Exploding the Big Bang

Exploding the Big Bang

Daniel Linford

It was thought that science could tell us about the origins of the Universe. Today that great endeavour is in serious doubt.

The question of our Universe’s birth seems settled. And yet, despite how the Big Bang is portrayed in popular culture, many physicists and philosophers of physics have long doubted whether science can truly tell us that time began. In recent decades, powerful results developed by scientifically minded philosophers appear to show that science may never show us that time began. The beginning of time, once imagined as igniting in a sudden burst of fireworks, is no longer an indisputable scientific fact.

The Malament-Manchak theorem presents us with a sobering limit: our observations, no matter how extensive, may never be sufficient to determine spacetime’s global structure. Mathematically, the possible shapes and properties of the Universe remain too numerous – many versions fit equally well with the data available from our past light cones. Though the Big Bang has been popularly hailed as the origin of our Universe, many physicists and philosophers remain unconvinced.

In the end, whether time had a beginning is a cosmological riddle. Despite dramatic scientific developments, no theorem or observation seems powerful enough to tell us whether the Universe emerged from ‘bright but very rapid fireworks’ or has always existed. Science has brought us closer to understanding the cosmos, yet it also reminds us of the limits of our knowledge. The beginning of time may remain, in the end, a mystery that we will never conclusively answer.