We love Stephen Hawking to bits, although his thoughts do sometimes run ahead of our understanding. We came across an article he wrote by the name of The Beginning of Time. He steps over the problem of what caused the big bang in the first place. His purpose is to provide sufficient proof that the universe has not always been there.
What the Second Law of Thermodynamics Has to Say
The Second Law of Thermodynamics deals with relationships between heat and other energy. This states that disorder always increases over time.
Here we are not talking about the drawer where we keep our socks in. Our universe is still in good order.
If the expanding universe has always been present, Hawkins reasons, then by now the night sky would be blinding. Since it is not, there must have been a time when there was no matter, and no starry islands shining in the sky. Moreover, since the universe is expanding we can plot a time line to when it began.
Is the Big Bang the Origin of Time?
Stephen Hawking thinks we can take it as read that the big bang was the beginning of time. Events before it have no consequences we can observe. However he does not believe the event was ‘imposed from outside’.
It is the product, he reasons of ‘the dynamical laws that govern the universe’. He concludes that the universe did not exist approximately 15 billion years ago. Could the universe and time ever end?
Hawkins predicts an end of time when expansion of the universe ceases, and gradual collapse begins. During this period, time will not reverse though. As he says, “So we will keep on getting older, and we won’t return to our youth. Because time is not going to go backwards, I think I had better stop now”. And we had better get back to our blog. There are still 20 billion years to go.
Related
Relativity of the Space-Time Continuum
