Is there genuinely good evidence that the universe could have been eternal/infinite into the past?

[RestlessSoul]

Atoms and sub-atomic particles or you can say 'physical energy'. That alone is the reality and that creates all things that perceive and also things which we do not perceive.

When you say “creates”, I assume you mean “constitutes”?

For you do not believe in a creator (or do you?)

 

[rational experiences]

it’s a trope familiar to Haiku poets. The universe contained in a dewdrop.

Here’s Percy Shelley;

I am the daughter of Earth and Water, the nurseling of the sky;
I pass through the pores of oceans and shores,
I change but I cannot die.

Everything is fleeting; everything is infinite.

Here’s William Blake;

To see a World in a grain of sand,
Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour.


Poets and artists are the true visionaries of this world, I find. Not hidebound either by dogma or by logic, they are free to imagine the world as, perhaps, it really is.

When you stand on mass inside of mass and are logical you say pressure and cold as extreme emptiness owns by holding all form.

Oh holy mother space womb.

Infinite defined holy status owns holding of form.

If I want to minus holding of form I want to add onto the infinite to increase its non existent measure oh holy mother of science.

Hence if I was a philosopher I would claim one drop of water owns the same reason that a huge water mass of lots of droplets existed...the same as.

Yet say it not logically like a destructive scientist would.

 

[oldbadger]

Is there genuinely good evidence that the universe could have been eternal/infinite into the past?

No.

This universe happened at the pin-point in time of the Big-Bang.

But there was already space, and other universes all about, I have little doubt.

 

[Aupmanyav]

When you say “creates”, I assume you mean “constitutes”? For you do not believe in a creator (or do you?)

You are very correct in that assumption. Yeah, I meant 'constitute'. I do not believe in any creator or any creation. It is all a make-believe created by our minds.

But there was already space, and other universes all about, I have little doubt.

IMHO, what you write is a bit ambiguous. Do you have a doubt or you don't? I will not say yes or no. I will wait for science to find out.

 

[WalterTrull]

Atoms and sub-atomic particles or you can say 'physical energy'. That alone is the reality and that creates all things that perceive and also things which we do not perceive.

Pretty sure that apple is problematic.

 

[viole]

What are those reasons?

That things like spacetime, if they are physically objects (as it seems from relativity), then they cannot possibly be subject to dynamics, or any change in time.ergo, they will a-temporal.

Ciao

- viole

 

[alypius]

Now, I'm no cosmologist and I'm terrible at understanding science but are there good philosophical and scientific reasons to believe that the universe could be eternal/infinite into the past and thus didn't need to have a beginning and thus a God/creator to begin it? Or is an uncreated/beginning-less universe just wishful thinking? Please let me know and for you scientists and sophisticated philosophers out there, can you please explain it to me like I'm 5? I'd really appreciate it lol.

Why does an eternal universe not need a cause?

 

[gnostic]

Now, I'm no cosmologist and I'm terrible at understanding science but are there good philosophical and scientific reasons to believe that the universe could be eternal/infinite into the past and thus didn't need to have a beginning and thus a God/creator to begin it? Or is an uncreated/beginning-less universe just wishful thinking? Please let me know and for you scientists and sophisticated philosophers out there, can you please explain it to me like I'm 5? I'd really appreciate it lol.

The only evidence - direct and indirect - we have, only indicate that the universe have finite past of 13 or so billion years, but beyond that we don’t have enough evidence and data to conclude the universe is eternal or not.

So we really don’t know.

People who think they have the answers to your question, are either dishonest or just plain stupid, because anything they say without evidence to back them up, are just wishful thinking speculation.

I am not saying it is wrong to speculate, I just think people should recognize when someone is speculating, is just that, and speculations are not the truth, until it can be tested and verified.

 

[Valjean]

Why does an eternal universe not need a cause?

Because the need for a cause is an artifact of human experience and consciousness?
Reality doesn't operate like the perceived, human world. Relativity, quantum mechanics and string 'theories' are not intuitive. From a human perspective, they're utter madness -- but don't let that fool you. They're real. It's our own, commonsense perception of the world that actually flies in the face of physics.

 

[Native]

And this brings me to the most direct possible answer to your question: do we have good reasons to think there might be an infinite past?

The answer is "yes, but..."

The "yes" portion is that if inflation is true (and it has every appearance of being true), then it's really hard to avoid a multiverse because the inflaton fields decay asymmetrically, leading to "bubble universes" where it has decayed (and ours would be one such example). While inflation decayed here, it is still ongoing elsewhere, and has no reason to ever end, and no reason to have ever began.

The "but" portion is that while inflation is a scientific inquiry in terms of the local universe, I wouldn't strictly call eternal inflation elsewhere scientific because we can't empirically observe it: we have to leave the realm of pure science and enter the realm of philosophy to make those kinds of assertions. I am not saying that means the assertions are without evidence or without good reasons to think them, however.

Meow Mix, if you had the slightest insight in ancient culture´s Stories of Creation, your answer would be:

Yes there genuinely are good evidence that the Universe is eternal.

And if you don´t believe in the human physical observation skills and spiritual/intuitive insights from thousands of years, just use the laws of energy conservation to assure yourself of this.

 

[thomas loebel]

Now, I'm no cosmologist and I'm terrible at understanding science but are there good philosophical and scientific reasons to believe that the universe could be eternal/infinite into the past and thus didn't need to have a beginning and thus a God/creator to begin it? Or is an uncreated/beginning-less universe just wishful thinking? Please let me know and for you scientists and sophisticated philosophers out there, can you please explain it to me like I'm 5? I'd really appreciate it lol.

 

[thomas loebel]

Evil and good are one infinite that repeats forever so that good is relative second wheel that then goes to eternal life as infinite. Moses is the good after the evil is fuL and returns as FiLL. the past is the future and repeat.

 

[Polymath257]

i am not bright enough to contemplate such things

but if the universe didn’t have a beginning, it seems like we couldn’t be here now

doesn’t now have to be a point in time that follows from other points?

I think without a beginning there wouldn’t be a beginning point, for others to follow from

this makes me think of Spaceballs for some reason

I have to admit that I have never understood this argument.

Why would there be a problem being here now? Between any two points of time, there is a finite amount of time. But there is no beginning.

The exact point at issue is whether there needs to be a beginning point. And there is no logical reason such would be necessary.

 

[Polymath257]

I've heard experts claim that there are models that show that an infinite past universe is possible, is that so?

Yes. Many such models.

 

[Polymath257]

How do they explain the redshifting in distant galaxies or cosmic background radiation?

In models with time infinite into the past, the BB is a phase transition. There is still expansion currently (and for the last 13.8 billion years).

 

[Polymath257]

Why does an eternal universe not need a cause?

Causes happen before effects. An eternal universe has nothing before it.

 

[Heyo]

I have to admit that I have never understood this argument.

That's because you deal with infinities on a daily basis.
The argument (from incredulity) is that something existing now (and only for a limited time) has zero probability (i.e. is impossible) as, in relation to the infinite past, the now is nothing.
It's like saying that x -> x² can't be 0 at 0 because it has been positive for the infinite past.

 

[Ponder This]

I'm at a keyboard now.

Cosmology doesn't have a direct answer to this. Direct observation into the past (by looking out to large redshifts) is limited by the time of last scattering, beyond which the universe was opaque. Everything beyond the surface of last scattering is extrapolated with well-understood mechanisms (some of which have made some of the best predictions to match experimental observation in the history of science).

So we already have the problem that there isn't direct observation, even though looking "out" is looking "back."

The other problem is that we do not have a working theory of quantum gravity, which would be necessary to really understand what was going on when the universe's size was on the order of the Planck scale. This includes understanding what would have been occurring around the Planck time after the Big Bang event.

Since time's arrow is given by the entropic gradient, and it's questionable what sort of entropic events would be happening on the order of one Planck time, it's not even really clear whether the concept of having a "time before the first Planck time" even has cognitive meaning.

This is a really roundabout way of saying "there isn't sufficient data, and the question might be wrong in the first place." Asking what was "before" the Planck time may well be like asking what's north of the North Pole.

Having said that, though, there is the concept of metatime. Temporal dimensions are always characterized by gradients, and there may be other gradients by which to give time an arrow than this universe's entropic gradient. For instance, the best way to understand this is by imagining a hypothetical multiverse where new universes are created: within each universe, there is a beginning to time (the entropic maximum for that universe), but overall there is a more encompassing metatime.

And this brings me to the most direct possible answer to your question: do we have good reasons to think there might be an infinite past?

The answer is "yes, but..."

The "yes" portion is that if inflation is true (and it has every appearance of being true), then it's really hard to avoid a multiverse because the inflaton fields decay asymmetrically, leading to "bubble universes" where it has decayed (and ours would be one such example). While inflation decayed here, it is still ongoing elsewhere, and has no reason to ever end, and no reason to have ever began.

The "but" portion is that while inflation is a scientific inquiry in terms of the local universe, I wouldn't strictly call eternal inflation elsewhere scientific because we can't empirically observe it: we have to leave the realm of pure science and enter the realm of philosophy to make those kinds of assertions. I am not saying that means the assertions are without evidence or without good reasons to think them, however.

Let me wrap this already-too-long response up by saying this: what we can say for sure is that there is zero evidence that the universe ontologically began to exist, even with the Big Bang (the most we can say is that its present local state began). This means that it remains a possibility that the universe is infinite and eternal. I am not sure how that could be shown, however.

That the "present local state" began would be considered evidence of the universe beginning, otherwise we are instead debating what the universe "is".

 

[Valjean]

I have to admit that I have never understood this argument.

Why would there be a problem being here now? Between any two points of time, there is a finite amount of time. But there is no beginning.

The exact point at issue is whether there needs to be a beginning point. And there is no logical reason such would be necessary.

If there were no beginning point, why would we see any stars in the sky?
The universe is expanding. Everything is becoming farther apart -- and the rate of expansion is increasing. If you run the observed expansion backwards, it a comes to a single point ~14 billion years ago.
If the universe had begun twenty or thirty billion years ago, would there be any stars still close enough to see?
If the universe were eternal, and had been expanding forever, we'd surely see nothing when we looked up at night.

 

[Polymath257]

So why believe that the universe is 14 billion years then?

For those theories that allow for an infinite amount of time, the Big Bang was one phase transition, possibly among many (even infinitely many). Alternatively, it is a single 'budding off' of a region of 'different expansion'.