(March 13, 2014 at 6:11 am)Cato Wrote:(March 13, 2014 at 5:13 am)Alex K Wrote: Are you looking for a cause? Then you are out of luck, since cause and effect are only applicable in the macroscopic realm within our universe.
I think it's more accurate to say we lack the ability to observe/measure the effects of any potential events preceding the Big Bang. This is where someone usually jumps in to state something like the Big Bang is t=0 and there is no t<0. The Big Bang is t=0 because we say it is, and it fits with our idea of spacetime, but I think it is wrong to cut off speculation on what existed/happened before The Big Bang because of this designation.
Lacking the ability to answer certain questions doesn't mean the questions aren't valid; such as: Could the singularity that created the universe come from a previous collapsing universe? Are there more than one universe? What caused the singularity? Are there more universe creating singularities? etc.
I don't think that's the problem really (apart from the fact that the singularity is probably and artifact of the classical treatment of GR without quantum phenomena). Whether you can look beyond the t=0 and what is before it does not address the question whether anything is there in the first place imho.
