A clock from nothing

Umonsarmon

Greetings all
This is a post on an idea I've had for awhile as to how time could exist before the big bang. Now the nearest that I can imagine to a state of pure nothingness is a state of pure homogeneity, in other words
a sort of blank canvass that infinite in scope and size. The question is how can change exist in such a state without violating the homogeneous state. Well a homogeneous state can change color and still be homogeneous.If the homogeneous state can change color then it is possible to create a clock even though there is no geometry or matter. If the homogeneous state fluctuated between black and white for example then you could create a clock based purely on that even though there are technically no moving parts and no geometry. It would be a clock that would exist where there was as near to nothing as one could speculate. Furthermore if you had three colors that it fluctuated between then you could create a binary language with nothing more than color as your alphabet so to speak. With a language you can perform computation of some form and so on. This means you could potentially compute the universe before it appeared via nothing more than a homogeneous state that existed prior to it and so on.

Streetlight

Color is (for the relevant purposes here) a frequency of light. You're going to need at least some geometry (2 dimensions, at a minimum), and a time vector. Frequency = periodicy (i.e. a time period).

Umonsarmon

Your defining laws that exist after the big bang to define colour. All I'm saying is that if the homogeneous state can change color by some means regardless of what that is then you can create a clock.The only thing I speculate is that the homogeneous state can spontaneously change color. That's all it needs.from there.

Streetlight

Yes. If you disregard physics, anything is possible.

Umonsarmon

So what were the physics before the big bang? I'm curious, I thought they popped into existence afterwards

Wayfarer

↪Umonsarmon

What's north of the north pole?

Umonsarmon

Directions on a compass are not quite the analogy you need.Its not the same thing

Streetlight

↪Umonsarmon

Nobody knows. But this doesn't give you carte blanche to make things up. I could say instead that there were in fact homogenous ducks and their quacking (which made no sound) allowed for 'calculations', and if you tell me that either homogenous ducks and soundless quacking make no sense then I'm going to tell you that you're just relying on the laws of post-big bang physics and too bad for you.

Although frankly aionic ducks are just alot cooler as a speculative cosmogony.

Umonsarmon

I thought the whole enterprise of science was to have a curious mind. Furthermore the only leap I'm asking you to make is that a homogeneous state can change colour. That's a reality that is a lot simpler than this one..I'm not sure what you think I'm making up, I'm postulating a theory. Also you can create a clock and a form of language using this. I thought that was obvious but I can explain it more simply if you want.

Streetlight

Curious minds are not a licence to baseless fiction.

Umonsarmon

Whats baseless about it? Is there something you don't understand about how clocks work and how easy it would be to create one using color.

Streetlight

I wonder if aionic ducks would taste good in a salad...

Umonsarmon

Its very easy you know. All the background would have to cycle its colours and hence time exists where there is nothing

Daniel

↪Umonsarmon

and where is this color coming from?

Umonsarmon

Ahh that is a good question and one I have not worked out the answer too. My assumption was that the homogeneous state has only 1 degree of freedom so to speak which is to change color.That is the assumption that I start with. As for the how and the why I'm not sure. All I'm saying is that if it can happen then my argument stands.

god must be atheist

There is another argument that shows that time existed before the big bang.

Assuming that there was no change and no movement before the big bang proves that time was immesurable. But it does not prove that time did not exist.

"What was the time five minutes before the big bang? It was five minutes to big bang." Just because nobody could measure it, because there was nobody to measure it, and nothing to meausre it with, and nothing to measure it by, time still existed very happily, so to speak.

god must be atheist

A better unanswerable question, at least I think so, is to ask, what prompted god to create the world WHEN he created it?

obviously there were changes that precipitated the creation. Creation does not just spontaneously happen; it is done when one is prompted to do it.

So there was something that prompted god to create the world when he did, as he had had an INFINITE time of the past when he never even budged.

But if something nudged god to create the world, then something existed, that was not stagnant.

What was that thing?

ovdtogt

↪god must be atheist

.We wish to understand God.

It is only once we have become God that will we understand God

SophistiCat

This is a post on an idea I've had for awhile as to how time could exist before the big bang. Now the nearest that I can imagine to a state of pure nothingness is a state of pure homogeneity — Umonsarmon

That's a far cry from "nothing," especially when you add some sort of periodic state change, as you do further on. And it isn't anything that any cosmological theories postulate or even speculate. As a purely fictional scenario though, sure, this (with a periodic state change of some kind) would constitute a physical clock. But it wouldn't be time out of "nothing" - it would be time out of a structure that is just complex enough to support something like time.

Umonsarmon

Sure its not an exact description of "nothing" in the absolute sense but if there was nothing in the beginning then I don't think we would be having this conversation as there would be nothing to cause the big bang in the truest sense. This is about as simple a structure as I think you can get to besides a reality that would be both homogeneous in both space and time in which case absolutely nothing would happen at all.

ovdtogt

↪Umonsarmon

As matter and anti matter can emerge in a quantum fluctuation out of the void so time may emerging from timelessness. Time and anti time emerging simultaneously.

christian2017

↪Umonsarmon

When something changes color there are moving parts. Colors are produced by different wavelengths of light. Visible light is above Infrared and below Ultra Violet.

ovdtogt

↪christian2017

As matter and anti matter can emerge in a quantum fluctuation out of the void so time may emerging from timelessness. Time and anti time emerging simultaneously.

Gregory

Isn't anti time timelessness

ovdtogt

Isn't anti time timelessness — Gregory

No. Anti-mass is not mass-less. A positron exists as much as a electron. Light and Anti-light have the same properties merely their frequencies differ half a wavelength. Time and anti-time have the same frequency but have a half wavelength shift in relation to each other. As water waves which cancel each other out. One was a sinus and the other as co-sinus as they meet.

Gregory

I see all over the internet people saying something is reduced to nothing by way of contraries, and that the universe arose by the backwards process of this. Yet 3 minus 3 equals zero but you can't get 3 out of zero. You can't just reverse equations any way you like

ovdtogt

Yet 3 minus 3 equals zero but you can't get 3 out of zero. You can't just reverse equations any way you like — Gregory

There is no arrow of time in physics. So yes it goes both ways. If you can add minus 3 to 3 giving you zero you can go from zero to 3 and minus 3. How to keep 3 and minus 3 from joining up again is the problem.

Devans99

We can logically deduce there must have been a ‘time’ when time cannot have existed:

1. There must have been a first event within time. The first event causes the 2nd and so on. If there was no first event, there is no second event, no third and therefore by induction, the universe does not exist.
2. What caused the first event? There cannot be an empty stretch of infinite time before the first event else there is nothing to cause the first event.
3. The first event must therefore be caused / be co-incidental with the start of time. There is no other possibility.

christian2017

↪ovdtogt

Time is measured by the movement of objects or particles. If no particles or ligh waves are moving then there is no time.

Gregory

An eternal descending series of dominoe like effects feels intellectually unsastifying . But just because you don't like it, that don't make it false, as rationality rules says

Devans99

An eternal descending series of dominoe like effects feels intellectually unsastifying . But just because you don't like it, that don't make it false, as rationality rules says — Gregory

If the series of dominos is eternal, it has no first member (if it had a first member, it would have a start, so not be eternal). If it has no first member then there is nothing to cause the rest of the dominos to topple, so an eternal series of toppling dominos is a logical impossibility.

A clock from nothing

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