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What is the scariest/creepiest theory you know about?
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this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2024
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"The cosmos is not infinite, has a beginning and an end"
The fact that everyone around me seems to be persuaded that there is a beginning in time is unnerving to me. In my head, cosmos has always been infinite, and will always be infinite. Even if nothing is there, it will still exist.
The idea that anything before the big bang is considered to not exist has so many things wrong with it that I struggle to internalize it. If matter cannot be made or destroyed, that means that there will always be matter in one form or another.
As far as I understand it, time as we know it didn't exist before the big bang, so by definition nothing existed before time. I don't really know how that works out either, I just go with what the fancy science people say
Think of "before the big bang" like "South of the South Pole." It just isn't a thing, you're at the furthest point and it doesn't go further.
And I don't think there is a true "end" to the universe, as we understand it currently there's just an expansion forever and at some point all the individual particles rip apart and spread out and nothing could possibly survive in such a situation so it counts as an "end" for all intents and purposes for us, but time itself is infinite.
IIRC the math actually can check out for an always-existing universe (instead of a big bang) but it doesn't really make sense because you still then have to explain the giant sudden expansion.
I feel like I could talk about this for years, but I got video games to play. The short answer is I don't feel like I have to know what caused the matter to all be at the same place and then expand to be satisfied with an infinite universe of finite matter. I wish my brain could understand how time as we know it started with the big Bang, but I think I'm slightly too dumb for that.
If nothing is there then how can you say something exists?
Because the universe is expanding. If it were finite it wouldn't be able to expand. Emptiness is still "something". If we were "at the edge of the universe", we could still go further from the center, there would just be nothing for as far as we can perceive, maybe even infinitely, but then, we would be there. That makes it "a place".
If it's nothing, how can it be something?
It's potential. Matter can go there. Saying there is an end to the universe means that at some point, there is no possible expansion. It also means we are completely ignoring the tiniest infinitly small chance that our big bang wasn't the only one. If you zoom out far enough, is there really zero chance that this "known universe" is actually just part of a greater whole?
imagining the universe as a contained thing with hard limits is what gives me the creep