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Junpei · Posted: Mon Sep 15, 2008 7:18 am Post subject:

Fair enough. But how? Just like that, as if by magic?

I think this is one of those questions that will never be truly answered so we can rant on forever and ever. We might be able to expand our knowledge bit by bit but more questions will keep on coming and as a result, it turns out to be all pointless getting us nowhere.

But then I suppose this is also something that makes us humans strive to live. If I think about it, humans have been growing, thriving, expanding but in a way, always at the same level. We spread outwards but not upwards.

Phantast · Posted: Tue Sep 16, 2008 5:09 pm Post subject:

Fripod · Tarsian Joined: 18 Jul 2008 Posts: 50 Location: Australia

Well actually, time as we know it only began with the advent of the big bang, so it's not really possible to ask how long it was before this event, as time didn't actually exist. So really we have found no evidence of the universe NOT existing, it was just in a different form (very compressed prior to the big bang)

Stephen Hawking has sometimes stated that we may as well assume that time began with the Big Bang because trying to answer any question about what happened before the Big Bang is trying to answer a question that is meaningless as those events would have been part of a different time frame and different universe outside of the scope of our own.

Hawking, in A Brief History of Time stated his position more clearly: that even if time did not begin with the Big Bang and there were another time frame before the Big Bang, no information from events then would be accessible to us, and nothing that happened then would have any effect upon the present time-frame.[/u]

davus0 · Tracer Joined: 19 Jan 2009 Posts: 22

From the point of view of people in the universe, Immanuel Kant wrote a lot of good stuff about space and especially about Time. I'm not competent to paraphrase but it is worth reading if you're interested in what is with spacetime in the first place. HE talks about the conditions in which it is even possible that we can be cognizant of all these things. It was really eye-opening for me who kind of stopped caring about these questions when they seemed to lead nowhere but "The Big Bang--of course" or "fiat lux--duh"

Junpei · Posted: Wed May 27, 2009 6:05 am Post subject:

Quas · VelaCiela Joined: 30 Sep 2009 Posts: 34 Location: Sydney

I do not normally get into such discussions that can border on religious thinking and debate, merely because I do not actively engage in believing in any kind of religion or a notion of a god. However I think the best way that describes what I think was said best in the television series Babylon 5 - that we all are the universe, from the smallest atom and grain of sand on the beach, trying to understand itself.
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Ikaruga · Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2009 5:30 am Post subject:

I don't have any strong beliefs on the origin of the universe other than since the inital 'bang' we have been completely on our own. I don't know how the bang happened, I'm not particularly learned on the subject.

I do believe that everything that happens in the universe is only caused by other things inside the universe. Everything, no matter how trivial, happens due to grounded previous events and circumstances. By that logic I don't believe in any outside force, or I think it's more logical to assume that one doesn't exist rather than one does. Hence if something did trigger the bang (assuming it's possible for something to even exist before or outside the universe), I don't believe it would have any bearing on us beyond that.

Forgive me if that's a pile of waffle. Embarassed

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