The beginning of time was a real point in time: proof!

[Siberian Cold Breeze]

I think time is a concept of human mind to calculate relation between speed and distance for practical reasons because undivided duration makes it impossible for us to process anything.I don't think time exists outside of human mind. Animals and other beings do not need it.

[Stefan]

He did ask for a philosophical/meta-physical explanation that doesn't involve cosmology(which I consider more a philosophy than a science in some areas) so I didn't reveal my thoughts on time, but they generally align with the concept of "arrow of time" and entropy. The system which we call the universe goes from a lower entropic state to a higher entropic state on a macro-scale. It is our perception of the change in entropy which we measure time by. In local-systems with an addition of work, we can even analyze the reverse situation: higher entropy to lower entropy, yet this still gives us a perception of time. Therefore, it is the analysis of change (which we developed analytically as calculus) that defines time, and our brains just do these algorithms intuitively, giving us a measuring device for change, most notably that of the entropy of a system or subsystem.

[Smaug]

Kant described time as a "mode of perception" and, IMO rightly so. The following paradox militates against the existence of time as a Ding an sich.
Take the shortest interval of time you can imagine , say 10^-100 second.
Whatever happened just 10^-100 sec ago is already in the past; it's over and done with.

Whatever is about to happen 10^-100 second from now HASN'T happened yet. It is still in the future. The present is only the interval between 10^-100 second ago and 10^-100 second from now or 2 X 10^-100 seconds. But, if we had chosen an even smaller unit of time, say 10^-1000000 second, the duration of the present would be only 2 X 10^-1000000 second. Clearly, then, the actual duration of the present would be ZERO.

THE PRESENT DOES NOT EXIST ! However, if the present does not exist,
WHEN DOES ANYTHING HAPPEN ? What is the time in which I, e.g., can DO anything ? I can't do anything before it happens and I can't do anything after it has happened, and, in fact there being no time in which for it to do so, it can't happen at all.

If the present time doesn't exist and nothing can happen, surely we are justified in assering that TIME DOES NOT EXIST. Perhaps it is just a strategem which we have invented in order to organise and make sense of
our experience.


"Chronon te genesthai eikona tou aidiou" - Plato
"Time was created as an image of eternity"

Maybe time last only a tP (Plank Unity of Time), the smallest unity of time, that in seconds is something about 5.39106(32) × 10−44 s. It is the time required for light to travel, in a vacuum, a distance of 1 Planck length (1.616199(97)×10−35 m).

[Stefan]

[YOUTUBE]vLACGFhDOp0[/YOUTUBE]

[Methmatician]

How do you know there was nothing? Where is the proof of that?

I'm not a physicist so I can't go into detail. But astrophysics is almost all theory thought Physicists can trace things back to the big bang because it leaves and 'echo'. And since there isn't anything pre-dating the big bang, all we can say is that nothing existed before it. There's also another theory that says time and space began after the big bang in this universe, but in other universes (another theory: multiple universes) there was a 'big bang' at a different time. It's very complicated for me to understand not being a physicist and even harder to explain.

[Smaug]

I'm not a physicist so I can't go into detail. But astrophysics is almost all theory thought Physicists can trace things back to the big bang because it leaves and 'echo'. And since there isn't anything pre-dating the big bang, all we can say is that nothing existed before it. There's also another theory that says time and space began after the big bang in this universe, but in other universes (another theory: multiple universes) there was a 'big bang' at a different time. It's very complicated for me to understand not being a physicist and even harder to explain.

Big Bang only explains the origins of our universe, but nowadays most of physicists believe in the Membrane and in the Multiverse theory. Some even try to determine the shape our universe, closed on itself. So time predates the existance of our universe at least it seems.

[Burzum fan]

It didn't come from anywhere. It began with the big bang. There was nothing before the big bang, no particles, no time, no mass, not energy. What brought on the big bang (from what I was taught in school) were certain subatomic particles that could appear and disappear rapidly at any random time. This is where 'something can come from nothing'.

Something can't come from nothing. And yes I know there was "nothing before the big bang, no particles, [...]" but but the universe couldn't have started itself. So clearly there was at least a primordial source of creation.

Then, how do you avoid the paradox that the duration of the present is ZERO ? That is my point: that assuming the reality of time leads us into an irresolvable paradox.

Past, present and future are relative, like bigger, same size, and smaller. But the continuum of earlier and later is time.

[Burzum fan]

Big Bang only explains the origins of our universe, but nowadays most of physicists believe in the Membrane and in the Multiverse theory. Some even try to determine the shape our universe, closed on itself. So time predates the existance of our universe at least it seems.

That depends how you define "our universe" but existence itself clearly started at the beginning of time, if that thought has any relevance.

[Methmatician]

Something can't come from nothing.

Yes it can.

[Smaug]

That depends how you define "our universe" but existence itself clearly started at the beginning of time, if that thought has any relevance.

Now we are leaving physics behind and getting into something more philosofical. "Existence started" you said. What was before "existence"? What was before the Universe? What was before the Universes? Can we call it "before"? After all, it simply didn't exist...