Edenthiel wrote:
As a child I always had trouble accepting the Big Bang; as an answer it is inherently unsatisfying. An infinite universe on the other hand at least leaves no a priori questions.
Fully aware of the Russell's Teapot I'm committing, but if the Universe was either infinite or vastly more immense than we are considering, is it not possible that we are in a local expansion only - especially considering the limited distance/time we can observe and have observed?
The universe almost certainly 'began' at one point. So far, it has been demonstrated that if you embed the quantum theory of the minisuperspace into a time neglecting theory of quantum gravity
, it does not allow harmonic recurrences indefinitely. So we certainly rule out a cyclic model of the universe.
Again, the issue of time persists thus, it is fully dependent on whatever Hamiltonian constraint is put in. Moreover, the WDW formulation is an extremely rudimentary form of QG, so it may or may not be correct.
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Sebastian
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