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So, I've asked questions before that have been met with "Time (and our laws of physics) didn't exist before the big bang" and other answers to that effect. This is massively confusing to me, for reasons. While I understand that time could neither 1.) Be measured nor 2.) quantified, I want to intuitively assume that there was some non-zero amount of time during which the universe we live in now was an empty void. An absolutely perfect vacuum. It has no significant meaning, because in an empty and timeless void the probability of a big bang is apparently 1, but I can't help but see it as that.

So, I was wondering, if someone can clarify the statement and adherence to the phrase "Time didn't exist before the big bang". Whenever I ask about a question before it, I'm met with that statement (in a generally dismissive manner).

Sidney
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  • you might be interested in reading this http://www.hawking.org.uk/the-beginning-of-time.html –  Jul 05 '16 at 19:28
  • You are disturbed that time coordinates are confined to the universe. Are you equally disturbed that the equator is confined to the surface of the earth? – WillO Jul 05 '16 at 19:48
  • -1 for the idea that there is an absolutely perfect void or that modern science ever talks about that. All of these ideas are spooking around in the public's imagination but they have absolutely nothing in common with scientific thought on the matter. – CuriousOne Jul 05 '16 at 20:48
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    @CuriousOne Way to go on giving the same dismissive attitude that lead me to ask this question in the first place. :) – Sidney Jul 05 '16 at 20:51
  • You and science are simply not talking the same language there, so one can't do anything else than to dismiss it, on a science site. If you want to propose something, then it has to be measurable, that's just as true for you as for every string theorist in the world that I can (and do) dismiss just as easily. The notion of "absolute void" died about 100 years ago and we can't see any reason to resurrect it in physics. Time is quite easily measurable, today, but it's not clear that it had meaning in the same sense before the big bang. That's a rather logical thought that can be fleshed out. – CuriousOne Jul 05 '16 at 20:56
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    @CuriousOne I think he knows that his ideas and science aren't speaking the same language. That's why he asked for a translation in terms he can understand. – userLTK Jul 05 '16 at 22:08
  • There are several levels of ignorance. We know there's something but we don't know what so we theorize (dark matter, energy). We know nothing but it fits our beliefs and can't be disproven so we fantasize (parallel worlds). We know nothing and it doesn't fit our theory so we dismiss the question (time before big bang). What did Donald Rumsfeld say again, about the known and unknown unknowns... – Previous Jul 05 '16 at 22:14
  • Honestly the duplicate question and the hawking lecture cleared up the what part of the question (that being that we cannot deterministically know, so we assume its meaningless), I still don't get why it makes some peoples hair stand on edge when it's mentioned though. – Sidney Jul 05 '16 at 22:17
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    @userLTK: You are right, maybe I am too impatient here. No, I am actually frustrated. How do we exorcise decades of failed science education out of hearts and minds? Whatever the public has heard about the big bang for decades from the usual sources is about as wrong as it comes. – CuriousOne Jul 05 '16 at 22:37
  • If you accept my apology, I can tell you why this makes our hair stand on edge: we are getting the same kind of questions about cosmology three times a week (and sometimes three times a day) and they are all based on amazingly false statements that have cemented themselves in the minds of non-physicists. Part of the problem was caused by science journalists and the media and some by colleagues who wrote best-selling books that are telling stories that "just aren't so". It is very hard to respond to questions that start with false assumptions other than to say "Go back to start, don't pass Go!" – CuriousOne Jul 05 '16 at 22:43

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For fundamental questions concerning time you might not forget that any coordinate time is deriving from proper time:

The definition of proper time does not depend of spacetime (= the time measured by a clock following the worldline of a particle) while conversely the coordinate time does depend of the spacetime metric/ the spacetime interval which is a direct function of proper time.

This principle must also be applied to massless particles (lightlike movements) whose proper time is zero: The observed coordinate time of massless particles corresponds to proper time zero.

As a result, your question should refer to proper time and not to coordinate time. A universe without proper time should be automatically a universe without coordinate time.

The underlying idea is that we cannot imagine what the nature of (coordinate) time. But we can imagine the existence or not of some particle with a given proper time.

Moonraker
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    I'm not sure what this answer is trying to say - "proper time" is a feature of world lines, not of points in the spacetime. What do you mean by coordiante time "depending of the spacetime metric which is a direct function of proper time"? And where do you actually answer the question? – ACuriousMind Jul 05 '16 at 19:56