What if the universe had no beginning?

[Judi Lynn]

By Paul Sutter about 14 hours ago



(Image credit: Shutterstock)

In the beginning, there was … well, maybe there was no beginning. Perhaps our universe has always existed — and a new theory of quantum gravity reveals how that could work.

"Reality has so many things that most people would associate with sci-fi or even fantasy," said Bruno Bento, a physicist who studies the nature of time at the University of Liverpool in the U.K.

In his work, he employed a new theory of quantum gravity, called causal set theory, in which space and time are broken down into discrete chunks of space-time. At some level, there's a fundamental unit of space-time, according to this theory.

Bento and his collaborators used this causal-set approach to explore the beginning of the universe. They found that it's possible that the universe had no beginning — that it has always existed into the infinite past and only recently evolved into what we call the Big Bang.

More:
https://www.livescience.com/universe-had-no-beginning-time

[OAITW r.2.0]

1. And what if there is no "end" ?

Damn.

[getagrip_already]

43. What if there really is no spoon? N/t

[Quanto Magnus]

50. That would mean....

heat death of the universe.

As space continues to expand our finite amount of matter will get further spread out. Regular stars die, neutron stars go cold. black holes evaporate....

Then there's the whole discussion of whether protons decay or not and how that affects the cooling of the universe.

[jaxexpat]

65. And every change is discovery as well.

Endless, eternal, infinite. Time is a poor gauge of reality. All that is, has been and will be is now. The wrapping is part and parcel of the gift until it's opened, defined, deduced and disproven, again. The living know life as a passage of barely dreamed moments which disappear into memory. Awareness, transcendence, illusions of spatiality. There is no righteous one, not even one.

[Anon-C]

2. Life is so strange!

[JoeOtterbein]

3. K n R ! Thanks for posting! nt

[Baked Potato]

4. Whew, now I don't have to wonder about what became before nothing.

Wait, darn it, there never was nothing? Ok, back to GD.

[airplaneman]

86. actually, technically, everything came before nothing. n/t.

[elleng]

5. As I've 'always' thought.

[Bluethroughu]

6. Welcome to the grand illusion.

[rsdsharp]

7. And no religion, too.

Sorry, John.

[TlalocW]

12. I would call those

Leading questions as you're assuming a creator.

TlalocW

[COL Mustard]

33. It Had To Start With Something

Where did the first matter come from? How did it develop into the first life, and then into the first intelligent life (excluding Mango45 and his ilk). Some things are unknown and unknowable, and sometimes I'm glad I'm just along for the ride.

[Farmer-Rick]

38. Well the post claims there is no beginning. The universe has always been.

They are theorizing there is NO beginning to the universe. It always existed. Matter comes with the universe as it evolves. Life evolves from the conditions created by the universe. Then intelligence evolves from that.

I think it is amazing that out of this turmulus universe something evolved that can understand the universe....well eventually understand it. It's like the universe created a creature to understand it's own existance. As if a rock created an ant that could understand the rock. That just is dumbfounding and so spectacular.

[7wo7rees]

45. Or not

Your assumption indicates the paradox. Why does the first matter have to COME FROM something. Isn't THAT first? And what did that come from?

Why wouldn't eternity work in both directions?

[WhiteTara]

37. A Tibetan teacher I know says that the universe

is formed from karma/desire

[Sibelius Fan]

62. That's a self-aggrandizing position.

[marble falls]

81. It's all Maya. "(S)elf-aggrandizing" is an illusion.

[SCantiGOP]

9. Hawking said a good, brief explanation is:

Once there was nothing. Suddenly, it exploded into everything.

[C Moon]

10. My brain hurts.

[Joinfortmill]

20. 👍

[Javaman]

29. it's a concept that I sometimes think that we as humans have to further evolve

to completely appreciate.

we still think in linear terms.

if there were no beginning and end and the universe just "is", that confirms that the concept of time is merely a construct of our minds to wrap our brains around things like this.

once we evolve to a point where time no longer has meaning or even matters, then we will full conceptualize the "concept" of no beginning and end.

that all is happening at the same time.

[COL Mustard]

34. If You Think The Concept Of Time Is Merely A Construct

Don't you dare be late on your mortgage or car payments!!! . You know the old joke, if you think no one knows you exist, miss a couple of payments!!!

[billh58]

69. Time is what

keeps everything from happening at once...

- Woody Allen, Albert Einstein, John Archibald Wheeler, and Anonymous

[Javaman]

78. That only happens with our current state of mind

If we ever evolve to a state of time happening all at once, our minds will I understand it, hence evolution

If we currently believe that time prevents everything happening at once, that just proves we can’t conceptualize how our evolution will be to handle such at concept. We haven’t evolved to even comprehend it yet.

[Stardust]

77. I grok that. Nt

[BigmanPigman]

79. I've been listening to people who have had

Near Death Experiences lately and this fits right. Some who have "crossed over" and came back said that there is no time at all. People on Earth have a hard time understanding it. They all say the same thing about their NDE...time doesn't really exist.

I have to be reminded about Shakespeare's quote, "There is more between Heaven and Earth Horatio...".

I know that we have a limited amount of tools to study this issue. Actually none of our current tools available could really understand this. I doubt we will be able to comprehend any of this for thousands of years, or maybe even longer.

[Danmark]

56. I hear you

Question are we even here?

[Javaman]

80. Exactly. Then we start to explore the concept

that we are living in a simulation, as some have suggested. Which then dovetails into the idea of the many worlds or multi-universe hypothesis.

This is truly brain bending stuff.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

11. Uh, oh.

I am currently reading Sutter's book How to Die in Space and it's a hoot. He has a wonderful, almost snarky way of presenting things, and I keep on laughing out loud. Plus, early on he talked about the asteroid belt and so I sent him an email asking if the materials in the asteroid belt had gotten together to become a planet, would it be naked eye visible? He responded within a couple of hours (and that alone is fantastic) that no, Ceres itself is more than half of the matter in the asteroid belt, and all of the rest of the asteroids would have made a very small planet, not naked eye invisible.

He is an amazing and interesting guy.

I have asked My Son The Astronomer if he'd crossed paths with Sutter, but alas he has not. Darn. I'd love to meet that man in person.

I do have his first book, Your Place in the Universe which I will get to once I'm done with How to Die in Space. I will add that How to Die in Space is so packed with information, that I've been taking it rather slowly. Never took physics, never took math beyond a business based calculus, although I constantly ask My Son The Astronomer many questions.

I love this stuff.

[SergeStorms]

13. Would that mean....

that no god created it? That certainly would piss off religious folks. 🙄

[Demobrat]

22. If god created the universe

who created god?

[Javaman]

30. we did to explain that the universe has no beginning and end.,

LOL

[wnylib]

44. Or else what we call God IS the universe,

with no beginning and no end.

[judesedit]

48. I kind of agree with that. It is all knowing.

Comforting to me. This puts me in mind of "Desiderata". I think I'll go read it. Peace and love to all of you. Thanx for being here.

[wnylib]

49. Science and religion often say the

same things, in different ways. Carl Sagan pointed that out in his book, Dragons of Eden.

The human mind is incapable of complete objectivity. We start developing frameworks of perception from the time we are born and our experiences throughout life build on them. So despite all our efforts to maintain objectivity, our subjective experiences creep in. It may be that the human mind is hard wired to perceive things in certain patterns, as Jung pointed out regarding a collective unconscious.

So scientists do extremely well with objectivity despite, or maybe in cooperation with, our inescapable subjectivity. Modern technology in all fields is evidence of scientific success. But when it comes to developing theories from scientific evidence, science can overlap with some aspects of religious theology.

It's been a long time since I read Dragons of Eden, but if I remember right, he drew parallels in thought patterns and conceptualization between the order of creation in Genesis and the orders of beginnings and evolution in science. The parallels are not identical in every aspect, but are remarkably similar.

As a child In Sunday School, I was taught that God is not a person or being as we conceive of beings, but is a spirit that always was and always will be, without beginning or end. Now some physicists are describing the universe that way.

[samnsara]

84. i still have my wall poster from college!

[NotANeocon]

64. I think that is called Panty-ism.

[Woodwizard]

60. I drove my mom crazy with that question.

[olegramps]

66. God created man, and man being a gentleman returned the compliment.

[LudwigPastorius]

14. Asserting that there exists "atoms" that are the smallest possible expression of....

space-time?

Yeah, that worked out for atoms, then protons and neutrons, then quarks, then strings, then...

I know, that's a bad analogy, but it seems like every time we humans think we've defined a fundamental building block, we later learn that it is made of something else.

This theory sounds like mathematicians rearranging numbers just to do away with singularities.

I personally don't have anything against singularities. They make more sense to me than time stretching in both directions with no beginning or end.

[NH Ethylene]

70. I personally am not eager to do away with the Big Bang Theory in favor of mathematical harmony.

There is a lot of evidence to support it, even as we have attained more powerful telescopes and look farther 'back in time.'

It will be interesting to see what the author's peers say about this.

[slightlv]

15. I always thought the use of the concept of "Infinite"

was a space holder when you didn't know what the real concept actually was. That there wasn't actually anything such as "infinite." Am I way off base with this belief? If so, I've sure carried it around a LONG time. Someone enlighten me! It's midnight, and I really don't want to do a google search. I've got a couple of cracked ribs and I'm really ready to take a pain pill and head to bed. And I truly have thought there was no such reality as "infinite" anything. (shrug)

[Buckeye_Democrat]

17. Several physicists still think that the singularities...

... within black holes are "infinitely dense".

I have my doubts, despite the argument that no KNOWN force can withstand the collapse from gravity once the process of black hole creation starts.

[VWolf]

31. Just as GR "replaced" Newtonian gravitation for massive objects / highly curved spacetime,

so too will a new theory "replace" GR, once someone clever enough comes up with it, and that will most likely clear up the singularities.

I put "replace" in quotes, as "refine" is probably more appropriate. Every theory has its appropriate domain of validity.

[COL Mustard]

35. I Work With A Guy Who Is Infinitely Dense

But he's married.

I'll show myself out now.....

[reACTIONary]

53. +10 nt

[Walleye]

27. I'm just the opposite. I've always thought that infinity was the one true reality

The fact that we don’t understand it and can’t resolve it is irrelevant. Just my philosophy of course

[7wo7rees]

46. It's just a ride

[ancianita]

68. +1000

[Moebym]

16. Interesting theory...

My favorite theory on the origins of the Universe is that it is cyclic, meaning that it's in an endless cycle of Big Bangs and Big Crunches.

It's my favorite not because I think it's the most plausible (I'm no astrophysicist) but because I like the idea of there being neither a beginning nor an end to the Universe. The alternative is too frightening to contemplate.

[qazplm135]

21. I don't think big crunches happen

What I tend to lean towards is that over a very long amount of time after a Big Freeze, you can get a new Big Bang since effectively the universe is massless and nothing but energy at that point and you get that once in a googol years fluctuation and boom, another Big Bang.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Which means the universe is effectively eternal. Because sooner or later (much later) anything that can happen, will happen, including another Big Bang.

I also tend to think Black Holes spit out baby universes.

[LudwigPastorius]

24. "sooner or later (much later) anything that can happen, will happen"

Yikes!

That means that it is likely that you are a Boltzmann Brain, with a false memory of having a body and posting on DemocraticUnderground.com, When, in fact, you are a second away from dying in the freezing, dark emptiness of a dead universe.

[qazplm135]

25. thankfully

hasn't been enough time for that yet.

[Esra Star]

76. I think that is where Wall St is headed. nt

[slightlv]

32. My view is kinda like yours....

An ever expanding universe is finally swallowed by a black hole and spit out into various "new universes" (ala new "big bangs&quot . I don't have the science down pat yet. And as someone has said on this thread, it makes my brain hurt! (LOL) But I LOVE the idea of the multiverse, and find it makes much more sense to me than the idea of a single universe, as does the idea of a one of these universes bumping into another universe, a piece of which becoming absorbed into the universe into which it bumped, thus showing up in the 2nd's background radiation pattern. Meanwhile, a new baby universe is created which is made of the two universes which bumped into each other.

There are so many possibilities out there beyond "In the beginning..." And I love contemplating each of them... even if they do make my brain hurt! (lol) The only thing I can't do right now is actually laugh out loud about them, cause that makes my cracked ribs hurt!

[Moebym]

36. Quantum fluctuations? n/t

[qazplm135]

39. couple of ways there

1. Higgs field collapses. If Higgs field is real, and if it collapses as the density of space gets super tiny, then the universe will be in a hot dense state...just like the Big Bang. Basically Roger Penrose's theory (kinda sorta).

2. We could be in a false vacuum, and if it collapses late in the life of the universe it could produce a whole new universe. Although probably happens a lot sooner than heat death time frames.

3. Something else. Maybe Brane theory is correct where Branes are attracted as they empty out of matter and then when they collide a Big Bang happens. The universes fill with matter, the Branes are repulsed, and then entropy happens, emptying the universe of matter and bringing the Branes together again.

[Silver Gaia]

57. Brahma's Breath...

[NullTuples]

18. I love the idea that we're so tiny...

...that our observations are just nearsighted views of something so much larger.

My favorite example: What if the expansion we measure is just the trough of a pressure wave so massive it's entirety is far beyond what we can measure? These are fanciful alternatives that can't be proved or disproved, much as Georges Lemaître's theory fits much of the measured data but we cannot yet and perhaps will never know if it is the only suitable answer. But the math fits both. It falls back to the knowability of Plato's & Aristotle's god.

Personally, I find the idea of a universe that is finite in time or dimension to be offensive. It's modeled too much after ourselves. I would much rather prefer something more outside our experience and currently beyond our comprehension. Something that would push us to grow.

[Joinfortmill]

19. Hard to wrap your head around.

[renate]

23. You always find the most interesting articles!

Thank you!

[Wounded Bear]

28. Good stuff! Thanks for the link! nt

[Uncle Joe]

40. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread Judi Lynn.

[dupagelib]

41. Second Law of Thermodynamics

Entropy


The big freeze.

[lastlib]

42. puts me in mind of this beautiful tune:

Moody Blues, Eternity Road

[JohnnyRingo]

47. Saved for later.

[ashredux]

51. The void...everything and nothing

🙏

[JohnnyRingo]

52. I've wondered about a constantly expanding and contracting universe.

My mother told me when I was young that the universe went on forever. I would ask "what's beyond that?" "More universe".

We see a universe that is expanding from The Big Bang, yet we also see galaxies created by that Big Bang collapsing into massive black holes. What if those masses eat up entire galaxies and attract other nearby systems into an even more massive black hole until everything in the observed universe comes down to one or more unstable masses with atoms crushed beyond physical limits until.... Bang! It all starts again.

No beginning or end, just as it should be.

[alfredo]

54. What does Vishnu think about all this

[burrowowl]

55. Kick

Since I was 7 this stuff has always blown my mind.

[cstanleytech]

58. Does not explain why the universe does not look similar to todays as we peer further

away via telescopes.
Unless of course the universe is composed of an infinite number of giant singularities spread out and the current universe is simply the expanding cloud like effect of two of them merging and releasing at least part of themselves.
As for why we do not see other such universes? Well the "front" of the expansion I suppose could have pushed any such other clouds back so we cannot see them.

[hunter]

59. I figure we can only see into the past of our own local space.

Wherever you might go in the infinity of space-time, even by fantastical means, it all looks the same.

[llashram]

61. then it has no end

[NotANeocon]

63. What if there were MANY beginnings -and contractions, and big bangs?

And what if - from a quantum view - those motions operated simultaneously in several planes ln non linear time?

[Duppers]

67. Yes! The universe has always been here, as defined..

As everything in existence.

But according to some DUers, Bento's postulating religion because this cannot be empirically proven.

Down thread: https://www.democraticunderground.com/122878359

[TreasonousBastard]

71. Start off with Einstein's observation that the universe is a...

marvelous creation.

And a creation would assume a creator.

Sorry atheists, but Big Al was into determinism and thought Spinoza was at least as smart as he was.

At any rate, paradoxes of infinity have fascinated theoretical physicists since at least since Plato, and these days no one is any closer to solving them. But not for lack of trying. Must be hundreds of physicists trying make a buck off of explaining this stuff in their videos.

Personally, I think it's simply that we are unable to comprehend things outside of our 3D reality. Time is merely motion in a fourth dimension, and distances are higher dimensional expressions of that motion. Or something like that.

But we can't really know because we are not as smart as we think we are.

[Martin68]

74. No need to apologize, TS. Even you are not as smart as you think you are.

[snort]

72. It's Turtles

all the way down.

[Martin68]

73. Interesting ideas but well beyond anything that would be useful to science as a theory that can

by confirmed by scientific tests that could bring into doubt the assumptions underlying the hypothesis.

[Mustellus]

75. It is a capital error....

.. my dear Watson.. to theorize in advance of data. (S. Holmes.. paraphrased)

That's why cosmology is actually a branch of religion.

(Professional PhD Astronomer in my real life)

[Dystopian Optimist]

82. Oh, it HAD a Beginning

But I started creating it on a Tuesday, not Sunday.

[Javaman]

83. it began when each of us were born, it ends when each of us dies.

and during our lives we try and figure out how and why we are here to give meaning to the unknown.

[KPN]

85. Makes sense to me. I have zero understanding of

the scientific theory behind “no beginning”, but I have always thought that might be the case. It just makes more sense to me than a start and an end, before which and beyond which there was and is absolutely nothing.

[nelsonarcherdd31]

87. What if the universe had no beginning

check out the website for more information about this

https://www.livescience.com/universe-had-no-beginning-time

[LiberalFighter]

88. How will climate change impact earth. Destruction or new ice age?

How long will earth survive when resources are depleted for human survival?

[Heartstrings]

89. Right on par with "infinity" in my mind.

And if I allow myself to think about it, I’ll have a panic/anxiety attack.

Have since I was kid lying on the green grass on the front lawn of the home I grew up in, contemplating what’s beyond the clouds and blue sky…..a brick wall came to mind but then what was beyond the wall? My dad would “settle me down”, usually by holding and talking calmly to me reassuring me that my thoughts were valid and he wondered the same.

Still creeps me out….