Aug 15 2012: It seems to me that the whole drama is much more temporally variable. We speak of the big band "happening" all at once, which, of course, begs the question of what came before. Then we try and break down what may have "happened" in the first units of time, which runs roughshod over our own simultaneous supposition that time, like space, was only just being created. How do you measure something with something that is yet nonexistent?
Time and space are somehow identical. You cannot have one without the other, and you cannot use one to measure the other.
Imagine instead that the whole process is ongoing. The bang is forever "happening". Time, along with space, is not so much expanding as accumulating.
If Einstein was on the mark in supposing that time slows down as we approach the speed of light, then we might conclude that time halts once the speed of light is reached. A photon traveling, naturally, at the speed of light would take "no time at all" to wander freely through the universe. In fact, it might roam playfully about CREATING the universe, outside of time as we know it, accumulating both space and time in its abandon. Then that photon might step into time at will to perceive and enjoy its own creation.
Just a playful little analogy ...but it helps me to break free of the philosophical conundrums with which science often leaves us.
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A comment on Conversation: If the universe is expanding - what is it expanding into?
Time and space are somehow identical. You cannot have one without the other, and you cannot use one to measure the other.
Imagine instead that the whole process is ongoing. The bang is forever "happening". Time, along with space, is not so much expanding as accumulating.
If Einstein was on the mark in supposing that time slows down as we approach the speed of light, then we might conclude that time halts once the speed of light is reached. A photon traveling, naturally, at the speed of light would take "no time at all" to wander freely through the universe. In fact, it might roam playfully about CREATING the universe, outside of time as we know it, accumulating both space and time in its abandon. Then that photon might step into time at will to perceive and enjoy its own creation.
Just a playful little analogy ...but it helps me to break free of the philosophical conundrums with which science often leaves us.