The "Big Bang" theory is a readily acceptable theory by many scientists.

One way we look at the big bang and accelerating expanding universe is time. We theorize and guess how long ago this occured. 14 billion years ago? Who knows...we don't..but only guess.

One thing scientists have not theorized (that I know of) is what about the time BEFORE the big bang. Is this when time started? As we mere humans understand the relationship between time and our physical senses, we also understand our reality dictates that time marches on, but when did it start marching? If our time started with the big bang, what was before time?

If our universe is expanding...what is beyond it? Itself?

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The "Big Bang" theory is a readily acceptable theory by many scientists.

One way we look at the big bang and accelerating expanding universe is time. We theorize and guess how long ago this occured. 14 billion years ago? Who knows...we don't..but only guess.

One thing scientists have not theorized (that I know of) is what about the time BEFORE the big bang. Is this when time started? As we mere humans understand the relationship between time and our physical senses, we also understand our reality dictates that time marches on, but when did it start marching? If our time started with the big bang, what was before time?

If our universe is expanding...what is beyond it? Itself?

Space and time are axes of measuring points within the Universe. They are not defined for points "outside" the Universe, however one might visualize such places.

Think of a simpler example: latitude and longitude. The two numbers can uniquely define a point of the Earth's surface (the odd overhanging cliff is an exception, but we'll explicitly ignore that for now). Latitude is defined from 90 degree South, down to zero, then back up to 90 degrees North. There is no such thing as 110 degrees North latitude, or 8 degrees East latitude, or any other measurement outside the defined range. The numbers are arbitrary (that is, there is nothing special about the number 90) but the physical reality that they define has definite limits. Once you are at 90 degrees North, you simply cannot walk any further North and still be on the surface.

Longitude is defined as 180 degrees West, down to zero, then back up to 180 degrees East longitude. Here the numbers are even more arbitrary... one can take a boat to 180 degrees East longitude and continue sailing East. However, the geometric properties of the Earth dictate that any point on the surface can be defined within the 180W-to-zero-to-180E scale.

For subscribers to the Big Bang theory, time and space measured from the Big Bang. Our measuring systems break down under known conditions, one being black holes and the other being the Big Bang. Our measurement system for latitude and longitude break down at the poles (what is the longitude of the North Pole?) but it's not like people fall off the edge of the world when they travel there. The same is for the Big Bang... our models for measuring break down, but that doesn't mean the laws of physics have changed.

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No animals were harmed in the making of the above post... much.

To give a meaningful explanation we need to have fully married quantum physics and general relativity. String theorists are working on this....But in the meantime we cannot fully address the question you raised, what was before the big bang.

There are a couple of ideas floating around though , e.g. one is when 2 branes (those from string theory) hit each other by a cyclic collision , that this may cause then a big bang at some location (and this over and over again some part of these branes) , or the other I think was Briane Greene once showing in the "Elegant Universe" that when you have a "big crunch" the big dimensions (those we see) get smaller and smaller (but of course not infinitely small, remember string theory takes care of infinities) and the small hidden dimensions which string theory postulates then get bigger and bigger creating a new universe in this process (dont ask me what happens with the entropy of the crushed old universe, so that the 2nd law of thermodynamics doesnt get violated, I forgot if this was addressed there)

maybe other readers have heard more ideas .......?

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The "Big Bang" theory is a readily acceptable theory by many scientists.

One way we look at the big bang and accelerating expanding universe is time. We theorize and guess how long ago this occured. 14 billion years ago? Who knows...we don't..but only guess.

One thing scientists have not theorized (that I know of) is what about the time BEFORE the big bang. Is this when time started? As we mere humans understand the relationship between time and our physical senses, we also understand our reality dictates that time marches on, but when did it start marching? If our time started with the big bang, what was before time?

If our universe is expanding...what is beyond it? Itself?

Just another flaw to the seriously flawed piece of fiction called the big bang.

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TEAM
LL

To give a meaningful explanation we need to have fully married quantum physics and general relativity. String theorists are working on this....But in the meantime we cannot fully address the question you raised, what was before the big bang.

There are a couple of ideas floating around though , e.g. one is when 2 branes (those from string theory) hit each other by a cyclic collision , that this may cause then a big bang at some location (and this over and over again some part of these branes) , or the other I think was Briane Greene once showing in the "Elegant Universe" that when you have a "big crunch" the big dimensions (those we see) get smaller and smaller (but of course not infinitely small, remember string theory takes care of infinities) and the small hidden dimensions which string theory postulates then get bigger and bigger creating a new universe in this process (dont ask me what happens with the entropy of the crushed old universe, so that the 2nd law of thermodynamics doesnt get violated, I forgot if this was addressed there)

maybe other readers have heard more ideas .......?

So what your saying is, time would stop for the old crushed universe...for a certain period of time, say, seconds for even millenias...but that doesn't make sense if time stops, no time can pass for the crushed..so how would that time be measured given the 2nd law of thermodynamics...?

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The "Big Bang" theory is a readily acceptable theory by many scientists.

One way we look at the big bang and accelerating expanding universe is time. We theorize and guess how long ago this occured. 14 billion years ago? Who knows...we don't..but only guess.

One thing scientists have not theorized (that I know of) is what about the time BEFORE the big bang. Is this when time started? As we mere humans understand the relationship between time and our physical senses, we also understand our reality dictates that time marches on, but when did it start marching? If our time started with the big bang, what was before time?

If our universe is expanding...what is beyond it? Itself?

Space and time are axes of measuring points within the Universe. They are not defined for points "outside" the Universe, however one might visualize such places.

Think of a simpler example: latitude and longitude. The two numbers can uniquely define a point of the Earth's surface (the odd overhanging cliff is an exception, but we'll explicitly ignore that for now). Latitude is defined from 90 degree South, down to zero, then back up to 90 degrees North. There is no such thing as 110 degrees North latitude, or 8 degrees East latitude, or any other measurement outside the defined range. The numbers are arbitrary (that is, there is nothing special about the number 90) but the physical reality that they define has definite limits. Once you are at 90 degrees North, you simply cannot walk any further North and still be on the surface.

Longitude is defined as 180 degrees West, down to zero, then back up to 180 degrees East longitude. Here the numbers are even more arbitrary... one can take a boat to 180 degrees East longitude and continue sailing East. However, the geometric properties of the Earth dictate that any point on the surface can be defined within the 180W-to-zero-to-180E scale.

For subscribers to the Big Bang theory, time and space measured from the Big Bang. Our measuring systems break down under known conditions, one being black holes and the other being the Big Bang. Our measurement system for latitude and longitude break down at the poles (what is the longitude of the North Pole?) but it's not like people fall off the edge of the world when they travel there. The same is for the Big Bang... our models for measuring break down, but that doesn't mean the laws of physics have changed.

This is a pretty nice discussion. Let me just add one more comment. Latitude and longitude uniquely describe a location on the Earth's surface, but they can't be used to uniquely identify any location that is not on the Earth's surface. Just as latitude and longitude are one way to express a property of Earth's surface, any measure we use of distance and time are properties of the universe. So, just as it wouldn't be meaningful to ask about the latitude and longiture of Alpha Centauri or to ask what exists at a greater latitude than the North Pole, it isn't meaningful to ask about things before the big bang.

What would be a well defined, meaningful question is to ask what there is external to our universe. We might imagine that the spacetime of our universe is a "pocket" in something larger. However, it is not clear that science can ever answer this question, as it would require finding either a means to measure things that aren't even in our universe or some property of our universe which depends on some sort of external conditions.

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Just another flaw to the seriously flawed piece of fiction called the big bang.

You keep claiming this, yet you have yet to convincingly present any actual flaws with it or present anything you consider better.

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Time began when man first began to measure it and will end when man quits measuring it. Time is a philosophical construct created by man in an attempt to order things. In doing so, it found it's way into measurements. I think it would be ideal if time could be removed from all equations. It's hard to determine the damage it has done, until it's undone. The problem is that it's used as a reference and it is quite difficult to eliminate time because one is strongly inclined to find the true and proper reference to neaten up the equations.

Take a spinning ball with some frequency x radians per second. If I spin around the ball at y radians per second, then I measure the frequency of the ball to get z radians per second. Has time changed for the ball or is my reference diferent from the second observer which is observing me measure the frequency of the ball? The aswer is "no and that my reference is different" from the second observer. You can't really tell that until you compare notes with multiple observations with different references. We need to lose the concept of time because it is simplay a philosophical construct of man and nothing more.

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TEAM
LL

Just another flaw to the seriously flawed piece of fiction called the big bang.

You keep claiming this, yet you have yet to convincingly present any actual flaws with it or present anything you consider better.

My copyright should be final by March. They been jacking me around since November. In due time...

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TEAM
LL

Take a spinning ball with some frequency x radians per second. If I spin around the ball at y radians per second, then I measure the frequency of the ball to get z radians per second. Has time changed for the ball or is my reference diferent from the second observer which is observing me measure the frequency of the ball? The aswer is "no and that my reference is different" from the second observer. You can't really tell that until you compare notes with multiple observations with different references. We need to lose the concept of time because it is simplay a philosophical construct of man and nothing more.

Mach and Einstein each took stabs at this problem.

There is a reason Einstein's theory is called General Relativity. It has an explicit caveat that all measurements have frames of reference, and that measurements of identical skill and technology taken from different frames of reference will yield different results.

However, if GR holds up (and recall that it doesn't gel with quantum physics), one can measure something then predict what some other observer would get from measuring it.

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No animals were harmed in the making of the above post... much.

Time began when man first began to measure it and will end when man quits measuring it. Time is a philosophical construct created by man in an attempt to order things. In doing so, it found it's way into measurements. I think it would be ideal if time could be removed from all equations. It's hard to determine the damage it has done, until it's undone. The problem is that it's used as a reference and it is quite difficult to eliminate time because one is strongly inclined to find the true and proper reference to neaten up the equations.

Take a spinning ball with some frequency x radians per second. If I spin around the ball at y radians per second, then I measure the frequency of the ball to get z radians per second. Has time changed for the ball or is my reference diferent from the second observer which is observing me measure the frequency of the ball? The aswer is "no and that my reference is different" from the second observer. You can't really tell that until you compare notes with multiple observations with different references. We need to lose the concept of time because it is simplay a philosophical construct of man and nothing more.

how can you take away time fromn the equation....don't answer sir...let me ponder further.

However, let's removetime from any equation, as being irrelevant to the problems we facein physics, what would you postulate as a replacement reference? None? or is time simply invented so we may better understand our world around us, yet at the same time meaningless....

I don't think it can be removed...

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I haven't thought about it much yet. It simply can't be removed because time is the basis of many if not most of the measurements. Velocity. Acceleration. Force. Energy. They are all based on time.

Similar to the seti@home project, they thought about what would make us the same as any possible aliens? How would we communicate with them. The seti@home resolution was to use the base frequency of hydrogen. This should be fundemental in all respects. i.e. The energy difference between orbitals or the first 1s orbital of the hydrogen atom should have the same distance from a single proton. This is the bohr radius. Now we would have a reference for distance. As for time, is there a base time? An alien would not reconize a second because it's arbitrary. An alien might measure the acceleration of gravity at the surface as 4.672 goolags and we would say 9.3 m/s^2. Thus, the idea is not fundemental or universal. It's simply convention.

We all have been trained to think in these terms and it's hard to break and would take a lot of work. Probably the dedicated work of one individual who believed strongly enough and got lucky enough to find the key. That individual would then need to reconstruct the fundementals in such a way that scienctists could convert their work in a relatively easily way.

This is an on the fly build of a very shakey theory which would absolutely deserve critique. An example replacement might use a number related to the speed of light. This way you have a reference for a changing system. For the force equation, one would need new units for acceleration which would mean velocity would need revised. In an attempt to describe this and to understand the removal of time. Time needs to be implemented in the discussion because it's so ingrained. Velocity would then be a ratio of the distance your object could travel to the distance light could travel given the same time. Instead of a time denomentor, you now have a universal ratio which you could name velocity and has no units. Basically, a mutltiplier of the speed of light. This of course would make calculus a nightmare when you try to take dV/dt because it would no longer be valid. Now acceleration would have to incorporate the change in the distance traveled in that time.

This might actually make sense now because before when you changed your velocity, you changed your mass. Now you might be able to work in the lorentz transforms and take your d(mass)/d(V) or at least avoid, in some cases, taking partial dirivatives.


It can be done, but the way we think would have to seriously change. It's not an easy task.

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TEAM
LL

Time is not a philosophical construct of man. It is a fact. Saying time began when man first measured it is the same as saying that water got wet when man first drank it or that the sun got bright when man first opened his eyes. A philosophical definition of time is nonsensible and useless.

Time is the implement of change. Rates of things changing are less fundamental than the fact that they do change. We can only tell that things change if there is time.

As for a base time, as I recall from when I was involved in extremely accurate timekeeping that the most stable timing was achieved by using certain fundamental properties of some elements, such as a Carbon atom, to keep the time. It seems to me that these properties are universal and an alien scientist would base its time on the most widely available, unchanging and sensible unit available.


Rosco P Coltrane
Hazzard County

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I would love to hear an argument on how time is a fact.

We need to order things and we derived time. Time an arbitrary convention contrived by convenience when other ways to order events exists. These other ways are event based as well as our time is based on the event that the earth rotates around the sun where the smallest integer unit defined was a second which is an arbitrary if not a random division of set number from a local and non-universal event. You could define a day roughly by saying lunar cycle.

A lunar cycle in itself does not imply time. One may think of time because of the constant conditioning from childhood to understand it based on hours and seconds. Rather than time, we know a lunar cycle by understanding that the moon will vanish and then return. Time brings us comfort in the false sense of understanding these events by giving us the ability to predict it. If we were blindfolded and taken to another unknown solar system and lost our atomic clock and could not find the right element to remake the clock. How would you measure events and relate them to what you already know? If you refused to give up your current hold on time, you might not thrive as well as someone who could adapt by redefining time or eliminating it by using a universal event or standard.

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TEAM
LL

As for time, is there a base time? An alien would not reconize a second because it's arbitrary. An alien might measure the acceleration of gravity at the surface as 4.672 goolags and we would say 9.3 m/s^2. Thus, the idea is not fundemental or universal. It's simply convention.

There's a very fundamental difference between time and a second. Time is a dimension, a property of the universe. A second is a unit by which humans measure this property. A second is exactly 9,192,631,770 cycles of microwave light absorbed or emitted by the hyperfine transition of cesium-133 atoms in their ground state undisturbed by external fields.

You can certainly say that a second is a construct of man (which it is), but time is most certainly not.

This is an on the fly build of a very shakey theory which would absolutely deserve critique. An example replacement might use a number related to the speed of light. This way you have a reference for a changing system. For the force equation, one would need new units for acceleration which would mean velocity would need revised. In an attempt to describe this and to understand the removal of time. Time needs to be implemented in the discussion because it's so ingrained. Velocity would then be a ratio of the distance your object could travel to the distance light could travel given the same time. Instead of a time denomentor, you now have a universal ratio which you could name velocity and has no units. Basically, a mutltiplier of the speed of light. This of course would make calculus a nightmare when you try to take dV/dt because it would no longer be valid. Now acceleration would have to incorporate the change in the distance traveled in that time.

Force, velocity, acceleration, energy, etc cannot be ratios. They wouldn't have the correct units. I can travel .1c (3e7 m/s), but I can't travel .1. How far is San Francisco? Oh, it's 6.

You might be interested in the units of measurement where all the physical constants equal 1. This seems to be the most "natural" system of units, and it's called Planck Units.

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Here's an Installation Guide.
Try the Wiki for other questions.

Time is not a philosophical construct of man. It is a fact. Saying time began when man first measured it is the same as saying that water got wet when man first drank it or that the sun got bright when man first opened his eyes. A philosophical definition of time is nonsensible and useless.

Time is the implement of change. Rates of things changing are less fundamental than the fact that they do change. We can only tell that things change if there is time.

As for a base time, as I recall from when I was involved in extremely accurate timekeeping that the most stable timing was achieved by using certain fundamental properties of some elements, such as a Carbon atom, to keep the time. It seems to me that these properties are universal and an alien scientist would base its time on the most widely available, unchanging and sensible unit available.


Rosco P Coltrane
Hazzard County

Quite true. However, since we certainly can't guess what another civilization might use as a standard time, we'd want to look for some sort of fundamental length of time. The most fundemental that one could come up with (so far as we know, at least) is the Planck time, given by t_P = SQRT(G*hbar/c^5), which clearly only depends on fundamental physical constants.

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Force, velocity, acceleration, energy, etc cannot be ratios. They wouldn't have the correct units. I can travel .1c (3e7 m/s), but I can't travel .1. How far is San Francisco? Oh, it's 6.

There are a few types of people. One type says that "you cannot just invent words" and a second type that says "then were did the current words come from".

The fact that we currently preceive something as unitless does not mean that we do not have the ability to understand it in a different light. Units would absolutely need to be assigned to it so that when the number is known, we'd know what to do with it. Nor am I proposing this as THE correct system but is quickly constructed to generate dialog. I am perfectly willing to hear critzism but would love even more improved examples.

To go back to your point. It would be enough information. So, give the speed of 0.1 in your example, the units for example could be 0.1 (v/c). Now you as how far it is to SF, but what you mean is how far does light travel by the time I get to SF by going 0.1 (v/c) and the person you ask says it would take you 5x10^6 lm or "light meters". Voila, you have enough information to figure out how far it is to SF. Since you are moving 10 times slower than light, SF is 5x10^5 meters or about 9.5 miles. Time has been eliminated from the calculations and you can figure out how far it is using different conventions. It's all base on what you were taught.

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TEAM
LL

Well, i've provided examples on how to eliminate time and everyone has disagreed with me. I expect that, but I quote 1 person:

You keep claiming this, yet you have yet to convincingly present any actual flaws with it or present anything you consider better.

No one has made any argument other than the theistic ideal that it "is" and pointed to a constant. Yes, I might be able to accept it as if it's purely derived from constants but no compelling argument has been made as to why it may be valid. But I do seriously have a problem with the plank time being base on the qualities of gravity because it's not a true constant in the since that it's made of of multiple units and therefore not truly fundemental. In that sense, planks time could not be truly fundemental since it's not derived from truly fundement elements. That is to say, something fundemental cannot be derived.

Only measured.

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TEAM
LL

Well, i've provided examples on how to eliminate time and everyone has disagreed with me. I expect that, but I quote 1 person:

You keep claiming this, yet you have yet to convincingly present any actual flaws with it or present anything you consider better.

You know as well as I do that this comment was about your objection to the big bang, not about this discussion of time.

No one has made any argument other than the theistic ideal that it "is" and pointed to a constant. Yes, I might be able to accept it as if it's purely derived from constants but no compelling argument has been made as to why it may be valid. But I do seriously have a problem with the plank time being base on the qualities of gravity because it's not a true constant in the since that it's made of of multiple units and therefore not truly fundemental. In that sense, planks time could not be truly fundemental since it's not derived from truly fundement elements. That is to say, something fundemental cannot be derived.

Only measured.

Newton's constant, G, appears as a constant in the field equation of general relativity. There is nothing we know of in physics to say that it is not a "true constant." And, in that way it stands on exactly the same footing as c and hbar.

But, if you prefer, I could give you another fundamental time which does not depend on G. You already cited the Bohr radius (a_0 = hbar^2/(m_e*e^2), in units where 4*\\pi*\\epsilon_0 = 1) as a fundamental length, so I propose the Bohr time (t_B = a_0/c) as just as fundamental.

My personal preference, however, is to avoid using units based on properties of a particular particle. So, the appearence of the electron mass and charge in these quantities leaves me less satisfied than Planck units.

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Cut it out man, ya'll talking way over my head!

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