about it
Yes, that's how I understand it, and the second sentence could be dropped, as it is tautological in my understanding.
Depends on what you mean by causality. That concept tends to get stretched beyond our everyday understanding when you zoom in to very tiny scales, or out to very large ones. It is not meaningful to apply it in every context.
But what do you mean?
What came before time? You are saying there was no before time. But time began 13.8 billion years ago. The further out we look, the further back in time we see. We see stars as they were billioms of years ago.
You try to describe some sort of self-contained circle moving around on the surface of a sphere to get around the arrow of time. Ok, these 4D concepts are difficult to visualize. Can you explain it a bit better?
Leonard Susskind describes a holographic universe, where what we see is a projected reality upon the surface of an event horizon. Plato's cave.
Roger Penrose likes a non-scalar recurring universe. Each new big bang the result of the eventual evaporation of the matter particles of the previous one.
Unimaginable time scales. But even that had to have a before? There must have been an original event? Otherwise it's turtles all the way down?
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I don't think it is meaningful to say, essentially, "Did the universe exist prior to the universe existing?".
No, I'm afraid not. Good thing I never became a school teacher.
Pesky animals, these turtles!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_Tortoise_Said_to_Achilles
But why don't you think so?
Ok, let's take a different tack. Is it meaningful to ask: Did time exist prior to time existing? Regards whether or not that pre-time condition 'was' nevertheless a part of the universe? If not, why not?
Once this was a purely philosophical question. But now the universe has a definite age. 13.8 billion years. And the consensus has always been for a flat (like a pancake) universe. Open, not spherical.
New talk about the reliability of supernovae brightness as a measurement is bringing dark energy into question -- but until now, the consensus is for a flat universe?
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Yes .. but the word "time" needs to be defined. If you define it in terms of space,
the answer becomes a definite NO!
Does it?
It is only "definite" in terms of theory. Nobody ever lived billions of years ago.
It is all about perception. It is all about scientific definitions which are based on assumptions.
Mankind continues to expand their understanding.
After all, it is only ~100 years ago that we discovered energy and mass are equivaent.
..and now, "we" think we know it all?
Because I think the word "before" has a meaning which is not applicable here, as I tried to illustrate with the "north pole" mental image of singularity.
So even within the simple "second ticks on a straight edge ruler" notion of time which orders events, how would you determine the order of events if there were no events to put in any order?
Expanding.
Time in the sense of the arrow of time, from past until now. When I look at a distant star billions of light years away through a telescope I see it as it was billions of years ago in its own past -- the time its light has taken to reach me.
There is no centre point. Wherever I am in the universe, its origin is 13.8 billion years in the past. It's not reversible. That's when time began.
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Of course. But open, not coming back around to itself. And now, perhaps not accelerating, they say?
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But everything breaks down at singularity? There is no way to conceive all the universe condensed into an infinite point? There's no mathematics or mental trick. It simply cannot be done?
So how can you be so sure it looks like what you say? Or is it just your belief/guess -- whatever?
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So: time obviously did not exist before time came into existence; the universe did not exist before the universe came into existence.
And it could not come from nothing, because nothing is not a void or a womb. Nothing simply isn't there: it's not even like an invisible pink unicorn, of which one can begin to form some sort of mental concept.
So if the big bang was like the seed from which the universe sprouted 13.8 billion years ago, where did the seed come from from?
Obviously words like where and when cannot apply to a state of no time/space. But that does make the question simplistic and irrelevant.
In fact, it is impossible to know?
And it could not come from nothing, because nothing is not a void or a womb. Nothing simply isn't there: it's not even like an invisible pink unicorn, of which one can begin to form some sort of mental concept.
So if the big bang was like the seed from which the universe sprouted 13.8 billion years ago, where did the seed come from from?
Obviously words like where and when cannot apply to a state of no time/space. But that does make the question simplistic and irrelevant.
In fact, it is impossible to know?
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I have no opinion on the possibility of knowing the answers to paradoxes or self-contradicting statements.
Concepts that can't be reasoned about are sometimes called "irrational".
Is the irrational deep or simplistic and irrelevant?
Is it a matter of taste and inclination?
But a singularity is a known fact. A black hole is a known 'object'. It is something which cannot be described beyond the event horizon. Not by mathematics or any other way.
The big bang is the reverse in a way: instead of stuff vanishing forever into a black hole singularity, it came into existence via the BB singularity.
Where is the paradox or self contradiction in asking where did it go to, or where did it come from?
So is the answer going to be that although maths and science to date cannot answer, one day they will be able to?
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But what parts of science do we want to have, and what parts do we want to dismiss?
I prefer to accept the scientists' conclusions -- limited of course as they might be. They pretty much know what they're doing, imo. I'm typing on an internet device. It still leaves plenty of room for questions, imo.
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Which scientists conclusions?
Furthermore, when we say "13.8 billion years ago", are each of those years measured the same?
You perceive this world from a point of view of space i.e. l x w x h
Perhaps there is more to it than that. Einstein certainly thought that there is more to it than mere perception.
It's the biologists that insist on "billions of years" as being meaningful.
Physicists, are more mathematically inclined.
I know when it comes to IP numbers there are ~4 billion. They certainly aren't all the same
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Which scientists conclusions?
Furthermore, when we say "13.8 billion years ago", are each of those years measured the same?
You perceive this world from a point of view of space i.e. l x w x h
Perhaps there is more to it than that. Einstein certainly thought that there is more to it than mere perception.
It's the biologists that insist on "billions of years" as being meaningful.
Physicists, are more mathematically inclined.
I know when it comes to IP numbers there are ~4 billion. They certainly aren't all the same
Of course there is more to it than that.
But don't you have to be careful not to be in the position of accepting the science of the internet device which you are using to deny the science of the Planck Telescope?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background
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I'm not sure what you are getting at..
Are all scientific theories equal?
Of course not !
I hope you don't start bringing up "facts"
I'm not denying anything in particular.
I'm just pointing out that the meaning of some "sound conclusions" are not
as obvious as on first glance. The mind naturally extrapolates to the subjects relative
point in time and imagines what billions of years must mean..
..when in fact, it is more obscure. Shall we take "space" as fixed?
Shall we take "time" as fixed? Shall we take "mass" as fixed?
..or shall we just "fix" our perceptions?
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