Before the Bang

[owl]

I read a lot about empty space in this forum. It's my understanding that time is space and that before the big bang there was no time. Therefore there could not be any space (as we know it) either.

Try thinking of time and space as follows:

If all cosmic "stuff" disappeared (matter, energy, plasma... and the "forces" they generate, nothing would be left... one could say "nothingness" or emptiness. Of course this conflicts with the standard reification of space as a malleable medium (with uncertain ontology) or as an entity which curves, expands, etc.

Then, same with "time,"... as "that (whatever) which clocks measure"... clearly a tautology which does not address the ontology of "time,"... "what is it?"

So... the concept, "the beginning of time" is a result of "making something of it" beyond the obvious duration of events ... between one instant (now) and another... (now.)

 

An eternal and perpetually cycling universe avoids this kind of problem... linear thinking and reification of space and time.

Edited March 9, 2011 by owl

[Airbrush]

I read a lot about empty space in this forum. It's my understanding that time is space and that before the big bang there was no time. Therefore there could not be any space (as we know it) either.

 

Hahahahah. Nice to know that what you read here is a lot of "empty space." We try to write substance, but alas, it seems like so much nothing. Hahahaha.

 

Time is not space, and space is not time. What we formerly called space is now considered to be "space-time".

 

Ready for some more space? More nothing? Heeeeeree it comes:

 

I think that before the Big Bang there was space, not space-time. After the Big Bang we have space-time. Big Bangs happen so infrequently that for all practical purposes it is correct to say that before the Big Bang there was no time, or there was such an unimaginably long period of time, measured in Googols of years, that the word "time" becomes meaningless. This is my wild speculation. Sorry I could not resist.

Edited March 9, 2011 by Airbrush

[Greatest I am]

I am on your page airbrush.

 

Wherever all the matter that makes up the universe was, was in a space and it had to have a place to expand into another space.

 

Regards

DL