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SKTwenty t1_j1qm8wa wrote

Reply to comment by ComradeMicha in eli5 what is the most credible theory for what existed before the big bang? by waterboy14

But isn't time just a human construct used to measure duration? So wouldn't that imply that time didn't begin with the big bang, but with humans recording time?

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lemoinem t1_j1qo9do wrote

You're conflating time units and temporal vocabulary, with the part of the universe described by the part of the mathematical model that we call time.

Humanity not existing didn't prevent galaxies to form and recombination to happen. However, our current models cannot even talk about "before the big bang"

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skebu_official t1_j1qqyv6 wrote

That's like saying distance is a human construct used to measure length?

The units to measure them might be manmade - minutes and meters. But time and distance are real things.

Weirdly, both space and time as we know them began from the big bang. So neither distance nor duration exist when the whole universe was compressed into one small thing. The correct answer is that there is no "before".

Personally I have always imagined the universe in a bit of bouncy equilibrium - the big bang followed by expansion, which peters out eventually, to be followed by the big squeeze and compression, which leads to overcompression and another big bang, so on and so forth.

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fox-mcleod t1_j1qv0d7 wrote

It’s also possible that events still happened before the Big Bang. Just not in any kind of cause > effect order. What started existing at the Big Bang was the arrow of time.

There could be time, just not space time with any meaningful relationships we would recognize constituting a recognizable “before” or “after” relationship. There could still be change as in your bubbling equilibrium theory.

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ExodusRex t1_j1rkfj8 wrote

You need two fixed points separate from each other in order to measure time. Since all things existed in the same location before the mass/energy erupted away from this fixed single point, time was irrelevant.

Time itself is not a construct but the language of mathematics is as we can say "two" or "dos" and mean the same thing. Aliens for instance on another planet could use math just fine to measure things but the would have different language to explain it. Maybe the communicate in with smell and produce specific smells to indicate math language.

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