Oldskeptic wrote:

Oldskeptic wrote:
If you want to ask if there was space and time before initiation of expansion of this universe as we know it I will answer no and possibly yes in the order that the question was asked.

Rainbow wrote:
OK, all perfectly clear.
Only I think 'initiation of expansion of this universe' is unlikely to come into snappy everyday usage. I personally will continue to use 'Big Bang' to refer to exactly the same, if you don't mind.

And you will continue to be wrong.

Good luck then with trying to presuade the rest of the world that they should be saying:
'initiation of expansion of this universe'
instead of
'Big Bang'.

Oldskeptic wrote:It takes entropy to have time. Without it there is no time. Outside of time means no change.

I'm not sure that that actually holds water when it's unpacked. I actually agree with your argument in general, but there are several ways to unpack this, and all of them are problematic.

Firstly, the most highly entropic entity in the universe doesn't experience time, namely the singularity of a black hole (if a singularity is actually possible, which is a matter of some debate). Certainly, if a singularity exists, then this line of argumentation fails.

It should also be pointed out that, from our perspective, the singularity experiences change, in the form of mass gain (through accretion) and mass loss (through Hawking radiation), yet it doesn't experience time.

We need to be careful with entropy, because it's already horribly misunderstood by many. Certainly it can be described as a measure of time, but that doesn't actually mean that time relies on it, or vice versa.

Ultimately, the only means by which any arguments concerning the nature of time before the Planck time must be reserved until our understanding of the dimensional manifold is up to the task, and we're probably a long way from that. My own view is that there are very few treatments of timelessness that have any degree of coherence. The leading example is the idea that, prior to the Planck epoch, time was space-like, and thus traversable, but again that falls under the rubric of speculation at the moment.

z8000783 wrote:

hackenslash wrote:

z8000783 wrote:
Thanks, but won't the 'True' statement be - that something can only exist in place at 1 time - and therefore this is contradicted.

John

It would be if that were actually a true statement, but it isn't.

Could that not be the case with any apparently contradictory statement until we find it's false or does this Law only apply to Mathematics and Logic?

John

What has to be understood is that the LNC is a correlate of the law of identity. It applies to all statements that are contradictory, not statements that merely appear to be. In the case of quantum superposition, there is no contradiction, because it doesn't state that the particle is both there and not there at the same time, but that it is there and somewhere else at the same time. It looks like a contradiction, but only because our middle-world thinking doesn't prepare us for the idea that something can be in many places at once. Indeed, this is why so many people struggle with grasping QM, because it throws up just such apparent contradictions and paradoxes, which only look like paradoxes and contradictions because we aren't equipped to deal with them.

I can't help you any further with this, but a look at the wiki on the three classical laws of thought should give you a good overview and links to further reading material. It isn't a subject that interests me greatly, beyond pointing out where it is being misapplied, and certainly not to the degree that I find it interesting to discuss in and of itself.

rainbow wrote:

Oldskeptic wrote:

Oldskeptic wrote:
If you want to ask if there was space and time before initiation of expansion of this universe as we know it I will answer no and possibly yes in the order that the question was asked.

Rainbow wrote:
OK, all perfectly clear.
Only I think 'initiation of expansion of this universe' is unlikely to come into snappy everyday usage. I personally will continue to use 'Big Bang' to refer to exactly the same, if you don't mind.

And you will continue to be wrong.

Good luck then with trying to presuade the rest of the world that they should be saying:
'initiation of expansion of this universe'
instead of
'Big Bang'.

Being correct doesn't always correspond with being popular.

Oldskeptic wrote:

rainbow wrote:

Oldskeptic wrote:

Oldskeptic wrote:
If you want to ask if there was space and time before initiation of expansion of this universe as we know it I will answer no and possibly yes in the order that the question was asked.

And you will continue to be wrong.

Good luck then with trying to presuade the rest of the world that they should be saying:
'initiation of expansion of this universe'
instead of
'Big Bang'.

Being correct doesn't always correspond with being popular.

Don't I know it.

However, using the popular usage, just for convenience - if something did exist before the 'Big Bang', then it existed outside of time.

John P. M. wrote:Is it even a coherent sentence to say that something is 'outside of time'?

I mean... would we ever say "It is outside of motion. It is outside of any possibility of a sequence of events" ?

Or are people talking about an alternative time; a time outside of our time? If so, it seems they'd be stuck with the same conundrums they are trying to solve by claiming God is 'outside of time'.

People do sometimes talk about "2-T physics"

Oldskeptic wrote:
Space is a product of the expansion and it continues. Time is another matter.

Time is a component of space-time. It's not "another matter."

Oldskeptic wrote:
In an environment where nothing changes does time exist? In an expanded universe where there is total heat death and nothing ever changes does time exit? In a hot dense area where perfect symmetry prevails does time exist?

No! Time only exists where entropy exists. It is that simple.

The virtual particles produced by the so called quantum foam would still be formed even if the universe is in a state of total heat death. So you have events. Those particles, which are also responsible for the evaporation of black holes through Hawking radiation, would, in my opinion, actually decrease entropy in some situations.

We know that the rate at which space-time expands is increasing, so it follows that at one point in the future it will reach such speeds that it will overcome even the strong nuclear force, literally splitting atoms and their nuclei apart, then further separating them. Heat death.

Continuing to wildly speculate, I'd assume that the same high speed of expansion would prevent the aforementioned particle-antiparticle pairs from annihilating each other like they normally do, for the simple reason that the space between them has expanded so rapidly since their creation. Therefore(?), at high speeds of space expansion, particles and antiparticles would be constantly added to the universe by the quantum foam.

And then they keep being added and added until their collective mass generates enough gravity to overcome the speed of expansion and even reverse it. Then, due to excess gravity, everything, including space-time, coalesces into a singularity. Bang!

There you go, armchair astrophysics.

rainbow wrote:Don't I know it.

We'll be in a better position to answer that if you're ever actually correct, which would probably require you to actually adopt a position on something at some point. You'll forgive me, I hope, if I allow respiration to continue operating within normal parameters while we all wait for this to occur.

However, using the popular usage, just for convenience - if something did exist before the 'Big Bang', then it existed outside of time.

And, of course, you can actually support that assertion, can't you?

This particular trope is a popular one but it is, like most popular assertions in this vein, rooted in a misunderstanding of the relevant physics.

hackenslash wrote:And, of course, you can actually support that assertion, can't you?

It is simply a logical extension of OldSkeptic's view that you can't have time without entropy.
If this is wrong, then please explain time if there is no entropic direction to it.

rainbow wrote:It is simply a logical extension of OldSkeptic's view that you can't have time without entropy.

No it isn't, it's an assumption that there was no entropy before the BB, which is another unsupportable assertion, and that there was no time before the BB, which is again unsupportable (and not taken seriously by many cosmologists, nor has it been for some time).

If this is wrong, then please explain time if there is no entropic direction to it.

Well, it isn't clear that time cannot exist without an entropic direction, although it would be meaningless in most respects. Again, this is rooted in an assumption, namely the assumption that time is merely change.

To draw an analogy, it is like assuming that there can be no lengths shorter than the Planck length. Certainly lengths shorter than the Planck length have no meaning, but that doesn't suggest that no such length can exist, only that they may not be meaningfully quantified.

Ultimately, all conclusions regarding the pre-Planck cosmos are unwarranted and unsupportable,

Here is my view on this "Does the past exist?" issue.

Simple answer: no. The past clearly isn't here now because... it is the past.

BUT this would be a shallow answer. It is not the same as saying that the past must be declared non-existent. When we talk about matters such as whether the past exists or not, and whether anything can exist outside time, we run into a problem:

All of everyday human language relies on verbs to construct statements, and these verbs are temporal by their nature: they assume that things are located in time. In other words, if I say "The past exists" then I am using the present tense of the verb "to exist" - which means I must be saying that the past exists NOW - and it clearly doesn't. Likewise, if I say "X exists outside of time" then I must be saying that something exists outside of time NOW - which is clearly nonsense because I am using temporal language to describe something outside of time.

We might think that this is proof that the past has no reality, and that things cannot exist outside of time, but we should just view it as a limitation in our language. It probably comes from the difficulty of imaging anything outside of time, or not related to other things in some temporal way. Kant's idea of "conceptual schemes" comes to mind here.

Some languages do not have this problem, and allow us to make statements free of temporal connotations. For example, in mathematics, I can say:

2+2=4.

Now, when I say that, you know what it means. It means 2+2=4. Suppose now that I translate it into English:

"Two plus two equals four"

It suggests that 2+2 equals 4 now, or maybe always equals 4 - at whatever time you do the adding.

But is this temporal aspect of 2+2=4 implied by the actual mathematical statement? I suggest that it is not - and that a mathematician need not think about time at all when he is considering such things. 2+2=4 implies a relationship - nothing more - and you can understand what it means without any reference to time. It is only when we start translating into everyday human languages that the problems start.

So what is the solution? There are two obvious possibilities:

1. We could invent a new "atemporal tense" to be used for verbs like "to exist" when no atemporal connotation is implied. For example, we might use the present tense and stick "zonk" on the end. So if I say "Does anything exist-zonk outside time?" or "Does the past exist-zonk?" I can now be understood to be asking these questions in an atemporal way. Really, this could never be expressed in everyday language. But I would be asking if reality extends-zonk beyond the familiar everyday world of time, or if in some sense the past is-zonk "there" in some sense.

2. We could just use the present tense and accept that it may have an atemporal use too. That is to say, we could include atemporal meanings in the present tense. So, if I say "Does anything exist outside time?" or "Does the past exist?" then I can now be understood as if I were using the atemporal tense I just discussed. Nobody should then really think I am asking if the past exists now, or if something exists outside of time now.

Given this, I have no problem saying that I think that the past exists-zonk and that there is no philosophical problem with the idea that things exist-zonk outside of time. Further, if it is accepted that I am including atemporal meanings in the present tense, then I have no problem saying that the past exists or that things can exist outside of time. In fact, anyone who subscribes to the B-theory of time would have to say that the past exists-zonk (or that the past exists using the more general form of the present tense) - and I subscribe to the B-theory of time. In fact, all I demand is that reality is-zonk some structured object - and I take the view that any temporal relationships are see are-zonk merely relationships within this object, in proximity to me, and that there is no reason to think that such kinds of relationship are-zonk a universal feature of reality.

This may sound trivial, but I do think that out everyday language can impose philosophical ideas on us that might limit us in various ways.

And yes – “zonk” is a silly choice, but I had to come up with something.

I.C.37 wrote:

Oldskeptic wrote:
Space is a product of the expansion and it continues. Time is another matter.

Time is a component of space-time. It's not "another matter."

I disagree. While space-time is a way to look at the universe, space expands while I don't think that the same could be said of time. A point in space is where an event occurs. A point in time is when it occurs. Time is a component of space-time but it can be separated out and dealt with on it's own.

Oldskeptic wrote:
In an environment where nothing changes does time exist? In an expanded universe where there is total heat death and nothing ever changes does time exit? In a hot dense area where perfect symmetry prevails does time exist?

No! Time only exists where entropy exists. It is that simple.

The virtual particles produced by the so called quantum foam would still be formed even if the universe is in a state of total heat death. So you have events. Those particles, which are also responsible for the evaporation of black holes through Hawking radiation, would, in my opinion, actually decrease entropy in some situations.

If there is no energy left in the quantum foam then virtual particles cannot be produced. Total symmetry and there is no way to measure time.

We know that the rate at which space-time expands is increasing, so it follows that at one point in the future it will reach such speeds that it will overcome even the strong nuclear force, literally splitting atoms and their nuclei apart, then further separating them. Heat death.

If both space and time were expanding at the same rate then how would you measure the expansion rate? The expansion rate is being measured by the doppler effect which requires a steady flow of time when not affected by massive gravity wells.

Continuing to wildly speculate, I'd assume that the same high speed of expansion would prevent the aforementioned particle-antiparticle pairs from annihilating each other like they normally do, for the simple reason that the space between them has expanded so rapidly since their creation. Therefore(?), at high speeds of space expansion, particles and antiparticles would be constantly added to the universe by the quantum foam.

It is wild speculation because total heat death does not rely on particle anti-particle annihilation. It relies on all matter having a decay rate leaving only energy that is spread so thin and uniformaly that the universe reaches absolute zero.

And then they keep being added and added until their collective mass generates enough gravity to overcome the speed of expansion and even reverse it. Then, due to excess gravity, everything, including space-time, coalesces into a singularity. Bang!

This rebound theory has been done away with a very long time ago.

There you go, armchair astrophysics.

That it surely is.

hackenslash wrote:

rainbow wrote:It is simply a logical extension of OldSkeptic's view that you can't have time without entropy.

No it isn't, it's an assumption that there was no entropy before the BB, which is another unsupportable assertion, and that there was no time before the BB, which is again unsupportable (and not taken seriously by many cosmologists, nor has it been for some time).

If this is wrong, then please explain time if there is no entropic direction to it.

Well, it isn't clear that time cannot exist without an entropic direction, although it would be meaningless in most respects. Again, this is rooted in an assumption, namely the assumption that time is merely change.

To draw an analogy, it is like assuming that there can be no lengths shorter than the Planck length. Certainly lengths shorter than the Planck length have no meaning, but that doesn't suggest that no such length can exist, only that they may not be meaningfully quantified.

Ultimately, all conclusions regarding the pre-Planck cosmos are unwarranted and unsupportable,

Fair enough.
However then you have to concede that the conclusion that 'all conclusions regarding the pre-Planck cosmos are unwarranted and unsupportable' is itself unsupported and unwarranted.

A bit of a paradox.

Sorry if I've missed something but...

rainbow wrote:However then you have to concede that the conclusion that 'all conclusions regarding the pre-Planck cosmos are unwarranted and unsupportable' is itself unsupported and unwarranted.

Why is that?

rainbow wrote:A bit of a paradox.

What is the paradox?

rainbow wrote:However then you have to concede that the conclusion that 'all conclusions regarding the pre-Planck cosmos are unwarranted and unsupportable' is itself unsupported and unwarranted.

A bit of a paradox.

Two things; no I don't, and no it isn't. The conclusion that all conclusions regarding the pre-Planck cosmos are unwarranted and unsupportable is not a conclusion regarding the pre-Planck cosmos.

Logic fail.

It would appear, then, that rainbow's conclusion about the conclusion about conclusions regarding the pre-Planck cosmos is unsupported and unwarranted.

A bit ironic, perhaps.