When did time begin?

[xmaddness]

Hey all.... The other night in IRC we were having a discussion of when we believe time in our universe/cosmos etc... began. In todays theories we have come to understand that time must have had a beginning. Why? Well if time has just always exsisted and been infinit, then the universe would have come to a temperture equilibrium and the cosmos/universe would be the same temperture throughout. Obviously we are not all the same temperature... So.... When did it begin?

What do you guys think?

Try to give a good logical explanation of your thought..

x

[MrLinus]

Welp, apparently in this Month's Issue of Discover Magazine (April 2002) they have come to a conclusion:

http://www.discover.com/current_issue/index.html

http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_uni.html

[SarinMage]

time doesent exist, we made it up to define the distance between 2 points of existence.

[xmaddness]

Well I think that time has to exist. If it doesn't exist then that means that if i jump into my car to drive somewhere, then i will meet my past self, and future self there every time i get into the car. The time you may be thinking bout is our concept of hours days minutes etc... But the time i'm talking about is the grand "spacetime" that causes a natural progression through space and time. yesterday certainly isn't today... and today certainly isn't tommorow....

[xmaddness]

I'm going to have to look up that mag and see what it says

[SarinMage]

it does exist, but its not something that passes, as everyone thinks, (this is my personal opinion) Its more of a measurement of distance between 2 events during existence.

[xmaddness]

so in this thinking.. if I weren't moving, then time wouldn't exist. That means that one wouldn't age so long as he weren't moving?

[hot_ice]

time doesent exist, we made it up to define the distance between 2 points of existence.

I think I know what you mean, but does that mean that speed, length, weight, etc. all don't exist, cos we did make them up too.

- We made up time to be a measure of how long somthing takes to do something, or travel somewhere.
- We made up speed to measure how fast something is.
- We made up length to measure how far something spans.
- We made up weight to measure how heavy something is.
- etc.

Basically, all I'm saying is that I think it does exist, it's simply a measure of something, like the others things are (speed, weight, length).

Greg

[lord_darkside_x]

Hot ice is very correct with the fact that time does exist.... it is the passing of days and seasons... the name time (hours and minutes and such) is just the name we gave for the earth going around the sun in that sense. it is also a measurement for existance along a continuing line. this is true because of what xmaddness said

i will try to explain the beginning of time for both of the major theories of the beginning of the universe

now... assuming creation is correct. time began on the first day of creation... as we can see here...

Genesis 1:5 God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." And there was evening, and there was morning--the first day.

so there is creation and the beginning of time. that one is pretty simple.

now assuming the big bang is correct, (and bear with me, this one is less simple)
if there was nothing before the big bang, than the entire universe came from nothing. for that kind of spontaneous vacuum genesis to occur, it would take nearly INFINITE amounts of time...but, since nothing was there before the big bang, time is irrelevant, so we can assume that the big bang pretty much happened right away. thus time did not exist before the big bang.

also... if you use the assumption that time is no more then the earth going around the sun, then time existed when the earth did.... but that assumption can't be made. the assumption has to be made tat time existed once something existed, because once something existed there was a reason for a line of existance to be, thus keeping past and future apart...

[SarinMage]

yes it exists, but its nothing more than a measurement... not a "dimention" (i cnat spell) or somehting like that, (i get a lot of people arguing that to me.)