lucifer_sam

I've formed hypotheses in regards to the origin of the universe, more specifically the origin of time, but I dunno if I'd be able to convey them properly...

My basic premise is there is no such thing as time, or at least time as a dimension which could be considered disparate from spatial dimensions. In layman's terms, the only way we've ever been able to prove the existence of time is to say that things happen. And indeed, we've only ever measured time by the passage of one event to the next, regardless of whether that event is the revolution of the Earth or the infinitesimal switching of atomic polarities of a Cesium atom.

Imagine all of the events of the universe, spread out before you like an enormous film strip: from the singularity event to whatever annihilation awaits us all at the end of days. You can see that despite the immense complexity of it all, time viewed in this manner is simply another spatial dimension demarcating the progress of the universe's unraveling.

One of the implications of this hypothesis is to nullify the existence of a supposed "great crunch," because time becomes inextricably tied to the expansion of the universe, and once that reaches its apex, well, time no longer exists. The behavior of the universe -- its purported expansion and inflation -- would be governed by higher-order mathematics of which I don't have the capacity to deduct.

I will say that regardless of whether any of these assumptions are correct, astrophysics remains one of the truly sketchy sciences; I strongly doubt even the most cogent astrophysicist has a clue as to what really happened in the beginning. But then again, science has never been about getting it right, only getting it less wrong.

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Guybrush

You might find this interesting .. According to Einstein, things that move very fast move slower through time. His theories are consistent with our observations and for example satellites which travel around the earth at orbit at high speed are affected by this so much that this effect has to be corrected for when syncing their clocks to clocks close to the earth's surface.

Also, the general predicted scenario for our universe does not include a big crunch. Observations have indicated that such a scenario will never take place and that was one of the important observations that kickstarted the whole anti-matter thing.

I don't necessarily believe that our universe is infinite, but how can you say it isn't?

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Something Completely Different

lucifer_sam

Yeah, time dilation is part of the whole relativity thing -- I had a university class on relativity and quantum mechanics a few years ago. And it isn't that fast moving objects move slower through time (there is no "zero" reference point in time), it's that from a stationary perspective, they appear to be.

Relativity (more specifically, velocity dilation) was responsible for the explanation of red shift phenomena, allowing astronomers to verify that the universe is indeed expanding (and therefore, NOT infinite).

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