Seeing as the universe is finite, something infinite must be containing it, no?
Your premise is wrong. What we call the Universe is congruent with space-time itself. There is nothing (literally, since there is no space, and no time) “outside” the Universe.
What happened before the big bang? What sound does the color mauve make? The question has no meaning.
“The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger
than we can imagine.” – JBS Haldane
The universe is finite, no?
If we trace back the cause and effect sequences… we will hit something that is infinite, no? If something is finite, something has to ‘cause’ it, no?
No.
(but this should be in GD)
Some Guy…
Are you saying the First Cause is finite?
No. If you go back far enough, you hit the Big Bang. Both space and time begin, for this Universe, at that time. Time and space did not exist before the Big Bang. A bit difficult to get your mind around, I know, hence the quote by Haldane.
[I ignore the possibility that there may have been another Universe existing “before” the Big Bang. But space and time for the current Universe begin then, and there is no way to know what may have existed “before.”]
I’m not talking time as in Space Time, I’m talking time as in cause and effect sequence.
Beastal, you are missing the point here. Time is time. Cause and effect can only exist within time. Since time begins at the Big Bang, there is no point in asking what came before it, or what “caused” it. Asking what came before the Big Bang is like asking what’s south of the South Pole.
Are you asking what caused the Big Bang?
There are some philosophies which contend that space and time are cyclical. The universe we live in which is expanding now will eventually begin to contract until enough pressure builds up to cause another Big Bang…and so on and so on and so on.
Mods? This is interesting–would you move it to GD?
Eh?
So nothing caused the Big Bang? A totally finite entity came in to existence with no cause?
I’m asking more so what is containing the universe. I can’t see how something finite can’t be contained.
More accurately, I can’t see how something finite can exist without being contained by something else.
Yup. You’re getting it now.
And it happens all the time, on a much smaller scale, in the present Universe, due to quantum fluctuations at the sub-atomic level.
Heh, quantum fluctuations sound like a cause to me.
As Haldane’s quote indicates, quantum physics and relativity tell us many things that are unimaginable on the basis of our everyday experience. Just because you personally can’t imagine it, doesn’t mean it isn’t so. It’s pretty difficult for most people to imagine the absence of space. Not empty space, but no three-dimensional space at all. But that’s what modern physics tells us is “outside” the three-dimensional universe - nothing at all, not even space.
But nothing causes them, they are simply an expression of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Quantum fluctuations are an explanation, not a cause per se.
Surely something causes them. We can define that something as:
the difference between a quantum fluctuation occuring, and one not occuring.
By that logic then, the “cause” of the big bang was ‘the difference between the big bang occuring, and it not occuring’… Not a very useful definition of a cause, but if you really want one, there you go.