Far out cosmology (Introduction)

by George Jelliss , Crewe, Saturday, February 01, 2014, 19:08 (3733 days ago) @ David Turell


> > George: The concept of anything pre-existing the universe, is just absurd. The universe is by definition everything that exists. So nothing can exist outside or before or after it. So the hypothesis of a first cause is also absurd.
> 
> DT: I appreciate your discription of your own thought processes. but I can't let this one sit without commenting. If the universe is everything that exists, and it is without a first cause, then you are stating that the universe is eternal. What is before the Big Bang if the Big Bang created the universe? I think you must accept the proposition that you can't get something from nothing, and by this I mean true nothingness, not our spacetime with its quantum potential particles popping in and out of existence. There always has to be something to start with, and that has to be energy since what we have in our universe are forms of energy. Whether that energy is intelligent or not is the long debate dhw and I have had.-The error in your thought processes here is not realising that time is an aspect of the universe. You are assuming the existence of infinite Newtonian (or Aristotelian?) time outside the universe. As one traces back the history of the universe from within it seems that one reaches a situation where time no longer exists, or becomes non-directional or indeterminate. That's the only solution that makes sense to me. -Since the dimensions of space also apparently contract to near zero, where length also becomes meaningless, it seems appropriate to call this initial state of the universe some form of nothingness. To attribute consciousness to it is just fanciful. It is also questionable whether it can be described in terms of energy, since energy is defined in terms of dimensions of mass, time and length.

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GPJ