4 ms·
I've found one useful way to think about the question "what was before the Big Bang" is to ponder "what is North of the North pole"? Don't stretch the analogy
by jbert 14y ago
I've found one useful way to think about the question "what was before the Big Bang" is to ponder "what is North of the North pole"?
Don't stretch the analogy too far - I'm not suggesting that spacetime is topologically shaped like that - but to me it's a useful example of a co-ordinate system which seems locally euclidean going whacky at/near the boundaries.
Roughly, "But there has to be something before the big bang, you just go back a bit further in the same direction!" == "But there has to be something North of the pole - you just go a bit further in the same direction!"
- ccozan 14y agoThe problem is that you an use words like "go" and "direction" in a situation where they make sense. In the incipient phase of the Universe the space-time did not exist as we can perceive it with our brains, themselves based on physical and chemical properties of the mature Universe - so would be impossible to "imagine" that there is no "north" because there is no direction available. Kant deducted that our conscience and brains are born with the sense of space-time and we cannot override this. The only way in which we can access this ideas is only through highend mathematics and AIs that just need to do a job, but not to explain to our limited brains how.
- dredmorbius 14y agoKant may have deducted that, but he's talking about a neurobiological phenomenon born from evolutionary pressures in a very limited environment. Michelson–Morley mesured, and Einstein explained, how speed of light, not time, is constant through the Universe. To the point of questioning simultaneity. If we've already got non-constant time, then the concept of a time origin prior to which there is no sensible physical description is at least plausible, if not something I can, spacial geometric puns pardoned, wrap my brain around in the same sense that there's a limit to "northness" on a spheroid.
- jbert 14y agoYes, the idea of the analogy is that these concepts "make sense" near our current space-time location, but break down near the edges of our universe. Our brains think that "North" and "earlier" are directions which can be extended infinitely, but they are wrong.
- baddox 14y agoI don't think your analogy relies on this, but I should point out that spherical (or ellipsoidal, if you please) geometry is notable for being a non-Euclidean geometry.
- Drbble 14y agoThat is exactly what parent said. spherical geometry is locally Euclidean but not globally Euclidean. (It is a manifold).