Sunday, June 17, 2012

Time must have a stop: was there actually NO "Big Bang"?


"A fool may ask a question which forty wise men cannot answer."

I have a question about the supposed origin of the universe, and perhaps you may be the forty-first wise man (or woman):

Time slows down in the neighbourhood of massive objects. There is no object more massive than the entire Universe, when (some 14 billion years ago) it is supposed to have been compressed into a space smaller than the nail on my little finger. In that case, seen from our present frame of reference, was time then effectively at a stop? In which case, is the Big Bang effectively separated from us by an infinite duration, and therefore did not happen?

Another correspondent tells me, "Good question. Before Planck time, there isn't even matter, and energy doesn't experience time."

5 comments:

The Arthurian said...

Dunno, but a big bang is nothing but a black hole, seen from the other side. And time slows down near it, on both sides.

The Arthurian said...

Oh, and the Moon fell out of the Pacific Ocean, causing the breakup of Pangaea.
:)

A K Haart said...

Maybe we should forget time and just think sequence.

If there was a state of affairs where the Big Bang occurred, then there was a state of affairs where it had not occurred. Therefore the Big Bang was not the first state of affairs.

Paddington said...

'Before the Big Bang' is not defined, as that's when our time started.

As for the effects of mass on time dilation, the Big Bang didn't have mass at all. My physics is not current enough to know the relativistic effects of a sea of energy.

Sackerson said...

Then, perhaps, this fool is answered.