In my humble opinion, the modern western mindset is losing rationality like happened with religious before. it was easy to me elaborating a complete theory of universe's origins while keeping my feet on the ground. Where else happens something emerging from extreme simplicity (singularity), by an event like a big bang, which grows, etc.? Embryogenesis. It obeys all requirements. So, why looking for ghosts in the sky? Where is Occam's razor? Physicists need to understand that they study only the mechanistic skeleton of bodies, but, like us, it can not explain origins, because the skeleton is created by meat, genetic code, etc. So, please, call the Biologists to solve this question... maybe they can do something better than I did.

What happens if Time = Space in motion?

That's basically all it is, just a way of defining change.

The matrix of time only exists in memory which forms itself relentlessly into the ego. I woke up one day and knew that, except as a tool for measuring, it does not exist. From that moment on I was free of it.

What if our universe is like an exploding firecracker in a larger universe we can't see because we are infinitessimally small in that universe and we humans are beings that chemically evolved on one of the bits like microscopic mites in our world? We would be flying apart like the bits on an exploding firecracker and in the end it appears the "firecracker" would reach an end of the explosion and "fall back to the ground" so to speak in the larger unseen universe where the firecracker was set off.

People keep missing the point and not asking the real question. It's not "what happened before the big bang?", that we should be asking, because that question always ends up with people arguing about the concept of time. Really we should be asking, "where did the big bang, multi-verse, (insert theory here), come from? Ultimately, when you go back far enough, it all had to come from something that created it, which is why you will NEVER be able to prove creationist wrong or make them not exist. Sorry.

You should be.

There is always the eminently scientific answer to the question of where the universe came from: "I don't know". No religionist knows either. There is no way to adjudicate between creation myths across religions or cultures. The problem is that people prefer certainty over truth. That is one reason creationists can never be proven wrong.

Another issue is that people seem to prefer agency-based explanations. A complex object cannot create itself, they feel. There is some deep impulse to keep seeking explanations, to find some kind of actor, doer, subject or agent that made the thing.

That is the "stopping rule" of religionists. Once you find an agent whose attributes are up to the task of creating everything, you are done explaining and have no further need to press the question.

They are rarely perturbed by the fact that their explanation is JUST as vulnerable to the "where did X come from" question, as is the scientific view. Where did the (character[s] in your religious origin myth) come from? At some point, those mythological stories run dry too.

The religionist view in no way overcomes that question of origins. It just provides ersatz certainty, which feels good. The scientific view forces us to maintain awareness of our lack of knowledge, to sit with our uncertainty, which is uncomfortable.

yes,... but there is always the eminently ( from humans and not from Science) religious answer to the question of how this world began, or if there was a beginning at all: Big Bang! Are you feeling uncomfortable now?

With the expansion of the Universe changing quite a bit (Expansion, Inflation, back to normal, speeded up expansion, etc), why not ad one more change and suppose it eventually slows way down again so we collapse in the very distant future. IE, Big Bounce (at the Plank size).

Although I still like the constant inflationary Multiverse which continuously generates new Universes (like ours) breaking off.

In any case, we need a new vocabulary for talking about "Time" "before" BB. IE, a way to reference what happens outside in our local time. It needs to be flexible enough to cover the many alternatives outside our current Universe. For example, if there is a frothing Multiverse "before" our Big Bang (BB), we need a way to consider those events and mechanisms. The "time" may actually be the same (events in order with cause and effect) but not connected to our "Time".

Time does exist, as proven by numerous movies and stories involving time-travel. Pay attention!

I can't understand what the hell these people think about time. To me, time is merely a human concept, a human creation for measuring and ordering events in a scale, like the metric. It can not be inserted in math equations, since it does not exists in reality.

Loved that! That's how I know that Aliens and Bigfoot exist along with Trump supporters.

Please, if nothing else, see the COMMON SENSE fact that time does not exist ever!
The Universe in whatever form it is, is a timeless present with a whole lot of endless movement. The Universe in whatever form has no cause! Time is a measurement that is all. It is a human tool as is math and the simple screw driver. The use of time in physics and math as symbol to measure and predict the movement of energy and matter is a valid tool. But that is all! It can be also considered as the Emperor's new clothes when taken beyond that point. Please feel free to comment or argue the point.

Time is also one of the space-time dimensions. It is an actual dimension just like a distance. You can convert time into distance. Einstein showed us how. 186Km = second. Where ever you are or how fast you are going.

Time exists because without it there would be no cause and effect. Everything would happen at the same "time". I agree that the method of measuring time is a human construct, but I suggest the concept of time is expressed in one of the dimensions of String Theory.

How can you state that without time there would be no cause and effect? I suggest you are confusing the measuring device - time with actual movement.The map is never the territory. The string theory is only a theory no matter how close to the actuality it would point to. However the timeless present is the only fact. It is the eternal ground state.
Everything we do and think occurs in the present. Do you ever remember not being in the present? Your own words are that time is only a concept. When I eat, it is not a concept it is activity in the present. Now I can use that tool of measurement - time as memory to measure how long it takes me to eat a Big Mac.
It is true that this movement has a direction, according to the The H-theorem. It is used to state that time has an arrow. But so what? Its only showing direction of movement of energy which may also be relative depending on local gravity conditions. A river also has direction in its movement. The use of time as a chronological measurement is a biological necessity. Otherwise how would we know when to plant crops or when to go to work in the morning? The future is only a concept as is the past. Both are mages as tools of memory.

The popular idea of "everything would happen at once if time did not exist does not make sense. One might want to ask rather, What would happen if all actual movement stopped rather than the measuring device. That answer is more obvious. However it is unlike to happen.
I thank you for bearing with this.

I stand by my remarks. Length is also a concept expressed as a dimension in String Theory, as are width and height. One view of all of the 11 suggested dimensions in our universe are discussed in this YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/wat...

There is time because there is movement. Its because there are stars and planets moving around those stars in an orderly fashion...hence the concept of time... Time is a marker to indicate where we are going on life's journey...and how much is left of it... Without life, or someone to mark the seasons, there then would be no time...

You miss the point. Time in actuality is only a TOOL to measure action movement. It is not real anymore than than the map is the actual territory. I ask you to put aside your condition and the authority it stems from and look again.

Are you God? Your name suggests it. It used to be a label of insanity to believe that way... Yes, I believe God created the universe and that is true... And we're all human. We have a limited amount of time in this world to love Him and our neighbors as ourselves and also know his Son too as the Bible teaches...

Let's try "a new picture of the Big Bang." Yes, Einstein's Theory of General Relativity breaks down at a singularity like the Big Bang, and quantum mechanics doesn't do any better. But String Theory, which provides answers to problems in both General Relativity and quantum mechanics, may also explain our famous Big Bang. While we're at it, ever wonder where all this matter and energy we have in our universe came from in the first place? One view to all of this is suggested and described in my YouTube https://www.youtube.com/wat...

What has become of physics!
It used to be an empirical science based on observation and experiment. Today we have mathematicians debating physics derived from their "Theory of Ideas", which is not different from Plato's philosophy.
Mathematics is not physics. Let's explain what we can see, not philosophize about the invisible!

"Mathematics is not physics." It's certainly a huge part of physics. "Let's explain what we can see," isn't that what they're trying to do? By positing various theories, and using supercomputers to crunch the numbers, we're able to see if the results match our observations. Remember, atomic theory has been refined since the Greeks invented it, but we had no way of verifying it until recently. Still, by applying mathematics and testing new theories against observations, we were able to hone in on the truth. We have now reached the point where the theories are difficult to verify. We cannot visit black holes, we cannot access the early universe, so what are we to do? Theorize, that's what, and test the theories as best we can. I don't know what else you expect physicists to do, the easy questions have already been answered. Some things aren't directly testable, not by us, not yet at least.

Spacetime - as we assume it to appear to us - is not the way it appears to be at all.

What if -- just like it seems that a straight railroad in front of us with parallel steel tracks, looks like it begins (or ends) at a perspective point far away on the horizon, and just like we know from factual and actual experience that such is not the case - that in fact the railroad tracks run parallel to each other, and that that horizon is really a relative notion -- what if it is so, in a similar manner, that we "vizualizingly think" and without questioning "see" (because we "think we ought to") a "beginning-of-time" at a "point-in-space" on a "seemingly-real-horizon", a horizon which only relatively appears to exist, a horizon which is as unreal as that metaphorical situation of that horizon and that imagined perspective point where seemingly those railroad tracks converge?

If that is so, then temporal and spatial considerations are meaningless in a similar sense... like those railroad tracks that have no beginning (or end), even if we seem to observe it, they are similarly faux appearances on a just as faux spacetime horizon.

Does spacetime exist though?
Yes, but not the way we somehow still think it does...
I have a hypothesis on that... If interested, email me at wimjborsboom@gmail.com

Thank you for the interesting article but the "lite grey" colored font of the main body of the text is harder for my older eyes to read. Not something that would probably be noticed by the younger folk who design these web pages. Thanks.

I have the same impression. Hawkins was the cause of decades of stagnation in physics. He was a brilliant physicist, but he made mistakes and he even later admitted them (e.g. information paradox of black holes). But nobody else but he himself dared to criticize him. Many people believed that due to his handicap he had supernatural abilities.

Physics hasn't stagnated. Not for decades. Not at all. We're building quantum computers that will soon transcend the power of all classical ones. We're developing useful nanotech with medical and material science applications. We've recently taken a picture of a black hole. We've detected the Higgs particle. More recently we've been able to detect gravitational radiation. The source of that radiation was a black hole merger about a billion light years away. And the signal itself corresponded to a displacement of about 1/1000 the width of a proton in a detector of length ~4 km.

You might be expected to be in awe of the beauty and power of modern physics. Instead you come across as an unimaginative, grumpy old man, who can't even spell Hawking's name right.

GPS and the internet itself are now mundane but truly magnificent marvels of modern technology which would not exist had physics stagnated.

And I see that you have access to an internet connection and are able to use it to express your opinions.

That's a shame

Glad we got the traveling physics circus debacle sorted out before Independence Day. I feel so liberated now.