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John C. Mather: “There is no first moment of time” (2017)

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Re: John C. Mather: “There is no first moment of time” (2017)

#11

Post by benreesman »

zibby8 wrote: post #3

> There’s another way in which the giant firecracker idea misleads us, because even scientists often talk about the “universe springing into existence.” Well, it didn’t, as far as we can tell. The opposite is true. There is no first moment of time, just as there is no smallest positive number. In physics we have equations and laws of nature that describe how one situation changes into another, but we have no equation…

As just one more computer programmer mouthing off about a Nobel Laureate's assertions in the grand tradition of HN:

I find it far more useful to think about boundary cases like "first time" or "farthest distance" in terms of observable causal structure: what can currently know about the cause and effect relationship between things, what could we possibly know, and what could we never know? Outside of that it seems to be not only a slippery but also a steep slope into sloppy analogy to human experience.

Re: John C. Mather: “There is no first moment of time” (2017)

#12

Post by lupire »

rosywoozlechan wrote: post #10

> even though there’s no first moment of time, we can still measure the age. This seems to be a contradiction? The time that's passed since some kind of transformation, but not the age? What is the age of something that has no beginning?

Open Interval / Zeno's Paradox / White Holes / time passing more slowly closer to Big Bang.

Re: John C. Mather: “There is no first moment of time” (2017)

#14

Post by lupire »

philosophyfirst wrote: post #9
zibby8 wrote: post #3

> There’s another way in which the giant firecracker idea misleads us, because even scientists often talk about the “universe springing into existence.” Well, it didn’t, as far as we can tell. The opposite is true. There is no first moment of time, just as there is no smallest positive number. In physics we have equations and laws of nature that describe how one situation changes into another, but we have no equation…

Yeah this is kind of a laughable position in the article. I don’t mean the conclusion, which might be right, but the method. The laws of physics as we know them are just reflections of … nothing more than what we know. The fact that we have no account of what came before the big bang is not evidence of anything except that we don’t know, especially when a very plausible theory is that what came before is totally diff…

The point is that the theory works -- matches observed reality -- even without a "0 point", analogous to the positive Reals or Rationals.

Re: John C. Mather: “There is no first moment of time” (2017)

#15

Post by [deleted] »

lupire wrote: post #14
philosophyfirst wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this is kind of a laughable position in the article. I don’t mean the conclusion, which might be right, but the method. The laws of physics as we know them are just reflections of … nothing more than what we know. The fact that we have no account of what came before the big bang is not evidence of anything except that we don’t know, especially when a very plausible theory is that what came before is totally diff…

The point is that the theory works -- matches observed reality -- even without a "0 point", analogous to the positive Reals or Rationals.

[deleted]

Re: John C. Mather: “There is no first moment of time” (2017)

#16

Post by hsn915 »

lupire wrote: post #14
philosophyfirst wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this is kind of a laughable position in the article. I don’t mean the conclusion, which might be right, but the method. The laws of physics as we know them are just reflections of … nothing more than what we know. The fact that we have no account of what came before the big bang is not evidence of anything except that we don’t know, especially when a very plausible theory is that what came before is totally diff…

The point is that the theory works -- matches observed reality -- even without a "0 point", analogous to the positive Reals or Rationals.

This is neither here nor there.

Suppose you have a "working theory" about how birds fly, but no theory about other things might hypothetically fly. Does that afford you to claim "Nothing other than birds can fly"?

Re: John C. Mather: “There is no first moment of time” (2017)

#17

Post by TEP_Kim_Il_Sung »

philosophyfirst wrote: post #9
zibby8 wrote: post #3

> There’s another way in which the giant firecracker idea misleads us, because even scientists often talk about the “universe springing into existence.” Well, it didn’t, as far as we can tell. The opposite is true. There is no first moment of time, just as there is no smallest positive number. In physics we have equations and laws of nature that describe how one situation changes into another, but we have no equation…

Yeah this is kind of a laughable position in the article. I don’t mean the conclusion, which might be right, but the method. The laws of physics as we know them are just reflections of … nothing more than what we know. The fact that we have no account of what came before the big bang is not evidence of anything except that we don’t know, especially when a very plausible theory is that what came before is totally diff…

Didn't Gödel prove that you can't prove a theory with its' own ruleset?

In physics maths always go haywire durnig phase changes, as gas laws don't apply to liquids, and such.

Re: John C. Mather: “There is no first moment of time” (2017)

#18

Post by pdonis »

rosywoozlechan wrote: post #10

> even though there’s no first moment of time, we can still measure the age. This seems to be a contradiction? The time that's passed since some kind of transformation, but not the age? What is the age of something that has no beginning?

You can still take limits as the Big Bang is approached, even if the limiting case of the Big Bang itself can never be reached. Just as you can take limits of things as some positive parameter approaches zero even if the parameter never actually takes the value zero.

Re: John C. Mather: “There is no first moment of time” (2017)

#19

Post by patcon »

rosywoozlechan wrote: post #10

> even though there’s no first moment of time, we can still measure the age. This seems to be a contradiction? The time that's passed since some kind of transformation, but not the age? What is the age of something that has no beginning?

I felt similarly. Thinking through the article's comparison between first moment in time and "smallest possible positive number", maybe it's sensible...

> even though there’s no first moment of time, we can still measure the age.

> even though there’s no first [positive number after zero], we can still measure the [range between zero and one].

That second variation doesn't seem so contradictory, so maybe the original isn't :)

Re: John C. Mather: “There is no first moment of time” (2017)

#20

Post by xwdv »

Not only might there not be a first moment, there might be no time at all. Every possible instant of time could be randomly distributed with some very small but not infinitely small probability of occurring. On an infinite timeline, everything should occur, forever. When a moment occurs, a structure of your brain exists coded with memories of past events that feel real but never happened.

Since each moment is pure and has no external state, you do not perceive the trillions of years that could pass in between two moments occurring, nor do you have any way to realize you are perceiving moments out of order or that other possibilities of realities exist.

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