What Happened Before the Big Bang?

The Bad Astronomer writes to tell us that a recent advance in Loop Quantum Gravity theory appears to allow the mathematics of cosmology to be extended to the time before the Universe underwent the Big Bang. Bad Astronomer also attempts to simplify things a bit with his own explanation of the new discovery.

Comments

Re:North of the North pole

[peragrin]

says the man who failed to understand the analogy.

you can not go north of the North Pole. Once you get to the north pole everything is quite literally south of you, no matter which way you go. If you leave the sphere in question(ie head into space) you no longer have a compass as the magentic field that the north pole is based on no longer exerts it's force on you.

What you think Astral(space) Navagation uses compasses for heading and bearing? That we can use the sun's magentic field t find our way across this planetary system?

Re:But time doesn't exists yet

[porkThreeWays]

I think it's really hard as humans to comprehend things we have no ways of describing in English. Time is a dimension and I think we just can't comprehend the idea of time not existing or being able to manipulate it. It's possible time didn't exist before the big bang. But again, these words "before" and "after" have to do with time. The best we can do right now is describe things in mathematical models.

Time is a vector, not a scalar

[Alzheimers]

I think that the problem we have is forming a mental image of time not as some quantity (5 minutes, for example) but as a scalar (the difference between 5 minutes ago and now, in the positive future direction).

We just don't talk or think about time having some of the same properties as physical space since we only experience it in one direction. Our lives are a filmstrip that doesn't roll backwards. What happened before the beginning of the tape? That's like asking if there was a universe before I was born?

I think we'd do a lot better to rename it something less associated with it's common useage, such as the Temporal axis. Then you can start to discuss what the properties of that axis are, without running into issues with metaphorical associations.

(see also: Free Software, Free as in Libre, not as in Gratis)

Re:The punchline

[mhall119]

Just because something is testable means that God could not have played a role? No, being testable means that it doesn't matter whether or not God played a role.