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crimeo t1_j4chogw wrote

Reply to comment by skofan in 87 newly-discovered galaxies, found using Webb space telescope, could be earliest known galaxies in the universe — the first indication that a lot of galaxies could have formed much earlier than previously thought by marketrent

So what if it had approaching-infinite density? Big Bang does not preclude infinite age. It could have just been increasingly dense going back FOREVER.

The only special thing that happened "at the big bang" that we have direct evidence of is "radiation started occurring". If radiation simply doesn't occur at higher densities than that, then that wouldn't necessarily be the beginning of matter/energy, merely the beginning of radiation

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skofan t1_j4cip9y wrote

yes, radiation began occuring, which means that the velocity needed to escape the gravity well fell below the speed of light, also known as C, so named because its the speed of causality.

radiation occuring is the beginning of causality in our universe, as time is the passing of events, it hardly makes sense to discuss a time before causality.

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crimeo t1_j4cj6wf wrote

I disagree, if radiation was occurring before but just not escaping a gravity well, then when space expanded, that radiation should still have been there hanging around, liberated by the expansion and still there for us to detect.

It seems to be that radiation did not get trapped but didn't happen at all to even be trapped or not. Like more along the lines of "the way subatomic physics works at very high densities just doesn't make sense for radiation to be a thing, but maybe a bunch of other stuff is"

> its the speed of causality.

Also how do you know this is the case anyway, at hyper intense densities that we've never observed and thus don't know the rules of? Or that the speed of light changes that high, or become unlimited, or that things just start to teleport as the main way stuff happens, or whatever

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skofan t1_j4cszeq wrote

unless you want to redefine the word time, and its meaning or move it to a philosophical discussion sub before continuing, i refuse to have this discussion.

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crimeo t1_j4cvhky wrote

I'm not redefining time at all, it indeed makes sense and I agree that it requires causality.

The problem is that you have no way to establish that causality was not going on before the big bang, because you don't know any of the laws of physics or what the speed of light was or if there even was a maximum speed of light or if movement had different rules in general, or anything else about back then. Nobody does. Because we have no observations of it.

"Assuming this series of things that I have zero basis to assume, there would be no causality, and time requires causality, so there was no time" is obviously not a sound argument. It's valid (syllogism) but not sound (the premises cannot be established as true)

> philosophy

Science extends to saying "I don't know" to things you have no data for.

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