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Originally posted by joz:
quote:
Originally posted by forgiven:
EDIT: let me give you a better answer... some thing, some existing thing (*any* existing thing) either began to exist or always existed...
Ok given that time started with the BB I have no problem with the universe having always exsisted after all it was there during that first cosmic tick when t went from 0 to 10-43 seconds....
You might be interested in Julian Barbour's notion that time is an illusion and that the universe consists of "nows" or instants, which our brains interpret as time. Under this notion, it would seem that cause and effect are
entirely human constructs, so to say what happened before the Big Bang is genuinely like asking what lies 10 miles north of the North Pole.
There's a short 25 min Dutch tv documentary on Barbour's ideas here, which I recommend for anyone who's interested in thinking deeper about what time is:
the mind of the universe - VPRO
And Barbour does have a book out (which I've not read) called "The End of Time", which is influential in many quantum gravity circles. Might read it soon tho'.
His ideas seem to me to be more philosophical than scientific (he offers an interpretation of Physics rather than expound any new predictions or testable hypotheses), but it does give a flavour of just how malleable and counter-intuitive the concept of time has become.
PE
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It's good to have an open mind, but not so open that your brains
fall out. - Bertrand Russell