It’s my understanding that time did not begin until the big bang and that it will exist for the rest of eternity. How could there not be a time prior to the big bang? And what exactly is time anyways?
It’s one of those questions that is hard to conceptualize. It’s like if the universe is expanding what is it expanding into.
Or like if engery and matter can be converted into each other and your mind is engery could it be converted into matter.
Or why is Charo famous? Hurts to think about it.
No one knows exactly what time is. I suggest you read an encyclopedia article on time; although long, it will sum it up well.
As the great physicist Feynman once said, “Time is one damn thing after another.” I haven’t found a better explanation yet 
Arjuna34
How can you not have a time before the Big Bang? The best analogy I’ve heard (by Hawking, I believe) is the North Pole. If you keep walking north, eventually you reach the pole. What happens if you keep walking north after that? You can’t, there is nothing north of the pole (at least, not on the surface of the Earth). Similarly, if you keep looking at earlier times, you eventually get to the Bang, and you can’t get any earlier than that.
If you want a definition of time, try this: Time is the interval between causally-connected events. In other words, if it’s possible for event A to have an effect on event B, or vice-versa, then the separation between the two events is time.
Time is a way of ordering events. Events are usually the motions of particles through space, and their positions relative to one another. Before the Big Bang, all the particles were at the same point in space, so time couldn’t really have measured anything.
The problem is that in our day to day existance, it seems that time is something that exists “out there” whether we measure it or not. But according to relativity, time is not absolute. In order to talk about time there must be a reference fram that can use (at least in principle) to measure it. Time exists only within the universe and even then depends upon a reference frame. “Before the Big Bang” there was no universe to contain such a reference frame. Talking about “before the big bang” requires some way of talking about time from outside the universe.
She married Xavier Cugat. And since she had a judge change her legal birth date from 1942 to 1952, they were married when she was 11. :D:D
The way I’ve always interpreted “time did not exist before the Big Bang” is that time is a way to order events in order to comprehend causality (I just threw up because I ate two cartons of ice cream an hour ago). Before the Big Bang occured, the laws of physics in the pre-Big Bang universe were different that those we currently accept as governing the universe today. In the context of current physical laws, whatever happened before the Big Bang has no bearing on events following the Big Bang and time as we perceive it has no meaning before the Big Bang.
Your question is exactly the same as asking “what is space expanding into?”
The answer: void.
Not void as in space/nothingness, but void as in the opposite of infinity.
Because time, or duration, are dimensions, they, like heighth, breadth and width (along with 13 others in theory) are a necessary component of space as we know it.
The primary problem is a poor definition of the term “time.” Unfortunately, the only way we can comprehend time at all is as a linear dimension. It isn’t.
(I realise that my ability to describe this is similar to my ability to describe the colour “green” to someone who has been blind since birth–I feel I understand it in some vague way, but am incapable of describing it–but I’ll give it a try)
We conceive of time as being “one damn thing after another.” (Thanks, Arjuna–I like the quote)
What makes it that way?
Simple answer: perception
Complex answer: it isn’t “ODTAA,” but one damn thing, another damn thing, another damn thing, but NOT actually in any order.
Every point it time is adjacent to every other. As when the Big Bang occured, all of space was created, so was all of time.
Hence, there is no “Before,” and there is no “After.” there just IS.
I hope that occluded the issue for you, as I know it did for me.
All space was at the same point (all space of the visible universe anyway).
But that’s so… boring. If anyone can attribute this, I’d be glad, but the quote goes something like:
“Time is a way of keeping everything from happening all at once.”
I like that explanation.
LL
I found this entry in The Devil’s DP Dictionary by Stan Kelly-Bootle:
Time *n. * That which tries to prevent everything at once.
It is a brilliant book. My favorite entry is:
Recursive adj. See recursive