JTurtle

This may or may not have been adressed before...but here is my question to people who believe the universe is eternal and has always exsisted.

I read that many scientists believe that one day the stars will burn out and everything will die, etc etc.....However, if the universe is eternal and has ALWAYS existed, then why have the stars not burned up already?! Why are people still walking around? If the universe is eternal would all of this not have happened already?!

Jonathan

Gregg

People say that because time did not exist before the Big Bang. Time and space started at the same "time." Therefore, the Universe has existed ever since there has been time, so it's possible to say it has "always" existed.

Jet Black

well we still don't have a complete picture of the universe yet. The Ekpyrotic model for example spawns a sparkly new universe from an extremely old and flat one. I find this quite an exciting proposition.

Ellis14

Are you aware that stars and planets are being created and destroyed all the time in the universe? The stars we see now at one point didn't exist, and they won't exist in the future, but new ones will. So an eternal universe doesn't create a problem here. However, there is no reason to believe that the universe regresses infinitely. If the universe began with the big bang, it was at this point that "existence" began, so as Gregg said, basically the universe has "always" existed, without always being here.

Infidelettante

Oddly enough JTurtle the only poster I recall bringing up the question of an eternal universe is you. Why is that?

JT

Loren Pechtel

The problem with an eternal universe is that as time passes hydrogen gets converted to heavier elements. In time the supply of hydrogen will run out, no more stars.

joedad

But the universe is still there, doesn't matter what you call the stuff that makes it up, or even whether you call it a universe. The universe was dark before it was light anyway. It was still the universe, and it didn't yet have stars.

Shadowy Man

The universe may have always existed, but not in the same form. All we know is that about 13.7 billion years ago the universe changed "phase". Before that point we have no idea what it was like.

Speculations of what the universe was like before that point are fully in the realm of the theoretical at the moment.

abe smith

Some of us hazard the thought (This is not a synonym for "believe".) that the What-There-Is may be "eternal" in the sense that when "It" cycles-down to a certain "state' then "It" automatically "flips-over" and begins again.

I like this. It eliminates any need for a "Creator/(contradictory) self-started Starter"; it does away with problems about "start" and "ending"; and thus frees me to think about matters of greater pith & moment, and perhaps more accessible to examination and data-gathering....