If the universe is "aged"...what was here before it?

Question

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20070511/sc_space/ancientstarnearlyasoldastheuniverse

I just dont beleive any of this. Its laughable.

Why couild they answer it? If they can "date" the univers ( laughable ) then surely , they can theorize what was here before based on the "age" of our universe. If not...how could they date it?

When they date layers of the earth, they are basing it off layers above and below the layer they are dating.

I just think its all a crock.

The key word to you statement is "as WE know it" which has absolutley no way of knowing to be accurate or not.

It is no different than people 2,000 years ago making the statement "as we know it" the Earth is flat.

I guess what bothers me the most about these "news stories" is they pass it off for fact, in stead of theory, which is what clearly it is, and a very weak one at that.

Oh boy. No, I dont need "proof" to disprove someone else's "theory".

Time is relative to us, as you indicated, over a span of time. Example, a year is defined as:

The period of time during which Earth completes a single revolution around the sun, consisting of 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes, and 12 seconds of mean solar time. In the Gregorian calendar the year begins on January 1 and ends on December 31 and is divided into 12 months, 52 weeks, and 365 or 366 days. Also called calendar year .

So, the minute, hour, second, week, month, etc is all broke down from the year.

A "year" is different on each seperate planet you are on, or any body of mass. It is simply a measurement of time it takes for Earth to circle the sun. So, Im only assuming they are referring to earth years.

So, to ask did time exist before our universe is a moot point. The answer is easy- no. Without Earth there would be no basis to measure time, by its own definition.

Again, that is fine to talk and discuss these "THEORIES", but these news articles are trying to pass them for fact.

Answer 1

I can give you two answers. The first answer is my own personal theory. The second answer is from something I learned from a science documentary on TV soon after I had created my own theory.

The First Answer:
1) Think of space as being divided into two sections. The first section is white space. White space is a space that has an unlimited and an infinite amount of material that goes on forever. (So with in white space, with there being an unlimited and an infinite amount of material that goes on forever that also means that the concept of time is irrelevant.) The second section is black space. Black space is a space that is infinitely empty forever and ever. Now two things could have happened. The first thing that could have happened is that a particle from white space had been introduce into black space and at that point the that one particle had exploded into the BIG BANG which had occurred around 13 to 15 billion years ago. The second thing that could have happened is that white space could have introduced a leakage into black space thus creating not only the BIG BANG but also creating all of the particles in our universe that had followed immediately after the BIG BANG. At the point that any amount of white space enters into black space is the same point that we begin to measure the age of our universe.

The Second Answer:
2) The second answer is that our universe is one of many universes that have come and gone and that have came and went. For example think of a black hole. A black hole is an object with a gravitational field so powerful that a huge region of space becomes completely engulfed into the black hole. No matter or radiation (including light) that has entered its region can ever escape it. Now the inverse and the opposite end of a black hole is where everything is funneled out. Now when this happens it can be called a white hole. A lot of scientist now believe that the BIG BANG of our universe had been created by the process of a white hole 13 to 15 billion years ago. The funneling between a black hole and a white hole is like an umbilical cord. One theory is that there are a lot of universes, and each universe is trapped inside something like a bubble, and the bubbles are connected through an umbilical cord or through a worm hole. At the point that any amount of material from a black hole exit itself out as a white hole is the same point that we begin to measure the age of our universe.

Answer 2

Before the universe came into existence there was nothing.
We know the universe is here to-day so it must have started.
The nothing had a potential and the potential had to be finite or it couldn't have started.
The universe began as a single space-time pulse of minimum duration.
The pulse continued expanding evolving into the universe we see and experience to-day.
WE can estimate the time from the beginning to to-day because of what we know about the age of the earth and the cycle of massive stars.
The universe may be 13 billion light years in diameter but it's age could be much greater.

Answer 3

Why would you pose a question that just expresses your own ignorance. Just because you don't understand an argument doesn't mean it isn't true. I suppose people like you were around when scientists said the Earth was round, you probably would have laughed and told them they could never make such a claim for such a huge thing like the Earth. The "age" of the universe is defined as the time elapsed since the big bang. This is known very well and through a variety of means each of which supports each other. As for what was there before the big bang, well that is just philosophy and can be debated forever. Just because you don't understand something doesn't prove it incorrect.

Answer 4

HA...HA.

Let me get this straight. The Universe, as we know it, began some time about 13 Billion years ago. And, you are asking human beings (with a life span of 100 years or less, each) what was in existance before everything "BEGAN" ???

Whom do you possibly imagine might be here to tell us that?

A similar impossible question might be, "What will happen after the end of EVERYTHING?" I suppose someone will come forward with an answer to that question also. We have all kinds of experts running around these days...

Answer 5

Let me just start by saying that you are entitled to your own opinion, but if you don’t believe on something, and you have the proof, then you must submit your own proof to justify your point of view. Otherwise, is just that, your opinion, and will not be valid until you prove it.

We have proof for everything that article describes. We do not know everything about the universe, and we might never know it, but we are humans, and we have always been inspired and motivated by discoveries and the urge to learn new things and why things are the way they are.

As per our own space-time, we calculate that the universe is about 13 to 15 billion years old. We don’t know if is correct, but is an estimate. We might be wrong. On the other hand, if we were living in another planet, in a star that rotates way faster, lets say half the speed of light, then things would be different. Because of relativity, we now know that time is affected by speed. The faster you go, the faster time will go for anything that is not moving with you. So if we were rotating that fast, time around us would go faster, so for our own perspective, the universe would be way younger. Maybe a couple of billion of years old only (big different).

In case you don’t believe on Relativity, it has been proven already. Clocks on satellites and the space station have to be adjusted to compensate the speed. Those object are traveling faster than us, so their time slows down (to them, out time is faster).

About your question, you want to know what was here before the universe itswlf. Well, that is the same question we all ask every day. What the hell was here before, was it empty, was “it” actually it? Did time exist before? (some expert have proven partially that time did not exist prior to our universe)…. Etc, etc.

I do have one more thing to add. You said “I just dont beleive any of this. Its laughable”. Well, as I said before, you have the right to have your own opinion. If you wish to teach that opinion, you must prove it, and you don’t have proof, you don’t have anything that can proof that those theories are wrong, but the scientific community have partial proof for most of those.

I am saying this to remind you of what has happened before in human history. We used to burn to death those who would try to explain the unexplainable, we would hunt and kill anybody who would try to give a scientific explanation for “divine” events. And sad, your comments remind me of those times. Before you say something like that, why don’t you do a little research and understand, or at least try to understand our discoveries? We are where we are because we managed to get out of the dark ages. Otherwise, your doctor would be trying to cure you with voodoo, and we would still be praying for the god of fire, the gods that shine every night (stars), and for the god of lightning and thunder.

Think about it, you and anybody that don’t believe our own discoveries, and instead of just saying “I don’t believe it”, why don’t you look for the reasons you have, and prove it? You will be then helping human kind, otherwise, you are not helping at all.





This is to answer your comment that was directed to me:

Obviously, you have no clue what relativity is. Time IS NOT dependable of us humans, or earth, or a year, or seconds, or nothing. Time is just time. You measure it as you want. In fact, you can come up with a new measurement whenever you want, and will be valid as long it counts time.

Relativity is much more complex than what you obviously think. On my example before, I was just explaining how time changes as speed changes. I will put it again with a simple example:

Lets assume you can travel in your car very fast, not just 60 MPH, but very fast, like 50,000 MPS (miles per second, not hour!). This speed start getting closer to the speed of light, so the effect will be very noticeable.

Once you jump in your car, and reach that crazy speed, you will be going much faster than lets say your friend that is in his house. For you, each second in your clock will still be the same, but if you were able to look at your friend, you will see him moving very fast (like a fast forward movie) and his clock will be going very fast too.

On the other hand, your friend, is still the same, his clock ticks the same and nothing has changed, but if he was able to see you in your car, he would see you like in slow motion. Each tick of your watch takes forever to happen. That is relativity in a very simple example. Time is relative to the speed of two objects.

You are thinking that time is relative to a planet as it goes around the star. That is a completely different thing. That is not relativity, not the theory that we are talking about. You must measure time first, no matter where you are. The best way is to use an atomic clock, that uses atoms as the point of measurement. Make it a unit, seconds, or whatever you want to call it, and apply it all over the universe, not just Earth.

Now, going back to my original answer, I put a very simple example that we all should consider: for us here on Earth, the Universe is about 13 to 15 billion years old. But if we could go to another planet that is in a star that orbits very fast in the center of the galaxy for example (around a black hole), and you try to determine the age of the Universe, you will get a different result. Why? Because you are not traveling faster, so time has changed. The universe would be much younger, but this is always applied to the time that our clock says when we are in that planet.

Move to another planet again that is traveling slower than our system (the sun), and you might get an older Universe, maybe over 30 billion years old. It is relative to the speed we travel. And the worse part is that we can not determine an absolute time or age of the universe as again, it is relative.

Beside relativity, I also want to point out that it seems you don’t understand how we know how old the universe is. We base our assumptions (yes, they are assumptions, nobody has a final answer) in the fact that we know what speed the light travels, and we know how it behaves, depending on the object it was reflected or generated from. Just by looking at the spectrum, we can determine what element we are looking at. It is not 100% accurate, but is a start, and again, is proven.

I understand you are not happy with the way they present those articles. I agree, sometimes they talk like they know what they are talking about. The truth is, and this we can confirm it, agree 100% and bet our life on it, that WE KNOW NOTHING. We have just started to understand some things in this universe, and we have no clue if we are on the right path or not either.

I give you a friendly advise though, as for what I can see (I might be wrong), you don’t really understand very well the theories and some fact that we already have. This is not material for everybody, so don’t bother too much questioning it. as of today, we don’t really care or depend of the fact that the universe is 13 billion years old, or that a supernova is happening 1 million light years away. It doesn’t affect our life, so is irrelevant. Don’t take it too serious, in any case, instead of complaining about a bunch of crazy scientific guys trying to understand the universe, complain about something you care more, like the government, the war in Iraq, etc, etc.

If you wish to learn more about our Universe (at least, what we think we know), watch the Science Channel, or read some books, or watch Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, that last one is a very simple and good way to lear a little bit about ourselves and our discoveries.

Answer 6

My mom and dad and before them it was my granny and paw. and so on.