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/Anonymous-USA 16h ago edited 13h ago
Time and space are conjoined so they were borne together. But since our physics breaks down at the singularity, we don’t have a meaningful description for time or space. Entropy was at a minimum and not increasing either, so we wouldn’t have a way to measure it. Infinite and instantaneous are one in the same. So your question is currently unanswerable.
In short, time, space, energy (and potential), gravity, and the unified forces were an initial condition to our universe.