🚀 go-pugleaf

-- 
John Stein <jstein@tfs.net>

Hawking uses this analogy when people ask him what caused the big bang, or
what was before the big bang. His opinion is (according to a Brief History
of Time) that time started at the big bang so asking what is before the
big bang is like asking what is more to the north then the north pole. 

> > >I confess to vast unfamiliarity with
> > >Hawking's theories, but my imagination tells me that to travel the
> > >distances of space (as we measure distance), we not only must overcome
> the
> > >distance involved but time. 

> > Agreed. It takes time to overcome the distance. So the distance isn�t
> > the real problem, but time is.
> 
> > >This doesn't mean time as in going faster to do
> > >it in less, but to travel in some way as to make our current
> understanding
> > >of time irrelevant. Perhaps this means, then, that we find some manner
> of
> > >entering eternity as a method of overcoming both distance and time.
> > >
> > You mean something like: 
> > - Now I�m here.
> > - Blink to eternity
> > - Blink, now I�m there (say 1 sec. later, and 3000000 lightyears
> > further)
> 
> Yes, I suppose so. Leave a temporal dimension, enter another where time
and
> distance are irrelevant, and pop out at your destination 3000000 light
> years away. It's profoundly speculative. Is there anything scientifically
> substantial to hint at such a concept?
> 

Excuse me but what are we tlaking about here. How can you leave our
dimensions. If there are more dimension (say ten) we're allready in them,
we just don't move in them. So you cannot "enter" or "leave" a dimension. 
This and the sometimes irritating property of time that makes us unable
to choose whether we move or not in that dimension makes it impossible to
move instantaniously in the way you guys describe.

I was already confused, and now it's getting worse. Science needs causality
to understand the universe. We've worked our way back to the big bang,
saying the universe was created by its effect. Are simply satisfied by
saying we can't look past that moment? We do look past the North Pole,
though we don't describe what we find there as north. We describe it as
space, solar system, or whatever.

If we look past the big bang, when time begins, then we will be describing
something beyond time or in "not time." Causality would tell us something
was at work to cause the big bang, and whatever that something was may have
existed in a "not time" state. So the question I'm playing with is: If it
is possible that "not time" once existed, can time and "not time" coexist,
or did one replace the other at the moment of the big bang. And if they
coexist, how, since by definition they are dissimilar. If they coexist, can
objects move between the two?

The best word I know for "not time" is eternity: no beginning, no end;
simply being or existence. Perhaps there is a better one. Perhaps also I
use the term "dimension" incorrectly. My background is philosophy and
theology. I am fascinated by this, but struggle to keep up with the formula
and terminolgy.