Big Bang Question

[Crow]

Can somebody give me a no-nonsense explanation of what was around before the big bang occurred? I have been researching this on the internet a bit, but most of things I have found either don't really mention it, don't explain why the thing spontaneously occurred (out of nothing, apparently?), or are too jargon-heavy for me to understand.

So, anybody out there want to explain this for me?

[PirateMonk]

To my extremely limited understanding, there was a zero-dimensional singularity which did not function under reality as we know it.

[Emperor Ing]

Here are the theories I know, I can put 'em in Laymans terms

1) Divine intervention

2) Imploded universe from a LOOOOONG time ago made into an ultradense mass decided to asplode

3) Ultradense ball of matter that was there for a long time apparently decided to asplode, similar to Theory 2

4) The beginning of Time

[DraPrime]

Can somebody give me a no-nonsense explanation of what was around before the big bang occurred? I have been researching this on the internet a bit, but most of things I have found either don't really mention it, don't explain why the thing spontaneously occurred (out of nothing, apparently?), or are too jargon-heavy for me to understand.

So, anybody out there want to explain this for me?

Absolutely nothing was around. No, not just the vacuum that we have in space. That still has some particles in it. We had complete nothing, except for one tiny spot, in which all matter was condensed. All of it, into one tiny minuscule point.

As for what made the bang happen, I don't know.

[arguskos]

The leading theory is a tie between "zero-dimensional singularity containing all matter" and "nothing", as I recall hearing it.

[Crow]

The leading theory is a tie between "zero-dimensional singularity containing all matter" and "nothing", as I recall hearing it.

So, something was there, but not as we know it? So what was there before that? How do we know it was there? I just can't seem to grasp the concept, sorry.

I remember one of my teachers telling me that you can't create or destroy energy, only change it's state. Which makes the imploded universe from long ago exploding again interesting.

Is there a chance that everything that makes up the universe just *is*? Or that through some wierd time crap, we're actually living in the universe that imploded and then exploded again (making time more of a loop than a line)?

[thubby]

generally, when you start asking about the stuff that came before the stuff that gives most people headaches, you're just asking for brain asplosion.

[Perenelle]

generally, when you start asking about the stuff that came before the stuff that gives most people headaches, you're just asking for brain asplosion.

I agree. My brain should have exploded years ago from thinking about this kind of thing every night while trying to fall asleep. :smallsigh:

[Dienekes]

Generally there was the joke.

At first there was nothing, and then it EXPLODED!!

[Pyrian]

There probably wasn't a before.

I think of it like this: entropy always increases. Looking forward, this eventually results in the heat death of the universe. Looking backwards, this eventually (albeit rather sooner) results in the big bang. Those are the absolute endpoints of time as we experience it. Insofar as there is anything beyond, we can only guess at it.

[Zocelot]

Basically, what Dragonprime said. The universe, including the very boundaries of space (and time) were at a singularity.

To answer your actual question better (what happened before the big bang), the answer is nothing. The big bang was the start of the universe, and time is only a property of the universe, not a constant. A traditional model is that of a the Earth with start of the universe is like a pole. There is nowhere north of the north pole, and there is no time before the big bang.

[Tirian]

Can somebody give me a no-nonsense explanation of what was around before the big bang occurred?

There is no "no-nonsense" solution, because we have no capacity to observe what happened before. There are different models that propose different theories, but there'd be no way to know if any of them were correct.

My guess is that it somehow involved the words "Hold my beer and watch this!"

[Crow]

time is only a property of the universe, not a constant.

That actually helps a good amount. Is this a theory, or is this something that has been proven? Do you have any links where I can read further?

[Zocelot]

Sorry, double post. Hit back, and then thought I hadn't posted.

Edit (so that I'm useful):

Well, in science, nothing is ever proven, only disproven. But it is generally accepted to be likely by the majority of the scientific community.

If you want to find out more, I recommend you check out A Brief History of Time and/or The Universe in a Nutshell, both by Steven Hawking. There are other books by different authors too, but those are the ones I recommend. He goes into a bit more detail, and is much better written than my post. They're really easy to pick up and read without any background in science. If you're just interested in physics and want to find out more, I can give you some reading recommendations for that too. Unfortunately, the internet is not a good place for physics education (it's really really bad actually), so I can't give you any links.

[xPANCAKEx]

think of a black hole - everything into nothing
the big bang is the reverse of that

[Jokasti]

I heard a splinter theory that stated that the single existing particle (Before Big Bang) was a God particle. But I don't know what the official theory states.

[Mando Knight]

think of a black hole - everything into nothing

Not exactly what a black hole is... it's actually a hyper-dense mass that has a powerful enough gravity field that it distorts reality and has a superluminous escape velocity beyond its event horizon.

[bibliophile]

Not exactly what a black hole is... it's actually a hyper-dense mass that has a powerful enough gravity field that it distorts reality and has a superluminous escape velocity beyond its event horizon.

Or more precisely a black hole distorts space time. Even in a black hole, the Dune prequels are still horrible.

[Maximum Zersk]

Not exactly what a black hole is... it's actually a hyper-dense mass that has a powerful enough gravity field that it distorts reality and has a superluminous escape velocity beyond its event horizon.

So, wait, that means if we COULD access literal superluminous speeds, somebody could technically escape a black hole?

Oh, and before the universe? Dunno, maybe another universe?

[Optimystik]

http://pbfcomics.com/archive_b/PBF140-Photo_Album.jpg

Sheriff of Moddingham: Page stretching is bad. :smallannoyed:

[Maximum Zersk]

http://pbfcomics.com/archive_b/PBF140-Photo_Album.jpg

LMAO!

Wait a sec, where's Eris? Don't tell me he's too GOO to hang out with everyone else?

[Mando Knight]

So, wait, that means if we COULD access literal superluminous speeds, somebody could technically escape a black hole?

Depending on the black hole and the superluminous velocity, yes, according to the current idea as to what a black hole is. The problem is that our currently best model of the universe states that nothing can go that fast.

[Miklus]

The Big Bang makes no sense to me either. It does not really explain anything. But I guess the universe had to start somehow...

I think there is still a good chance that the Big Bang teory will fall apart. It is all based on the red shift, right? It is assumed that this redshift is caused by the doppler effect. As I understand it, there are some problems with that theory, such as:

Galaxies and quasars next to each other does not appear to have the same redshift.

The expansion of the universe seems to be accelerating. Why?

When the redshift is used as a measure of distance to the stars, there appears to be "walls" in space, that is, the ditribution of distances is not as expected.

It just seems to me that if this one assumsion turns out to be false or that there are other effects that cause red shift, then this whole house of cards could come down.

[Mystic Muse]

honestly asking what came before is just a surefire way to asplode your brain. This question cannot possibly be answered I don't think. although I've been wrong MANY times before and likely will be again.

[Maximum Zersk]

Meh, I don't know. Asking questions out of the ordinary is a good idea. Isn't that how we discovered a lot about what we know?

Reminds me of a question I asked my science teacher. We were learning about the EM Spectrum when I asked if there was anything higher frequency than Cosmic or Gamma, or anything lower frequency than Radio. He said that it was good to ask questions out of the box or whatever.

Who knows? Maybe we will discover what was before the big asplosion, but until then, we have only our imaginations.

[Mystic Muse]

yeah. Thinking outside the box does lead to cool inventions and stuff.

Asking how the world began or what was before it leads to brain asplosions.

[Mando Knight]

Reminds me of a question I asked my science teacher. We were learning about the EM Spectrum when I asked if there was anything higher frequency than Cosmic or Gamma, or anything lower frequency than Radio.

There most likely are, but not that we've found any use for yet.

[Devils_Advocate]

Optimystik, stick that image in a spoiler box so it doesn't stretch out the screen, FFS. :smallfurious: (Seriously. DO IT NOW. :smallmad:)

Crow, by "the Big Bang", do you mean the initial expansion of the universe or the singularity itself? The term seems to be used for both. I'm not sure which is formally correct.

But if what you're getting at is "What happened before the beginning of time?", the answer is "Nothing, for the same reason that nothing happens north of the North Pole." Does that clear things up?

I read another thread on this very subject (http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=119401) recently elsewhere. Read ye the words of FrankTrollman, and be enlightened!

On the other hand, if what you're really getting at is "Why does anything exist at all?", "Why are the laws of physics what they are?", etc., then you want to know why, out of all the logically possible universes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possible_world), ours is the actual universe.

But "the actual universe" just seems to be a shorthand for referring to the universe you happen to be in (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_realism). To Frodo and Aragorn, Middle Earth is the "real world". So asking why your universe is actual is asking why you're in it. The answer is that you are in it because you are one of its constituent parts. A universe without you in it would be is a different possible world, not this one, which of course is specified as being the one that has you in it.

So, if you think about it, it's pretty tautological that you're in the universe you're in. Wherever you go, there you are. So this whole "actual existence" thingy looks pretty inevitable in retrospect, amirite?

(Actually, I'd argue that "you" exist in multiple logically possible universes, in which case we might say that there are multiple actual universes, but that's a bit tangential to this discussion.)


Is there a chance that everything that makes up the universe just *is*?
As a general rule, nothing is ever just anything.

In this case: Besides existing, particles, oh, interact with each other. The individual bits of the universe don't only be and nothin' else, yo.

And from a top-down perspective, the universe as a whole can certainly be said to do more than just exist. It... develops. In all its glorious detail.

It's got people innit, for goodness' sake! Don't we count as notable? I mean, obviously I'm biased, but I think we're sort of impressive. If I had made the universe, and I looked back in on it later and saw that now it had sapient beings with minds and civilizations and digital watches, I'd be all, like, "Well, I certainly wasn't expecting that."


Is this a theory, or is this something that has been proven? Do you have any links where I can read further?
Heh heh! With all due respect, you don't quite understand how science works (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method), do you?

Y'see, the equations of Newtonian mechanics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newtonian_mechanics) allow one to make a lot of very accurate predictions. Scientists like being able to make accurate predictions -- you could say it's kinda their deal -- so they liked these equations.

But when it turned out that the equations of Einstein's Relativity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_relativity) allow for even accurater predictions under a broader range of conditions, scientists decided that they liked these new equations EVEN MOAR!

It would be a bit misleading to say that Newton's equations were "wrong". They gave extremely good approximations of how matter behaves under normal circumstances. It may be that Einstein's equations simply give even better approximations. It seems foolish to speculate before we even have a working Theory of Everything (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_everything). I can has unification of General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics plz?

But the Theory of Relativity is, to the best of my knowledge, confirmed by the available observational evidence. You can call that "proven" if you like, but keep in mind that by the same standard you would have once called Newtonian Mechanics "proven", when they turned out to be, while very close to right, not exactly right, i.e. wrong. A standard of proof by which false things can be "proven" is a bit philosophically problematic, since we intuitively understand proven claims to be a subset of true claims, don't we? This relates to (or maybe just is) the problem of induction (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction).

Saying that a theory is "proven", under common understanding of "proof", would predict that it won't be overturned by a newer, better theory. And when your job is to form accurate inductive generalizations, and you've observed that even very good theories tend to eventually get replaced with newer, better theories over time... well, you kinda wind up putting two and two together, hopefully. :smallsmile: So hopefully now you can understand why scientists don't like to deem theories "proven". "Confirmed", maybe. That has a much less absolute connotation to it.

So Relativity isn't "just" a theory any more than any scientific theory is. (Remember what I said earlier about "just"?)

[Nameless]

We don’t really know what was around before the Big Bang. And because there was no time, space, or anything at all, it’s difficult to try and explain or even conceive such an environment as we’ve never seen or been exposed to anything like it. Trying to explain what was before the Big Bang is like trying to explain to someone who’s been blind from birth what the colour red looks like.

[Pharaoh's Fist]

I think there is still a good chance that the Big Bang teory will fall apart. It is all based on the red shift, right? It is assumed that this redshift is caused by the dobbler effect. As I understand it, there are some problems with that teory, such as:


Doppler effect. Theory.

[Serpentine]

1. Any idea of what was "before" the Big Bang/our universe/time is purely speculation. You could say that the universe consisted of giant pink unicorns who all squished together into a teeny itty bitty Volkswagon to make the singularity that exploded, and you'd be about as potentially right as any other theory.

2. The Big Bang is one of the more problematic "big theories" of science. That is, it has some big issues, not really enough evidence and significant evidence against it, but at the moment it's the best one we have.

3. I've read somewhere that the human mind is literally incapable of comprehending the infinite (that includes infinitely small, as well as infinitely big). So don't feel too bad if you have trouble grasping this stuff.

4. I like the idea of an eternally expanding-contracting-expanding-contracting universe, but unfortunately I think the evidence is against it :smallfrown:

[Nameless]

I like the theory where there are billions upon billions of universes, and each time one dies and explodes, all the fragments create thousands of new ones. That way, we can one day create a contraption which will allow us to travel to these other universes when our universes time comes. O_e *twitch*

[Boo]

We don’t really know what was around before the Big Bang. And because there was no time, space, or anything at all, it’s difficult to try and explain or even conceive such an environment as we’ve never seen or been exposed to anything like it. Trying to explain what was before the Big Bang is like trying to explain to someone who’s been blind from birth what the colour red looks like.

The Big Bang was red! And now you know.

[golentan]

The Big Bang was red! And now you know.

From a certain perspective (anywhere within the known universe)... Yes. Actually.

From outside, umm... (head melts)

Dammit, now I have to buy another one. Do you know how expensive it is to find a realistic human prosthetic head? You apes with your uncanny valleys, and your iPods... Ooh. I should build an iPod into the new one. How awesome would that be? And I could color the track pad, leave it visible on the forehead, and call myself Dr. Manhattan. Then I'd have an excuse to go everywhere naked.

Thanks Boo, you've been helpful.

[Boo]

Well, I think it's more likely the intense kinetic energy released in the Big Bang's reactions would cause a white light... That's my thought, at least.

I recall several theories, the dominant one being that the Big Bang was caused by friction between moles of dense, highly reactive material. Probably radioactive. These reactions created every element we know today and more--think of it like Pangaea or Ur; broken into more and more pieces. Whether they'll meet again is up for debate since Science cannot prove that the universe could implode and cause a theory of the Big Bang to become a law of universes.

Oh, and you're welcome Dr. Halfhatten.

[Nameless]

The Big Bang was red! And now you know.

Before the Big Bang. :smalltongue:

[golentan]

Well, I think it's more likely the intense kinetic energy released in the Big Bang's reactions would cause a white light... That's my thought, at least.

Oh, and you're welcome Dr. Halfhatten.

Ah, but all the matter and energy was expanding, and moving away from other points within it. The entire universe was moving away from itself very rapidly. When something does that, you get a doppler effect, specifically: A red shift!

Which we can still see from all significant cosmic bodies (not counting local group stuff), telling us we're not going to be crushed into a singularity any time soon.

Still, I find it a little hurtful that evidently the whole of creation is that eager to get away from us.

[Serpentine]

I know what caused the Big Bang! An interstellar fart of cosmic proportions :smallbiggrin:

[Exachix]

The big bang theory states that the universe was created at a point and then expanded - while at this point being very hot and very dense. In this event alot of mass was created instantly, although not all of this mass was matter - there was a great deal of anti-matter also.

Oh yeah, beware, this is turning into massive amounts of speculation, all of which I've just come up with and may or may not be correct. And then I'll adress some points.

Now, to create all this mass, there had to be energy. Therefore, I theorise that before the big bang there was energy - AND ONLY energy. This energy, be it photons or something else, turned into alot of matter and anti matter.

That's the conclusion I have attained today. I would like to add that what happened piror to the big bang is irrellivant, as it probably will have had no impact whatsoever upon the nature of our universe.


I think there is still a good chance that the Big Bang theory will fall apart. It is all based on the red shift, right? It is assumed that this redshift is caused by the doppler effect. As I understand it, there are some problems with that theory, such as:

It is assumed, but it can be fairly well assummed that the doppler effect causes the red shift that tells us that the objects are receeding. (An object who's observed wavelength (that is, the observed wavelength of spectral lines from the object) is longer than the labratory wavelength is receeding)


Galaxies and quasars next to each other does not appear to have the same redshift.

They only appear next to each other in the sky, by definition, the quasars are a long distance away from the observers (us) and therefore will be receeding at different rates as defined by Hubble's Law.


The expansion of the universe seems to be accelerating. Why?

When the redshift is used as a measure of distance to the stars, there appears to be "walls" in space, that is, the ditribution of distances is not as expected.

Never heard of the latter point, although to use the redshift to define distances to an object, the hubble constant needs to be defined, as this has eluded us for some time, using hubble's law to determine distances is unreliable. Alternate methods (Stellar Parralax, Standard Candles (e.g. Type Ia Supernovae, Cephaid Variables)) are more reliable


If you want to find out more, I recommend you check out A Brief History of Time and/or The Universe in a Nutshell, both by Steven Hawking.
Ayup. A brief history of time can be hard for people to get their heads around it, but it is a very very good book.


Well, I think it's more likely the intense kinetic energy released in the Big Bang's reactions would cause a white light... That's my thought, at least.

The intense kinetic energy would not have released white light. What may have happened (SPECULATION) is that matter and anti matter collided and created energy in the form of photons; As an example;

e- + e+ = {Energy}
The energy here would have been released as photons, with energy equal to the total mass of the electron and the positron. These photons could have been of any part of the EM Spectrum.

Aaaand I'm done.

[Boo]

I think the main lesson here is that if one were to have lived to see the Big Bang, one would not have lived to see the Big Bang.

[SMEE]

For my simple, uneducated mind the big bang theory resumes to "there was nothing, and it exploded". :smallconfused:

I try to not dip further on that to not lose my mind.

[daggaz]

Doppler effect. Theory.

The quoted poster had written "dobbler effect" and "teory" and I immediately thought to myself, hmm, those sound like typical danish to english spelling errors. And lo and behold, that poster is danish.

Thanks tho Phaero's whatever for the profound insight into the actual theme of this thead. Amazing how quick people here are to pounce on eachother for simple spelling and grammatical errors, yet those same people so often have nothing positive to contribute to the actual conversation, in fact, in regards to the topic at hand they often contribute nothing at all.

As to the OP,.. you are on to the beginnings of one of the more profound methaphysical/theological thought experiments as to the limitations of science under its own primary tennants, and a possible "proof" of "God" as defined by those very tennants. Spontaneous creation is outlawed by science and the tennant of causality, and thus infinite chains and infinite loops are outlawed as well, and Big Bang Theory runs directly afoul of these limits. (oh hey and Im a physicist, not a theologist!) But thats about as much as we can go into that here before it hits real world religion and all that..

[Hazkali]

For my simple, uneducated mind the big bang theory resumes to "there was nothing, and it exploded". :smallconfused:

I try to not dip further on that to not lose my mind.

That is one of my pet peeves. If you're going to reduce the theory into a pithy one-liner, at least make it an accurate one. "There was everything, and then it expanded" is better. The evidence is fairly conclusive:


The shift in spectrum of luminous bodies indicates their velocity
Observed bodies are red-shifted compared to our predictions (based on our own sun), indicating that everything is generally moving away from us
The speed at which these bodies move away is proportional to their distance away from us.
This is what happens in an expansion (*not* an explosion)


As far as I am aware (I'm hardly on the cutting, Hawking-et-al edge of it) to speak of a "before" the big bang is metaphysics. No information can originate from before the big bang, and from reading A Brief History of Time I believe there is a theoretical reason that time itself has an origin at that point, so the idea of a time before isn't valid.

[I'm doing a Masters in Physics but not in Astronomy, so if I've gotten anything wrong I apologise]

[Grey Paladin]

While religious folks and many scholars would have you believe they hold the answer, the truth is that all we have are wild guesses. We do not know.

We know that it happened and many details about how it did so, but not why. We know that the universe will likely end in either a similar ball or universal entropy.

[Trog]

Can somebody give me a no-nonsense explanation of what was around before the big bang occurred?

Nobody knows.

No-nonsense enough for ya? :smalltongue:

[Pyrian]

2. The Big Bang is one of the more problematic "big theories" of science. That is, it has some big issues, not really enough evidence and significant evidence against it, but at the moment it's the best one we have.Yes and no. The moment of its inception right up to the moment the cosmic plasma cooled down enough to de-ionize, we can only guess, theorize, and extrapolate about. However, through the basic action of looking further back in time by looking farther back in time, we can see the explosion itself. It's red, alright, redder than red, redder even than infrared. It's called cosmic microwave background radiation. That radiation's existence was postulated before it was found, based on a model of the big bang.

Similarly, while redshift is widely used, it's not the only measure of either distance or age. Funny thing about astronomy is that there's more to see than you can ever look at. As such, many of our ideas regarding the expansion of the universe since the big bang are based on veritable mountains of evidence.


4. I like the idea of an eternally expanding-contracting-expanding-contracting universe, but unfortunately I think the evidence is against it :smallfrown:I'm always dubious about any theory which essentially throws away entropy. :smallwink: That being said, given that we don't really know why the universe is accelerating its expansion, it's hard to say for sure that it won't reverse.

[Miklus]

They only appear next to each other in the sky, by definition, the quasars are a long distance away from the observers (us) and therefore will be receeding at different rates as defined by Hubble's Law.

I read about this in some newsletter I get at work (while I was supposed to be working). It's called "Inherent Redshift". I can't find the original site, but here is a link to something similar:

http://www.electric-cosmos.org/arp.htm

As for the spelling, eh, what can I do!

[golentan]

The only thing that really bothers me about the Big Bang Theory is the Inflationary Epoch.

I mean, for no apparent reason, the universe's growth accelerated beyond the current speed of light. Then it slowed back down to a curve similar to previous and current growth models, again for no apparent reason.

Can someone wiser and more knowledgeable than I explain why this is necessary, rather than just having a greater age to the universe and maybe having superluminal expansion before observable events to break the event horizon?

[Pyrian]

EDIT: Inflationary theory is interesting. It was actually theorized before evidence of it was detected, which tends to strongly reinforce such ideas. I know it's not "for no reason" but I couldn't tell you what the reasons supposedly are. I've never understood them myself...


http://www.electric-cosmos.org/arp.htmThat pot looks a bit cracked.

[golentan]

That's what I thought. And it occurs before models can consistently describe what happened, but has been taught in every astrophysics course I ever took. It seems to be generally accepted, but as best I can tell it's because they don't want the headache of coming up with a new timeline.

Here's a link. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflationary_epoch)

Edit: Ah, you were talking to someone else. I know it's not "for no reason," but I've never gotten a satisfying reason, hence "no apparent reason."

[_Zoot_]

What was before the Big Bang?


A crap load of TNT :smalltongue:

[Maximum Zersk]

What was before the Big Bang?


A crap load of TNT :smalltongue:

Again, the big bang wasn't an explosion. I was an expansion.

Or the universe came from the nose of the great green Arkleseizure. :smallamused:

[Partof1]

3. I've read somewhere that the human mind is literally incapable of comprehending the infinite (that includes infinitely small, as well as infinitely big). So don't feel too bad if you have trouble grasping this stuff.



I just need to point out that I believe the opposite is true, here. Only in the mind can infinity be understood. It can not be spoken, written, or drawn, only thought.

[Serpentine]

Really? So you can comprehend existence that extends forward and back into forever? Something so miniscule that it barely exists? The number of atoms? A universe that never ends? If you are capable of bending your mind around eternity, you're much cleverer than me. There's a difference between understanding and comprehending.

It does seem to be a philosophical, as opposed to a scientific thing, which disappoints me, but it was claimed by Pfeffer and Kant. I can't find anyone else saying anything substantial one way or another.

[Pyrian]

I find it much easier to think of infinities as non-finite - entities that merely lack a particular bound that finite entities possess.

I do not think the mind can grasp an infinity it its ownness, such as thinking simultaneously of all the digits of pi - if it could, we could use our mind to process non-finite calculations. It's just a label in the mind, just like the word is on a page. It's associated with certain properties - like lack of a finite bound - but that's a pretty simple concept in itself, just with consequences that are difficult to grasp and impossible to enumerate.

[HotAndCold]

The thing about the concept of infinity is that it sounds kind of simple on paper. It just goes forever, right? But actually wrapping your head around how stupidly big that actually is is something else entirely. Understanding the concept of infinity is different than understanding infinity itself. Personally, I have enough trouble just understanding numbers that are merely stupidly large (http://irregularwebcomic.net/2317.html). I will readily admit that infinity is beyond me.

[Pyrian]

The part of infinity I constantly see people screw up is the fact that it simply isn't finite - there's no end, no bound. People are always trying to say, "and then after an infinite..." as if that weren't a direct contradiction in terms.

[infinitypanda]

The part of infinity I constantly see people screw up is the fact that it simply isn't finite - there's no end, no bound. People are always trying to say, "and then after an infinite..." as if that weren't a direct contradiction in terms.

I also see people trying to use infinity as a number. It's a limit.

[Partof1]

I also see people trying to use infinity as a number. It's a limit.

Or lack of limit, I suppose.

@Serp
I suppose I do mean "to understand the concept of infinity".

It can't be fully comprehended, but I can picture something infinite in my mind what can't be put on paper. I suppose this isn't exactly infinity, as I don't think about it for eternity, but somewhere in my mind, its there.

[Coatl Ruu]

If you think visualizing infinity is tough, try visualizing nothing. Not just empty space, because space is something.

Does your head hurt yet?

[Partof1]

If you think visualizing infinity is tough, try visualizing nothing. Not just empty space, because space is something.

Does your head hurt yet?

Yeah, I can't do that. The best I can get is a white field.

This is why explaining Pre-Creation/Bang/whatever is a little difficult.