What about the giant tortoise? Huh?‽ Explain THAT brain boy!

How did the universe begin, you ask? Well, when two universes love each other very much....

I am 57, as a child I still recall when 1) continental shift was not widely accepted and 2) before any discussion of Big Bang and as you said infinite universe. They also believed the brain didn’t change much after puberty, neuroplasticity as it was later called didn’t exist.

Joe you do a super job. You're the most straightforward communicator I've seen on KZfaq. I can watch your videos and not be messed around with hype or nonsense. You also have a great sense of humor. To be straightforward and humorous and entertaining that is a winning combination. Keep up the great work!

As a nuclear engineer and physicist, I actually love the disclaimer and believe that we should all have them for multiple topics throughout life. Thank you for the engaging posts.

Lemaitre was also a professor of physics at the Catholic University of Louvain. He was a priest and a legit scientist. Later in life he he became a computer programmer. He also got a Ph.D at MIT and fought in WW1

Talking about time passing, I just remembered i started to watch your channel when you had literally few hundreds of followers .. incredible how far you went, 1.69M !!! You are clear proof that hard work pays off !! For those years you created incredible amount of great content !

I love that you can keep me engaged for over 13 minutes with a topic that is completely beyond my comprehension 😂.

A couple decades ago, I was having a random conversation about the beginning of the universe with some coworkers while working as a dishwasher at an Italian restaurant. I theorized the "Big Bang" was a local event, and our universe was one of many that naturally pop up throughout infinite space and time. I used a sponge covered in bubbles as a representation of how universes (bubbles) "pop" over time, or expand and pop up anew with a good squish. My fellow dishwashers nodded, whilst Mike the manager told us to, "Stop !%^%$#% around and get back to work!!". Couldn't stand that guy...

Joe is humble. Humility is a force multiplier when considering complex subject matter. Be like Joe.

for years i have watched your videos, never missed one, this is the best of all of them, you were throwing down truths that are often overlooked in science, this is how we really learn and advance, good for you!

Honestly the idea of an infinite steady state universe with no beginning or end makes much more sense than a big bang for whatever reason starting everything out of some kind of weird tiny "no space no time" state.

The fact you are honest and humble enough to acknowledge your lack of understanding in topics makes it more engaging for other people who are also learning. 🤙🤙

Love your videos. I also want to say, just because you aren't an astrophysicist shouldn't downplay how important videos like these are. I did well in school but I didn't enjoy learning. Now as an adult when I get to pick topics I'm interested in I LOVE learning and since I consider myself pretty smart, but with no higher education more simply explained videos like these are a godsend to help me understand better and sate my curiosity.

I was driving in my car recently. I have a terrible sense of direction. Been picked on about it all my life. I was headed somewhere, with the aid of my phone's GPS, trying very to remember how I'd get there in the future so next time I went there I would not need my phone as a guide. I was looking at all the physical things around me. Trying to remember the church that was on that corner and that weird looking sign that was on that other corner and that tree standing over there. All those things when you are trying to remember how you get to where you are going. But, a song came on the radio and I started singing. And, I started remembering all the reasons I absolutely love the song. And, by the time I got to my destination, I realized, I'd forgotten, even though I was looking and (at least on some level) really trying to concentrate on everything around me, much of what I'd seen... all manner of little steps I'd taken to get to where I was going. I tried to go back exactly the way I'd come without the aid of my phone and found myself lost fairly quickly. It was as though the song on my drive to the destination had transported me into a different dimension where Time... memory and emotion and reason... had been, to some extent, suspended. I was "transported" elsewhere in my mind. I'd obviously been aware enough of what I was doing to pay attention to danger coming from cars or animals running out into the street or the directions my phone was giving me, but not enough to really pay attention to where I was in the Now. I couldn't shake the thought that this is relevant when it comes to my very perception of Time itself. I have been wondering, as a layman, if this mental ability to be, basically, in two headspaces at once, is not our biggest problem when it comes to understanding Time, its relationship with physical reality and causation? I recognize that I am terrible at spatial cognition. At concentrating and learning from the tasks I am engaging in, as I engage in them, when my mind wanders. The wandering itself often yields leaps in logic I would not have had, so it does have its merits. But yes, that is a far easier explanation. Still, could there be a correlation between when that happens and understanding Time itself and its relation to reality.

This is interesting, and on a philosophical level it's basically how I've already viewed the universe for a while now (I'm a mathematician). I didn't realize there was an actual physics theory that fleshed it out.

While there were instances when some mathematical oddity led to discovery of physical phenomena (like negative energy solutions to Dirac equation that turned out to describe positron, the anti-matter counterpart of electron), it would seem that Nature has no obligation to follow all nice, consistent mathematical constructs with their physical realization. Just because we can _describe_ something it doesn't have to actually _exist._

One clarification. The Big Bang does not require that the universe was an "infinitesimally small point" at some point in its past. In fact the universe may have started off as infinite and expanded everywhere into the larger infinity that we see today.

One of the many many confusing aspects of the big bang theory is that when everything was at a infinite point just before expanding, why didn't it all just collapse into a black hole?

I never really liked the idea of a start to the universe or for that matter an end. It seems to me that searching for the ultimate beginning and end of everything is only seen as useful and important to us as humans because we are conditioned to think that way by our own individual finite existence. In any case its always seemed a futile proposition because once you conceive of a beginning you are still left with the question of what existed before that point. If you answer is nothing, then how does something come from nothing. Conceptually I think it's easier to just accept that it's always been there in one form or another and ever will remain so.

Well, you know the old saying: Even broken time is right twice a day.

You know, while I'm in the "have to get up and go to work tomorrow" camp generally, I'm incredibly happy that we live in a world where people are able to devote their considerable expertise to this line of thinking. Keep it up, hypernerds!

Don't you just love how upbeat and positive all of Joe's videos are😂

Oh! I have been looking at time as a physically occurring, "floating point" blockchain, and causal set theory seems to fit that idea perfectly. Good vid. I think what we'll find is that existence creates the potential for space, matter creates space and the potential for causation, causation leads to the breakdown of wider diffuse frameworks into more complex systems of a lower order, higher complexity gives rise to life and the potential for time, and life creates time. At some point we'll likely be able to tell where there is and isn't life in the universe, simply by where there appear to be changes in the character of physical causation, just as you can tell where people have lived by changes in the nature of the area. We are time, each of us is a wormhole from the past to the future, and because we are conscious, some of that causation in our time stream is under our direct control. The less involved with consensus reality we are, the more our time stream can be under our own direction. But, of course, as long as we participate in existence, we cannot consciously control all causation.

Joe, I don't care about your academic background, nor the size of your forehead (it's fine, really). I like watching/listening to you because you seem enthusiastic about the things you talk about, you are fun and smart and you sum up interesting topics for our curious, lazy minds. Most of my conversations throughout the day are with my 2-year-old, so I'm just grateful for the impression of being included in a group of intelligent adults

The idea that the larger exo-verse is a bunch of quantum membranes that have always existed and sometimes smack together to create a universe is a lot more satisfying of an answer than "There was nothing then singularity go bang."

Back up a century and a half and there was talk of the Ether. A cloudy, vague soup from which matter was born. I think quantum foam is the modern incorporation of the same principle. First was the ether, next came dark matter, now quantum foam with bubbles and strings. All are just different names for yet to be explained phenomenon. Thanks Joe! You rock.

It seems to me that the idea of a steady state universe is similar to the idea that the concept of "nothing" is impossible because once you conceptualize "nothing," it becomes "something."

Knowing that others are grappling with these issues (was there "a beginning" and will there be "an end", or is space-time "infinite").is reassuring. And knowing that Joe Scott is working to let the rest of us know. Well, it means that all is right with the world. Thanks.

As a person who also didn't understand most of those words that you said, I think you did a really great job of explaining what it was lol.

New to your channel, your disclaimer and moral approach are great. You have a new subscriber. Interesting content !

I had a thought recently... Prolly not the first person to think this, but ive never heard anyone else say it. It occurred to me when I read about the Great Attractor; an area in space we are all being pulled towards. And i wondered how could everything be moving apart from everything else, yet still pulled towards the same thing. And how does everything in the universe emerge from a point. How can spacetime have a beginning and end and be infinite. Or finite without a beginnig and end And i thought about what if the universe collapsed in on itself. Usually when i think of a star collapsing into a black hole, i imagine a sphere getting smaller and smaller til its a point. But now i think of the universe like a sphere collapsing into a donut shape. But not a donut with a hole. So lets say the universe was like a spherical balloon of the earth and it collapsed at the "south" pole into the center of the globe, and this started a rotation of the surface downward towards the "southpole" Where it then gets sucked down a hole towards the core, where it gets squeezed thru a hole as tight as a singularity. Everything on the surface at that point is squeezed together. Then, at the north pole, the surface of the globe emerges from a tiny point and everything that was packed together begins moving away from everything else And the farther you get from the "north pole", moving south the faster everything on the surface will expand, until you hit the "equator" where everyting will be squeezed together again at the south pole. But its a 4d surface, so its not really that the surface is rotating...its more like we're experience moving along the 4d surface at the speed of light ...or something.

I don't comment often, but I regularly watch/listen to your stuff. The "giant forehead" disclaimer mad me chortle whilst in the midst of a episode of depression. Thank you sir

Do Penrose's Conformal Cyclic Cosmology next. It's even crazier and the implications are wild. It might mean the previous universe was so small that the whole thing could fit in somebody's pocket, and our universe would be similarly small to an observer in a future universe.

That disclaimer of yours is great, I finally subscribed :) I’ve watched videos of yours in the past. You are extremely well spoken and well read and I appreciate the humility.

“So let me explain it with a bunch of words I found I don’t understand” (he said coyly) lol 😂😂😂 you’re the best man!

Lemaître's deduction was a bit more complex than just thinking "It's expanding, so it came from a point" He basically took Einstein's equations of general relativity and looked for parameters that made it fit current observations. Then found that all parameter sets started from a singularity.

Yeah Joe, my brain fell out on this one too. The part that made the most sense to me was “give us one miracle and we will take it from there”. Problem for me on that one is I don’t believe in miracles. 🤔

Well, I'm only an enthusiast, but I think its similar to Wolfram Physics, which I have been trying to make proper sense of and I think might be great. It new, and it is incomplete, but normal physics (mostly) emerges from the maths. The rules are very similar and the idea of causal logic at very small discrete intervals according to not yet known rules matches.

The universe may have had a starting point (at least this version of it) but even more mind blowing is the fact that existence itself has always existed.

I love Joe. His content is some of the best when I comes to taking complex crazy scientific news and info and making it into simple to understand digestible content.

It’s interesting to hear words in English, spoken in a clear voice, and in a familiar pattern, and yet not being able to understand them at all when put into a certain sequence.

Now there's a T-shirt I need. "Give us one miracle, and we'll explain it from there." lol

What if the expansion of the universe only SEEMS to be accelerating because farther away not only means farther in the past but also moving away faster and it's just time dilation making it look like the universe was expansing slower in the past? Mind you, this would still require expansion (whether steady or just slowing or accelarationg more slowly), which would mean that it might also still require a big bang beginning ... so maybe not quite "steady state" per se

I just want to say thank you. Your channel and a few others have kept me sane these last few months. Getting ready to start chemo next week. So thank you for all you do.

Hey Joe, thank you for taking on these difficult topics. Your videos are truly entertaining and informative. I also have to go to work tomorrow, but I never want to stop learning so please keep taking on these challenging topics.

"Don't be scured" at the end killed me 🤣🤣

General relativity and quantum mechanics will never be combined until we realize that they take place at different moments in time. Because causality has a speed limit (c) every point in space where you observe it from will be the closest to the present moment. When we look out into the universe, we see the past which is made of particles (GR). When we try to look at smaller and smaller sizes and distances, we are actually looking closer and closer to the present moment (QM). The wave property of particles appears when we start looking into the future of that particle. It is a probability wave because the future is probabilistic. Wave function collapse happens when we bring a particle into the present/past. GR is making measurements in the predictable past. QM is trying to make measurements of the probabilistic future.

As a character once said in a Woody Allen movie, 'How would I know what the meaning of life is? I don't know how a can opener works.'

1:39 Yes, although one of the old mystic ideas is that the material universe grew from a "seed" (and there can be many "seeds" resulting in different universes according to this idea). In this sense then the Big Bang was not so much a "creation" event but more like a "crystallisation" or "phase transition" in the pre-existing form of matter (different than what we know as "elementary particles"). It's interesting that those ideas are so old, really the only thing people in ancient times didn't know was how to _quantify_ things (which enables modelling and predicting) but otherwise they were quite original in their thinking.

I hate the way people talk about the BB like it was a given, like “when the BB” and “after the BB” etc etc. It’s still a hypothesis and if history tells us anything is that a big big percentage of our hypothesis ends up changing. People seem to forget that and act like we already know everything, just like they did 200 yrs ago, and 200 yrs before that etc

I remember reading Hoyle in the early '50's. As a young child (born in '41) I found it very interesting: "Imagine the surface of a ballon with spots [galaxies] on it. As it gets bigger they move further away from one another. I believe new ones just appear to fill in the spaces ... ". Pretty heady stuff for a kid. 😎🎸🥃

I find it comforting that you, Joe, and the great, late Terry Pratchett both agree on this fundamental of the universe: Time is Broken. This explains my life so well, especially why everything always seems to happen at the same time. It’s not my ADHD at work. It’s just that time is broken. Thanks for that. 😂

Planck length's of time or space, don't actually mean that nothing is smaller. It just means we can't measure or use anything in a meaningful way smaller than that limit. It's so small that any event below that of any scale is effectively considered the same, or that it is completely unobservable/ non-interactive. There absolutely no reason to assume that it's impossible for things smaller than those scales to be possible, and thus a infinitesimally smaller universe the further back in time, doesn't require a discrete beginning event as we would understand it. It's like that curve on a graph that gets closer to zero but never quite touches it.

I think it was Stephen Hawking who said time had to have a beginning, otherwise there would be an infinite amount of time before anything ever happened, which is impossible. I still find that argument compelling.

Hardcore (it's 'metal'?) science subjects have always been intimidating for me and very difficult to understand. You not only make me laugh but help me parse through the metal. You're a gem!!

"Vesto Slipher" is the greatest supervillain name in science. The fact that his middle name was "Melvin" makes it complete.

I wonder how this theory explains the (appearant) randomness of entangled particles which's wave function collapse. Especially as this has experimentally been proven to be "random" and us being completely unable to influence it in any sort of way. (at least iirc) If everything is based around a form of cause and effect, and/or is steady state, shouldn't this be (able to be) influenced in some ways? And if it *can* be influenced, wound't that mean that suddenly information can be transferred between these points faster than light... which is kind of impossible because a few other cans of worms?

So this why 5 minutes in a amazon warehouse feels like a decade. And your weekend goes by in about 5 minutes

Joe is truly entertaining and I really enjoy learning about theories that don't get much air time. That's really enjoyable to me. One thing we have expiremently confirmed is the CMB, this video probably should have touched on that.

I remember scientists saying, “Many people misunderstand the idea of the Big Bang. It did not happen at one point - it happened everywhere all at once.” That always stuck with me. We still hear it every once in a while. Seems to me that the idea of a singularity is an example of a kind of sloppiness, or laziness, an unwillingness to really grapple with the evidence, concepts and issues. Or, a kind of hype, or sensationalism.

I've always believed in a stedy state universe. To me it seems impossible for the universe to have a begining or end, no matter how much things in the universe might move and change.

It's suprising how many people don't realize that TIME is a system of counting revolutions. The revolutions the planet makes around its axis, and the revolutions the planet makes around the sun. There are 24 time zones representing the hours of the day, ect and 12 months or 365 days in a year. A year being a complete revolution around the sun. I thought we were supposed to learn that in grade school, and I'm shocked at how many people don't understand that.

That did break my brain, it still gives me dread, regardless of which theory to choose from it invokes infinity, not that there's a difference between infinity and very very very large universe for someone who only can travel at 140 miles a second.

Joe Scott is one of the best. His vibe is super "regular" in a good way. Hope he gets happier and happier doing what he does. Hope he does it until the internet rusts over, flakes off and blows away in the wind.

That was an excellent segue into your advertizement. Top notch.

I happen to like having my science explained by a guy who could literally play a a part on Always Sunny In Philadelphia and no one would notice

Whether it's steady state theory or Quantum, or whatever, if we weren't here to view or experience time, then it really wouldn't matter. Joe Scott, you're great with these videos. Keep them streaming ✌😊

I’ve recently been using results from causal set theory in a knowledge representation domain - the mathematical structure is really useful in a bunch of other ways! I’d been meaning to try and get a better understanding of the physics application but hadn’t got around to it yet, so this was timely! Thanks for the great introduction.

Honestly, causal set theory i find is the most intuitive in terms of explaining time and space themselves. They appear to just be events and reactions - and their relationship to each other. Our perception of time is mediated by the chemical reactions that run us - which gives a little more wiggle room for the relative nature of time. At least - in my head, as a lay person. It seems to be less grasping at straws than some ideas. But that's communication, not science.

This is my first time viewing your channel, and I want to say thank you so much for the disclaimer! Science communicators have done so much to obfuscate understanding and stiffle scientific curiosity, the exact opposite of their goals. Even scientifically educated ones have really screwed the pooch when it comes to science outside of their very narrow wheelhouse (looking at you tyson). Telling people you're here to offer the beginning of understanding and not the totality of it does more for science than anything you could actually say about actual science!

I loved the brain bit, although mine dribbled out. I like the idea of time having no beginning or end. I'm not a scientist, but the heat death of the universe is terrifying and maybe this means things will go on and on forever, which is comforting for me.

I think the biggest question we have to ask is: can we see Joe put his brain back in?

As he points out the practical effects of the passage of time are observable. Do we really need a series of experiments proving all mater decays or that we live in a cause and effect universe.

Most of this went past me, but I always thought that even if we lived in a totally vacant universe there would still be intervals of time like seconds, minutes, and hours. I guess not.

I have an old pendulum clock that picked up many years ago. When I got it home I wound the main spring and started the pendulum swinging. A few minutes later the clock stopped. I'm quite mechanical but have yet to figure out the problem. So, I have personal experience with time being broken. I can happen in mysterious ways!

7:48... 😁😁😁... Correlation does not equal causation, it is something to pay attention too... Synchronicities let you know you are on the right path.

I just want to know how do they explain black holes in CST.

Nice video, I like the approach. Also, 07:43 - beautiful escalation of difficult words 😆 Is "Give us one miracle, and we'll take it from there" yours? If so someone should totally gift you one of those mugs. Cheers!

Good as always! A minor thing- Hoyle's Steady State was a complicated kludge to allow the universe to be expanding yet static with an unchanging density. Whatever was before the Big Bang it wasn't Hoyle's Steady State.

It just makes me feel smaller and smaller compared to the overall existence of everything. My question: If they actually prove any of these theories (if we ever can), how would we use it?

If there is a vote, I'm going with Quantum Foam, that the Universe we think of as the whole shebang is just one bubble emerging and we might eventually reach the expanding bubble of another. There is just one curious thing for me -- why we see this large super structure of rings now -- because the time factor of looking back into the past to some central big bang point -- would suggest we'd see smaller rings in the distance -- not part of one large structure because it wouldn't have time to form -- and it flies in the face of the fans of entropy as if the Universe started less complex and homogeneous.

Why not just magnetic, in a sense? Originally, all of the energy/matter was as one, like a snowball. Gravity did not exist, and wasn't needed. I'm not sure what started the expansion and acceleration but gravity gives me the sense of all the little bits trying to pull back together to be a tiny snowball again.

Joe? The phrase, just give us one miracle and we'll take it from there!, was proof one need not understand to explain like a genius. This was pure genius, you at your pure honest best. And the brain ejection moment! Wonderment and instantly satisfying content! Thanks as always Joe! Yours, Sam

Interesting. Causal set theory sounds a lot like a theory I came up with a few years ago that I refer to as the "firefly theory". The name has to do with how the idea came about. I was thinking about how fireflies synchronize their flashes, and it occurred to me that *because light has to travel,* the rate which each firefly needs to flash for them to synchronize is a function of the distance between them. So what you have here is a variable "clock rate" based on distance, with each firefly speeding up or slowing down it's flashes in an attempt to not flash at the same time as the other fireflies. For any configuration of fireflies, there is at least one "clock rate" at which the transmission of energy/signals is most efficient. This is what I referred to as the *causal resonant frequency* (CRF). If you extrapolate this concept to smallest standing wave particles, there are some peculiar predictions that come about from it. One is that you can hypothetically shift the CRF for an object. Physically, this would result in certain quantum effects appearing on a macroscopic scale. Sort of like a Bose Einstein condensate. An outside observer would see what appears to be tunneling, teleportation, or impossible rates of acceleration. If you've ever played a glitchy video game, it's like when a drop in frame rate causes the discrete physics calculations to malfunction and your character ends up clipping through a wall. Another idea was that the existence of a CRF could define an entire harmonic series, with each half cycle corresponding to what is effectively a parallel dimension. Locally controlling the CRF could perhaps be used perform a phase shift, resulting in interdimensional travel.

This reminds me when i was studying programming : My teacher said do not ask questions this is how it is and just follow what previous believe to true and while their is a consensus you cant debate if not create your own language and hope other follows and agree with your thinking....

I've often wondered/imagined, should the universe ever stop expanding and begin to shrink, or if enough black holes expand and merge and grow large enough to consume the entire universe, what would happen when everything was reduced to a single point again? Would that "big crunch" actually be the end of everything, like how the big bang is supposedly the beginning? Or, would everything collapsing into a single point be so dense that it necessitates aggressive expansion, essentially causing another big bang that recreates the universe, perhaps the same as before or perhaps a bit differently? If that were the case, then there probably isn't an actual beginning or end to the universe, only a cycle of ebbs and flows. Naturally, that idea of the universe collapsing only to trigger another big bang has made me ponder the notion of a multiverse. Is a multiverse an infinite number of universes existing simultaneously, or is it an infinite number of universes existing sequentially? And of course, since I've often also pondered aspects of various world religions, the idea of a multiverse comprising of universes that exist sequentially has made me think of a Buddhist and Hindu concept known as Saṃsāra, which is a continuous, beginningless cycle of life, death and rebirth. I also can't help but think of the simulation hypothesis. If the universe is a constant cycle of expansion and collapse - or life, death and rebirth - then every time the universe reforms could be like re-running a simulation or conducting another experiment to see if you get the same result as before. If that's the case, then what is the desired outcome?

Causal Set Theory makes alot of sense to me. I imagined before, little time vortices moving around microscopically, we only know that progression through the distribution of matter.... and it means like you know maybe the universe doesn't go lights on/off and reset everything....kind of sad thinking another big bang would reset every fundamental trace someday....

Love the knock your brain into your hand trick. Spontaneous laughter!

So causal set theory has zero evidence backing it up, it makes zero sense, but someone told you that the math works even though you have zero idea how the math works? Sounds like this theory is pure faith to me.

The way I see it time is the causality of movement. As far as the expansion of the universe, we are being pulled towards Andromeda in with is being pulled towards The Great Attractor so we see galaxies falling away. Maybe no expansion just the push and pull of quantum fluidity. Or I'm I off..what do you think Joe Scott

Thanks for breaking this down, Joe! Always love your videos (and they inspire me to improve my own videos!)

I understood some of these words. Not a lot, but some

This made me think of Zeno's paradoxes. How about a vídeo about them?

Dunno, but I am hooked onto the universe being cyclical. It reduces to a small space (not a singularity) and expands to a great distance as long as the inertia would allow. Then (like a rubber band) the forces of attraction start overcoming the inertia and start pulling it back and it starts contracting. Until everything gets so close together that repulsive forces start pushing it back apart after overcoming the inertia. So the universe has always existed and it keeps forming and ending in cycles. I don't know what all theories cover that idea ( if someone knows, please lemme know) but I am sticking to this explanation. The bubbling of seafoam idea allows the energy of this Universe to be balanced with other universes also undergoing similar changes. And speed of light and all preventing one univere from recognising other still applies. you would probably have to access higher dimension to explain and integrate further. But my question is why do they call it "Causal' set. All they have said is that these events are "temporal" aka happen one after another in chronological order. They aren't talking about one event causing the other. maybe something got lost in the translation? I'll look it up.😊

Thanks, Joe... breaking my brain just before a holiday! Now, I need an adult beverage to remove all this from my head. As always... great content!

I’ve wondered about the idea of thinking about time less as a line or plane but as a rate similar to heat, in which time is the measurement at which elements are able to interact with one another

On a non-mathematical, civilian-philosophy perspective that I hold: existence itself is subject to the concept of "for every action there is an equal & opposite reaction". That there is irrefutably "nothing" and at the same time "something"/"everything". That at any point there was the potential for nothing to exist means that things had to exist at that same time. In other words, both the "Big Bang Theory" & "Steady-State" theories are correct at the same time. The issue we have is perceiving & quantifying what happened.

exponential curves expand, but if you try to trace them back to the "beginning" then approach the asymptote, but never reach the asymptote. Expansion of the universe could be the same way: the farther back in time you go, the smaller the universe will be. Just as the universe is infinitely expanding, if we play the time line backwards, the universe will be INFINITELY shrinking. So you'll try to arrive at the beginning, but you will never arrive since the beginning will be at --INFINITY. For instance, this equation: y = e^x (where e ~= 2.7183, and "x" is the exponent of this number.). Let x = 0 be present time, x > 0 be the future, and x < 0 be the past. As you go back in time (decrease the x), the value of y will become ever smaller, and ever closer to 0. But it will never arrive at 0, and will never be come negative either. Hence, it could be possible that what is called the beginning was FOREVER ago. Since it cannot be reached, it is pointless to ask what was before that.

I always thought that just because humans experience a “creation” does not mean the universe had one. We should be open minded to either possibility (creation or always existed).