Only as long as string theory holds and luckily this tangled web seems to be coming apart. See this book for a more detailed explanation.
Smolin seems to be heading towards a modified version of relativity (see this paper if you’re interested in the maths and physics ) which as others have said would indicate that there was nothing before the universe as there was no spacetime for anything to exist in.
With thanks to Terry Pratchett…
1 … 2 … 1 . 2 . 3 . 4
Si
Time doesn’t just exist regardless - it is dependent on movement in space. If you have no space, matter or energy, or had an entirely static universe without movement or decay, time would not exist.
Yeah, but What Time is Love?
The reason why people ask “What happened before the Big Bang” is because what they are actually seeking is some sort of Ultimate Explanation of existence: how existence itself is possible, and why this particular reality exists instead of any other.
The Big Bang doesn’t provide this explanation. Nor does the brane hypothesis, or hypothesizing an infinite set of universes. Nor does any religion I’m aware of (they just pass the buck to God “just existing”).
It sucks, but this ultimate philosophical question is unanswerable now, and may always be.
Any time you like. Or in an ‘entirely static universe without movement or decay’; never. Or perhaps forever. Your question is inappropriate for this forum. I have reported your post.
You have got to be kidding me. Is there a new rule which says “The stick up your ass must be this big <-------------> to post here?” I must have missed it.
In an entirely static universe, insertion of said stick would present an intractable problem.
Don’t worry guys, I’ve reported this post, so we’ve got this thread covered. :rolleyes:
At the risk of resurrecting this…
Hertog, Hawkins and Hartle have just published a paper (summary here at pysorg) on the No-Boundary Wave Function. Their calculations encompass both a Big-Bang (no pre-existant universe) and a Bounce (a pre-existant universe collapses from a large phase to a small phase and then expands again into the current universe).
So maybe there was something “before”.
Si
I originally thought that might be unlikely until I looked at the amount of papers written on the subject on arXiv alone. .
There are litterally hundreds more that I can’t access in online journals.
Something to think about at least.