Last century scientists thought that our universe had always existed, so its parts could transform but the whole was in a steady state. They felt, quite reasonably, that a whole universe expanding from a point was unlikely. But then in 1929, the astronomer Hubble discovered that all the stars and galaxies around us are speeding apart from a first event that occurred billions of years ago, and finding the cosmic afterglow of that event around us confirmed it. There had been what the press called a “big bang”.
This put physics in a quandary, as a universe that is all there is can’t just “begin”. Either something else made it, or it made itself, or it came from nothing. If something else made it, as parents make a child, then it isn’t all there is. If it made itself, it had to exist before its own creation, which is impossible. And that it came from nothing denies both physics and logic. That a complete system just began has no rational explanation.
Yet that our universe is both complete and began is oddly enough what most physicists believe today. Parmenides concluded that Nihil fit ex nihilo (From nothing, nothing comes) but physics now believes that from nothing everything came. Calling the initial nothing “something that fluctuates” (Atkins, 2011) doesn’t help because nothing can’t fluctuate. The first event couldn’t have been a “quantum fluctuation of the vacuum” because it also began space, so if matter just popped out of space, what did space pop out of? If the idea that our universe began from nothing is irrational, how is the creation story of science, that a point of nothing exploded into something, better than the one before?
The current reply to the question “What was there before the big bang?” is that before it there was no time, but defining away a question isn’t an answer. A universe that began had to start somehow, so it is valid to ask “How did it begin?” For if time just began for some reason at some moment, could it suddenly stop today, for the same reason? Some key questions are:
- How did matter begin, with no time or space for it to begin in?
- How did space begin, with no time for it to exist in?
- How did time begin, with no space for it to flow in?
That our physical universe made itself is impossible and that it came from nothing is inconceivable. In contrast, every virtual reality begins with a “big bang” that creates both its objects and its space and time. When Sim City boots up, nothing in that world began it, and before that event, the time and space of Sim City didn’t exist.
It follows that the big bang was just when our virtual universe booted up.