I don’t see what is the alternative. If it’s not cyclic how can there be something from nothing?
The only solution is every thing has always existed and there is no such thing as nothing
The only solution is every thing has always existed and there is no such thing as nothing
It is worth keeping in mind that reality is under no obligation to make any kind of sense to us.
I like this. It's reminds one to keep in mind that we have evolved to procreate, not necessarily understand reality accurately. Even wrong models can be useful in terms of passing along our genes.
- Blackhole Cosmology, Eternal Inflation: unscientific, dismiss reality
- Mathematical Universe: unscientific, no reality
Most of these concepts, in all their variety, share the same metaphysical premise that our observed universe was inevitable. To the extent that it appears very distinct, we simply cannot see the overall structure in which it was actually a certainty.
The Boltzmann Brain at least gets closer to facing the issue objectively. The basic reality that we experience today -- in which there's some amount of matter and charge, spacetime, in which eggs only scramble, etc. -- just happens to be so. From our point of view, something highly "improbable" happened in the distant past.
But keep in mind we are also the ones defining before and after based on our perception.
It happens that this matches our view of light propagation/etc, and our understanding of time. But that is today. Not during the big bang or "before" it.
In fact, we also know there were times where the current physical laws did not necessarily apply, shortly after the big bang for example. Currently we believe fundamental forces took time to separate. Heck, even subatomic particles took a very significant amount of time to form.
At a time when physical laws may not apply, things like "our view of the direction of time" would not have applied, either, for example, since most arrows of time boil down to the second law of thermodynamics, see, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_of_time. Which means even causality as we think about it breaks down somewhere in there.
This is hard to wrap your head around because it's so alien to how we currently perceive the universe. We want things to fit that perception.
Honestly, even before you get to "before the big the bang", we still can't explain why the universe inflated during the big bang (IE we have no idea what field did it, though we know some things about it, and just expect we will eventually discover it).