Thorham

That's not a lot, and people can claim whatever they want. That doesn't show much. In other words, it means that 'we' don't know. All this just sounds like: 'If I can't see it then it doesn't exist.', and I don't like that one bit.

Does that make it impossible? No. Also, are there any scientists even looking for evidence? Yeah, it means we don't know

Unless there is more then just the physical realm, of course. That doesn't really mean much, does it?

If there are still humans in a billions years then something went VERY wrong indeed. Humans in a billions years, what a truly horrendous idea Forget that. Humans in a million years is already exceedingly bad.

I hope not.

If we're automatons, then do decisions even exist?

Yeah, it's large now, but I wrote that it wasn't large, not that it isn't

Various tracked pieces of music (modules) on my Amiga.

That just means it has a large mass, not that it was large volume wise (is volume the right word?). That certainly sounds better than big bang.

I'm don't want to call it that anymore because: 1. The theory fails at a certain point. 2. It wasn't big. 3. It wasn't a bang.

How about this: Because the big bang theory doesn't work, there is no big bang. Instead there's expansion. Now you can ask what came before expansion, and the answer has to be that that is unknown right now.

Yes, but that doesn't exist in normal floating point formats.

Can you even make a Turing complete system out of planets, stars, etc?

Start of expansion (if it did start at some point). To me an event is just something that happens that's noteworthy such as those changes in evolution (hypothetical one: collapse -> expansion).

Or you could just quit, and bite through the 'hard' times. I've smoked for 25 years. The last five the equivalent of three packs a day. I quit pretty easily. Don't think about it, just do it. Blast this effing garbage out of your mind, and don't make a big issue out of it. It's not an issue at all and you don't need this nonsense for anything. However, if you're not absolutely, 300 percent, motivated then you're doomed to failure.

Something that was caused by something else perhaps.

Why not?

Probably. Most lay people probably refer to the one-off event, while physicists and learned people probably refer to the evolution of the universe. Hence the confusion. It certainly is misleading. You've seen the effects in this thread.

But that's what people are referring to. They're referring to things that happened physically, they're not referring to the model. The 'before the big bang' question really means: 'What happened before the expansion, if anything happened at all?'. The current theory doesn't work at this point so it's a perfectly valid question (which is perhaps worded in the wrong way).

Okay. Yeah, but if it doesn't work at some point then what good is it at that same point? A model of what? I'm talking about the 'what'. It's just like gravity. It's a theory, but it's also the name of what causes something to appear to fall when we drop it. This is just a language usage issue. There was still something that physically collapsed, and after that physically expanded. That's what 'before' refers to. It refers to what physically happened, not to the model. What happened before in a model that deals with a beginning obviously makes no sense.

Didn't the math somehow break down before t=0? Doesn't that tell you there's a problem with the current theory? It depends on what a big bang actually is. If it's something that just was then 'before' indeed doesn't make any sense. If it was caused by something, then it does make sense. In the case of your collapse example, you had a big crunch that lead to the big bang (yes, speculation)

Let me try that again in a different way. Then why are you bringing it up? In which case the before question isn't relevant. In this case any number of events could've lead to the big bang and the before question makes sense. In that case the before question makes sense as well, and is easy to answer: The collapse happened before the big bang. In this case it also makes sense to ask what came before. Then there's the possibility of bubble universes, in which case the before question yet again makes sense. The before question doesn't make sense if the relevant part of GR is true, but is it? I'm not claiming that it isn't, I'm claiming we don't know, and that therefore the before question makes perfect sense. Thanks.

Now you're just repeating what you said earlier, while you also said this: Saying that there's no 'before' because singularity at t=0 is a little too easy. Prove the singularity, and prove that time started at the big bang. In addition you have to prove that there are no multiple 'bubble universes' each with their own time. Good luck with that. Asking the before question makes just as much sense as asking whether or not there was a before to begin with.

'Before' makes sense because the big bang is simply an event. It's either the first event to have occurred, or it isn't. If it's the first event then there's no before. If it wasn't the first thing to ever happen, then there was a before. *Edited*