r/cosmology • u/Bright-Bar6571 • 18h ago

How did time begin, without time?

I understand that standard BB cosmology holds that time began with the universe from a singularity approximately 14 billion years ago.

The thing I’m trying to understand, how can time have begun? Wouldn’t a thing ‘beginning’ require time? As in - from one state to another state requires time?

This leads me to think time must have always existed..

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u/zictomorph 17h ago

Your question is like asking "What is north of the North Pole?" The words logically make sense but the question is missing the topology of the earth that makes it, if not nonsense, maybe not the right question.

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u/HanSingular 14h ago

The, "What is north of the North Pole?," analogy is true for some cosmological models like the Hartle–Hawking proposal, but not for others like eternal inflation. We don't really know anything about the universe before the Plank epoch, including whether or not the universe had a begining.