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skebu_official t1_j1qqyv6 wrote

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

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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