time

Some scientists are now saying that the universe is eternal, that it has always existed even before the big bang. Universe in its present form is only 13.8 billion years old, but before that it has existed in some other form. But before the big bang there was no space and no time, because space and time came into existence along with the big bang only. So if the universe was always there even before the big bang, then it was neither in space nor in time, because before the big bang there was no space and no time. Being neither in space nor in time it will thus be spaceless and timeless.

In a debate with Dr. William Lane Craig in March, 2014 theoretical physicist Sean Carroll has said the following in his opening speech:

If you have a universe that obeys the conventional rules of quantum mechanics, has a non-zero energy, and the individual laws of physics are themselves not changing with time, that universe is necessarily eternal. The time parameter in Schrödinger’s equation, telling you how the universe evolves, goes from minus infinity to infinity.1

It is not actually necessary that “fine tuning” of certain parameters will have to exist in reality for proving the existence of God. I think light with its very peculiar properties is sufficient for that purpose.

From Einstein’s special theory of relativity we come to know that matter and energy are equivalent. Matter is concentrated energy and energy is diluted matter. Again from GTR we come to know that space, time and matter are so interlinked that there cannot be any space and time without matter. Similarly there cannot be any matter without space and time. So we see that all these four are interlinked; we cannot think of any one of these four entities singularly, isolatedly. Whenever we will think of energy, we will have to think of matter.

The first half of the 20th century brought a revolutionary change into our concept about space and time. Earlier it was thought that space and time were having independent existence, and that they were absolute. Even if all the matter disappeared from the universe, space would remain the same and unaffected. Similar view was held about time also, that time flowed in the same way throughout the universe and that this flow did not depend on anything. But with the coming of Einstein’s theory of relativity our concept about space and time has undergone a total and drastic change.