In a conversation with prominent astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, the British physicist said what was in the cosmos before the Big Bang.
Hawking explains that this imaginary time is a curved surface like Earth, but with two extra dimensions. (AP)
The study of the Universe has always started with the Big Bang, this great explosion that occurred 13.7 billion years ago, and that gave birth to the stars and planets that continue to form.
However, a big question that has long persecuted theorists is what was there before this event?
To find an answer to this, the astrophysicist and face of "Cosmos", Neil deGrasse Tyson, spoke with the theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking on the subject, taking a categorical solution: "There was nothing".
"According to Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, time and space together form a continuity that is not flat, but curved by the energy and matter it contains," explains the British physicist, adding that, having adopted a Euclidean approach to quantum gravity, in which it replaces the "normal time for imaginary time, which behaves as a fourth direction of space".
With this proposal, Hawking explains that this imaginary time is a curved surface like the Earth, but with two extra dimensions.
Something that together with James Hartle, an American physicist, have posed a scenario "without limits", which allows to speak of "an endless closed surface, like the surface of the Earth".
In this way, the author of "Brief history of time" ensures that a relationship can be made in which the beginning of time is like the South Pole on the planet, a place where the laws of physics are concentrated, and as well as " there is nothing further south of the South Pole, there was nothing before the Big Bang. "
I used to live with a guy who was a theoretical physics student when I was at uni. Used to blow my mind every other day with some of the stuff he came out with.
It's very hard for normal people to come close to understanding half the stuff they come out with in that field of science. But then again, could it work any other way? I was happy when they proposed a big crunch followed the maximum expansion of the universe. And then came the big bang once again. Ad infinitum.
Now, those were the days!