ramsncardsfan7 t1_j1e0y0q wrote on December 23, 2022 at 4:45 PM

Reply to comment by zoicyte in Can we truly know the age of the universe? by Geodad478

Why do I see experts saying the universe wasn’t actually a singularity at the time of the Big Bang?

zoicyte t1_j1e1yw1 wrote on December 23, 2022 at 4:52 PM

Well strictly speaking a singularity is just a breakdown in the known laws of physics. something has to be down their, we just don’t know really what, or how it behaves.

Why did expansion start? Where did it all come from? What came “before”, to the extent that statement even has any meaning? These questions are at the very bleeding edge of theoretical physics and aren’t really testable yet.

[deleted] t1_j1e2uq7 wrote on December 23, 2022 at 4:58 PM

I wonder whether they ever will be. Our ability to peer back in time relies entirely on what we can see and the radiation we can capture and analyze. Looking back far enough, it all becomes opaque because "first light" hadn't happened yet. Perhaps some new tech will throw the doors open some day, but if we cannot see past a certain point, and that point happened after the "bang," then we will never know what came before the opaqueness.

For that reason, I don't know for sure that the singularity has any merit. If we run the clock backwards we get a singularity, but since we can't see past a certain point, we don't actually know whether singularity is a real concept.

zoicyte t1_j1e3hmo wrote on December 23, 2022 at 5:02 PM

It’s not just about looking “out there”, a lot of the early-universe physics are probed in high energy particle colliders. It’s mostly about understanding quantum effects at that point.