“There was no time before big bang” – what does that mean?
In: Physics
I’ll give an ELI5 that doesn’t include the concept of ‘nothing’ being, because that’s often when comprehension stops.
Consider ‘time’ as the word we give to cause-effect. Something happens, therefore something happens, therefore something happens, and so on. There is no ‘time’ without chains of causes and effects, and the same is true for ‘space’. We exist in permanent states of things affecting things, and that’s what we call spacetime.
But, so goes the (very well founded) theory, that isn’t how the universe always worked! All current causes and effects point back towards a single event where the very concept of ‘cause and effect / spacetime’ began.
We don’t know what ‘was’ before that. Whatever it was, it wasn’t based on cause and effect, and being fundamentally tethered to this state, it’s not likely we’ll ever be equipped to understand.
Tldr: Time is a word we use to describe the constantly changing state of everything, but this state has a clear ‘beginning’, ‘before’ which we lack the tools/minds to describe things.
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