before existence... what did it look like?

[jaycanuck]

A bit along the same lines... check this video out.

http://www.revver.com/video/99898/im...nth-dimension/

[transmaven]

the first ~50 seconds of this video explain everything

[MacShreach]

what did life, as we know it, look like, before anything existed?

What did life look like TO WHOM,

Trish, that would be the "theoretical observer." These often appear with rather bloodshot eyes and markedly slowed speech, but to be fair, they have been around a long while and scientists and philosophers not experiencing altered mind-states regularly use the device.

We are such a visual species that, without the theoretical observer, many concepts would be hard indeed to understand.

[hippifried]

The "big bang" assumes something was already there, so it has no bearing on this discussion. What does have bearing is the apparent existence of some very good weed.

[trish]

Theoretical observers are perfectly fine devices as long as they obey the rules. No observations of position and momentum that defy heisenberg, no traveling faster than light etc. The theoretical observer must always report a perspective. When there's no place to stand (as when nothing exists) there's no perspective to report.

[tstv_lover]

This looks like the kind of discussion that can carry on into infinity (assuming time can be infinite) without anyone being proved wrong

[lahabra1976]

Totally good point Trish, your thinking along the lines of "Einstein's theory of relativity." Einstein said nothing is absolute, not even time, not even color, its all based on perspective. So what did the world look like? What color? Perhaps the answer is it depends on who is observing it, how fast are they moving relative to some frame when they observe it, but as Trish mentioned, it is even possible to have a frame of reference here?

Perhaps this is something just beyond the grasp of human beings, our thinking isn't advanced enough to think in these terms as a pervious poster mentioned. We just assume something has to have color or has to be nothing (pitch dark). Something can be dark just because our eyes can't preceive the light, for example, there could be cosmic rays going through the air, but we can't preceive them, it doesn't necessarily mean absence of light all the time.

Even something we take as absolute such as physical size is relative. Einstein believed as things moved faster approaching the speed of light, the object gets smaller. This was proven by science by taking an object that could not fit a through a ring. But when the object was speed up really, really fast, the object was able to fit through the ring. So its actual size shrink in our frame of reference.

[droog]

A bit along the same lines... check this video out.

http://www.revver.com/video/99898/im...nth-dimension/

this video was crazy jay!

[jaycanuck]

A bit along the same lines... check this video out.

http://www.revver.com/video/99898/im...nth-dimension/

this video was crazy jay!

Yep...3 dimensions down...7 to go.

[Ecstatic]

what did life, as we know it, look like, before anything existed?

What did life look like TO WHOM, before anything existed? Perhaps the intent of of original question is, “If someone were there to observe it, what would it had looked like before anything existed?” But to that question one would have to counter, “Where would that observer have been, if nothing…not even space, with its three distinct dimensions…existed?” There would’ve have been no place to be. Worse, there was no time before time. More accurately, “before” has no meaning in such a context. At this point words fail us and we stumble over them.

Well said, Trish. When I saw this thread, I immediately wondered if you had contributed to it.

The ancient Indian philosophical system of Kashmir Shavism has a concept, summarized in a single Sanskrit term, spanda, which is remarkably similiar to the big bang theory. The literal translation of spanda is "movement within no movement": as there can be no movement (or observation) absent a second distinct something (observer) to measure the movement relative to that observer, there is, in effect, nothing (no time, no space, no substance, no energy). Yet out of that nothing (ex nihilo) comes the observable universe. Taoists say "out of nothing comes the one, out of one comes two, out of two come three, out of three come myriad things."

Perhaps we should all reserve a table with Douglas Adams, Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe (or the Big Bang Burger Bar) to discuss it all.....