InformationCosmology
There is no beginning or end of event time in theory. Infinity events ago in event time maps about 12 billion years ago classical time. There is no before the big bang in event time. I suppose in some abstract sense one might speculate about space and time existing without matter and energy or events, but then we are stuck with a very ugly singularity, or a mini bang part of some larger big bang.....
http://synergy.xanthusinc.com/~jim/images/cooling.gif
Say we have a gazillion events in the last 6 billion years, there would be another gazillion in the preceding 3 billion, another gazillion in the 1.5 billion before that. Each time you go 1/2 way back, another gazillion. Like Zeno, you can never get to the beginning.
It is an error is to presume that matter and energy are conserved intrinsically and must have always existed. Quantum Theory shows that energy conservation is emergent, not fundamental. We perceive conservation because systems that lose information (energy) are generally gone. But there is good evidence that inflation occurs, organization increases and information, as relative energy is manufactured logically not physically. Measurement of the cosmic background microwave radiation has ruled out all the proposed non-inflationary models.
Systems in general tend to go to equilibrium. The equilibrium them becomes a substrate for new organization. In a information ecology, there is a competition for substrate, like in EvolutionaryGameTheory. Self synergy of protons made matter rather than antimatter prevalent in the last epoch leading to present expansion of uniform space (ZPE).
http://synergy.xanthusinc.com/~jim/images/InfoCycle.gif
To understand information (energy) synthesis, think of the Mandelbrot set being generated by discrete computation. The system that generates it is finite, but the output is infinite variety (finite at any point in time). Fredkin proved that computation requires no energy in the limit. Quantum communications has the properties of general purpose computing which can propagate forever (or not) without consuming energy.
There is no limit to the information (energy) that might have existed, or might exist in the future, it is only our window on the universe in this epoch, which manifests a particular mass, apparently, of about 10^40 kg. The inflation occurring now, I expect, will be manifest in a future epoch.
Indeed expansion and cooling is increasing, what is slowing down is all the clocks, events are slowing down. The universe is getting colder and slower. The universe has cooled from millions of degrees down to 3 degrees in just 12 billion years. In a hundred billion years, quantum events will be happening on a large scale with magnetic monopoles filling the role of electrons. In a billion billion years most free energy will be gone and only one giant consondate will exists where the speed of light is less that one mile an hour. But because time between events has no meaning, denizens of these worlds will not feel cold or slow, any more than we do in this epoch of existence.
We cannot know how many epochs have come and gone before us. We only know that things were must hotter and faster a long time ago. We cannot see back to the first event or know if there was one. As far as we can tell, at any time there was always a gazillion events before that in the potentially infinite events in the big bang.
Sounds like a singularity you say? No. Event time need have no beginning. Our mapping of 12 billion years ago to minus infinity events is a mathematical construct, not a feature of nature. Our notion of time is arbitrary.
http://synergy.xanthusinc.com/~jim/images/ZPE.GIF
Aether as vacuum energy is consistent with big bang generated ZPE. QED predicts a vacuum energy of nearly 3000 MHz, which was confirmed by Lamb in 1947 to 8 places. I would think it should be easy to calculate the energy density based on that, but apparently not. I have said before that there is controversy over the value of the vacuum energy from zero to nearly infinity and most people besides myself don't consider it to be ordinary energy from the big bang. Wheeler pegged it at about 200 GeV about 30 years ago, Most estimates are between 175 and 200 GeV/cm^3. I've speculated the correct answer is between 186 and 188 from the sort of particle activity we see around this window. The simplest, and I think most relevant way of estimating it is by measuring it's permitivity and conductivity and the resulting speed of light propagation. The Lamb shift and Casmir effect measurements are more direct but are difficult. Most recently it has been associates with the cosmological constant, dark matter and dark energy in dozens of refereed articles and calculated from expansion rates of the universe.
A basic property of the "zero point" is that we don't see it, so I guess it is not too surprising we cannot measure it confidently.
There are many good reasons to think it comes from the big bang: 1. where else? 2. we see a cooling expanding universe, suggesting extraordinarily high energy existed in the past. 3. such energy is missing from the observed spectrum below the CMBR.
There are those who suggest the big bang came from vacuum energy rather than the other way around. That makes no sense. There was, in theory, no space and time before the big bang. The ZPE is clearly a property of space. It is electromagnetic energy, we should expect that it comes from somewhere.
I have answered at length why we don't see it, it is the lowest which we can only measure relative to, it's long signals overlap such that they seem to cancel each other in the macrocosm, it is so uniform that is is white, featureless noise. But is has a real effect on the quantum scale recognized, at least in part, by quantum theory. I believe the ZPE is the missing spectra of red shifted energy older than the CMBR goes from the energy of the Planck action up to the cosmic microwave background radiation, which though nearly uniform, have enough variation that we do see it, however, as time progresses and the universe expands, more and more of it becomes red shifted into the invisible ZPE range.
If the simple inverse relation we see in the measurable radiation energy density from gamma rays through microwave continues into the ZPE as we might expect, we can calculate the expected energy density easily, infinity. But accounting for discrete events, it becomes finite as single plank action waves are continually red shifted out of existence.
Physics seems to be at a turning point as more and more scientists are attributing gravity and inertia to the electromagnetic ZPE. e.g. http://www.calphysics.org/research.html as I have been saying that for over 25 years. Assuming that is correct, it must have an effective energy density close to that of ordinary matter in order that it manifest the properties that we see. This is the root in my confidence that measurements in that area are most likely correct.
If we sit around a table and blow at a balloon in the center with equal force, we will hold the balloon at the center. The emerging solution for why a body at rest tends to remain at rest is that it is being bombarded by huge numbers of low energy waves from all directions which hold it firmly in place. Whatever low frequencies (ZPE range) the body can absorb are equal from all directions keeping the body in the same place. If we apply extra energy to one side of the object it accelerates, but at any velocity it sees the frequencies it is able to receive in the same amounts from all directions. It is the same because the energy red shifted out of its frequency absorption range is the same as that blue shifted into its absorption range.
Nice explanation.
A comment: A body at rest tends to stay at rest means/because: A body at rest stays at rest, because it isn't absorbing any unbalanced forces. Until it does, at which point, it is at rest no more. Yes?
This sounds remarkably to me like: Everything being equal, everything stays equal.
---StarPilot
Well I guess thats true. As you said, a body at rest stays at rest. Newtons 1st law, no? Well, in a proportionate, if everything is equal it will stay equal, unless acted upon by an outside force, in which it becomes an unbalenced force/unequal.