Mr. Wolf wrote:
Absolutely yes.
Any decent scientist would admit as much and would be happy to amend the rules as and when discoveries are made that break the rules so to speak.

There are other theories, such as steady state, multiverse, blah blah.

I ask because that's the first thing that sprung to mind when dub mentioned his pet hate of theories being treated as facts. I've heard it loads of times on the telly "When the big bang happened", etc etc.

The Big Bang is one of the most out there theories imaginable. It's literally nuts
Hardcore atheists regularly mock those of religious beliefs for believing what they do, whilst holding a theory as fact in their heads which is every bit as, if not more unbelievable

So are we any closer to working out what time is?

The best I can offer is that time is change.

Could our dreams be a form of time travel, or time lag from our more physical reality to our subconscious in sleep thoughts, and those experiences at times play out in future time when we wake and go through the day?

Which can be changed by us, or a situation, a person, place, or thing interacting with us, or as I believe a intervention from a unseen realm for the good or bad.

The big bang (I'm not giving it capital letters) doesn't even answer the question that it's supposed to address. What people are interested in is how the universe was created. At some point there was nothingness, then there was something, how did this 'something' come into being? This is after all the bone of contention that people have with Creationism, that God couldn't possibly have created the universe, and that we can only explain this via scientific methods. So let's have a look that explanation:

- There was a big bang when the universe was in a hot and dense state.

- If the universe was in a hot and dense state it already exists.

- Oh. Well, this theory is largely accepted by the scientific community.

This is fairly well discussed here. Ultimately the big bang theory doesn't explain anything useful, and even if proved beyond all doubt will only by its very nature lead to the next question: "what caused the big bang?". These questions will never be satisfactorily answered by conventional science, it's impossible.

dubmeup wrote:
Strangely, I think I know what you mean, but haven't got a clue what you're talking about at the same time

Your comment calls for more elaboration dub

Time is used to define lots of other things...acceleration for example.
Now, if you try to define a measure on its own without bringing other measures into the topic then you will have an epic brainfart.
Its best not to even try

Its an emergent property of the universe that we perceive. Thats about as close as it gets.

That's right andy, you can't think of time in isolation from space. Hence the spacetime continuum

re: big bang, they detected an echo in the 60s, and galaxies are thought to move away from each other as a result of momentum from the explosion

also i dont know what the problem is with the universe being created. there wasn't a 'before' cos the universe when it started there wasn't space so no time either. stick that in your pipes and smoke it.

No bats, the universe isn't currently said to be expanding due to momentum from the big bang. The expansion is said to be accelerating. It's claimed to be accelerating largely due to the effects of dark energy...

The often asked question is, what is it expanding into?

batou wrote: How did the universe come into existence then?

you're not just a pretty face are you? i did not know that, i pretty much ignored the whole dark energy idea.

wake_up_bomb wrote:
Ha! Well you get around that by simply stating that the universe always existed because it literally IS all that has and ever will exist... :p

/chuckles quietly.

well wub i dunno. im just saying there wasn't a before , cos there wasn't time. its extradimensional is the only way i can think of it. maybe there was a before but not in this reality. it bubbled over from dimension X?
i realize im stepping way out of my league here so now i said all this shit im going to abandon you guys.

The question of what is the universe expanding into is imo crucial.
Even Nasa state that it's quite likely there is no edge, no boundary to the universe and that the universe may well be infinitely huge.
Well if that's the case, you can dispense with the big bang for a start
You can also dispense with any concerns about the laws of thermodynamics

If there IS an edge then yes you can keep both the big bang and the LofT but then you absolutely DO have to answer the questions of what did this teeny dot that everything emerged from exist in and what is the universe expanding into...which is just crazy to think of. I can't see how any serious scientist or thinker would even go there...But yet we are told the Big Bang is fact etc etbloody cetera

batou wrote:
lol, you're no more out of your league here than anyone else tbh

The religious viewpoint, the scientific or perhaps even the LSD trip could all have valid angles on it

batou wrote: I think we all are, that's the point. I don't think it can be answered. That's why I won't slag Creationists off because their explanation, while highly unlikely and still illogical because you'd have to explain how God came into being, is as good as any that anyone else has come up with. That's why I think, although there are problems with it, that the holographic universe is the most consistent explanation that I've heard. Any explanation that involves an externality that is 'real' just comes up against the same problem...what created it? How did this 'real' world come into being? And it will never be satisfactorily answered.

Here's one to consider. If the universe is expanding, then every single atom must be too surely? As in, we are expanding with the universe. If that's the case we should not be able to perceive the expansion...but apparently we do. So is the universe not expanding at a uniform rate? Another point is that if we all emerged from an infinitely dense point, it should all be radiating from a centre. We should be able to plot where the centre of the universe is. But we can't. The logical conclusion is that there is no centre and therefore there was no big bang. Which takes us into the territory andy described of the universe always having existed and always going to exist. Which starts to take us into the area wub mentioned of a holo-fractal universe.

Sayings like "as above so below".... Gotta love em