240
R. Barrett and P. P. Delsanto
We began our journey in this book with a look in Part 1 at the earliest
attempts of humans to make sense of their world. We saw how progress was
erratic until the development by Galileo of what is now known as the scientific method, whereupon began the bourgeoning of science that has impacted
the lives of everyone on our planet. Now it seems that some domains of
physics are beyond the reach of experiment or observation, and thus beyond
the ken of what we mean by science. Perhaps we should just accept this, albeit
with a degree of despondency. However, human curiosity being what it is, it is
difficult to prevent ourselves from venturing into regions that are customarily
regarded as metaphysics.
12.3 The Beginning of Time
Surely every intelligent being has at some time speculated about the origin
of their universe. However, arguably, nobody before Galileo had ever really
doubted the infinite range of time, and even believers in the creation of the
world by a God (or some other more or less defined entity), believed that,
if not the world, then at least God had always existed. Likewise space was
thought to range unbounded in its three classical dimensions.
Today, the current consensus is that time originated with the “Big Bang”,
i.e. it does not run back forever (to minus infinity), but starts at a given
singularity. (We must be careful not to say at a given point in time.) In other
words, when the universe was born, space and time were born together in the
composite known as space-time.
As a consequence, to use a simpleminded analogy, the universe is like a
movie that has been switched on and lasts as long as the director chooses to
allow it. However a movie runs for only a limited time, while our universe
might last forever, with an expansion leading to an extremely vast and cold
desert. Or it might terminate at any time in a collapse, or unimaginable cataclysm, in which case the whole process might begin anew. We hinted at this
possibility with our analogy of the ouroboros in Chap. 3.
In the case of a movie, we can learn who the director was, where it was
made and why, how much it cost, and a host of other details. This information is available because the movie was produced in the framework of time.
There is a “before”, which can tell us how the director conceived the idea,
and how he or she obtained the requisite financial support. There is a “during” with all the paraphernalia that creating a movie involves, and there is
an “after”, in which the audience can enjoy (or hate) seeing it, and learn
of its eventual success. In our Universe, there is no “before”, because time
R. Barrett and P. P. Delsanto
We began our journey in this book with a look in Part 1 at the earliest
attempts of humans to make sense of their world. We saw how progress was
erratic until the development by Galileo of what is now known as the scientific method, whereupon began the bourgeoning of science that has impacted
the lives of everyone on our planet. Now it seems that some domains of
physics are beyond the reach of experiment or observation, and thus beyond
the ken of what we mean by science. Perhaps we should just accept this, albeit
with a degree of despondency. However, human curiosity being what it is, it is
difficult to prevent ourselves from venturing into regions that are customarily
regarded as metaphysics.
12.3 The Beginning of Time
Surely every intelligent being has at some time speculated about the origin
of their universe. However, arguably, nobody before Galileo had ever really
doubted the infinite range of time, and even believers in the creation of the
world by a God (or some other more or less defined entity), believed that,
if not the world, then at least God had always existed. Likewise space was
thought to range unbounded in its three classical dimensions.
Today, the current consensus is that time originated with the “Big Bang”,
i.e. it does not run back forever (to minus infinity), but starts at a given
singularity. (We must be careful not to say at a given point in time.) In other
words, when the universe was born, space and time were born together in the
composite known as space-time.
As a consequence, to use a simpleminded analogy, the universe is like a
movie that has been switched on and lasts as long as the director chooses to
allow it. However a movie runs for only a limited time, while our universe
might last forever, with an expansion leading to an extremely vast and cold
desert. Or it might terminate at any time in a collapse, or unimaginable cataclysm, in which case the whole process might begin anew. We hinted at this
possibility with our analogy of the ouroboros in Chap. 3.
In the case of a movie, we can learn who the director was, where it was
made and why, how much it cost, and a host of other details. This information is available because the movie was produced in the framework of time.
There is a “before”, which can tell us how the director conceived the idea,
and how he or she obtained the requisite financial support. There is a “during” with all the paraphernalia that creating a movie involves, and there is
an “after”, in which the audience can enjoy (or hate) seeing it, and learn
of its eventual success. In our Universe, there is no “before”, because time