Time MINI mini series Part IV: Time and the Big Bang

When did time actually begin? Some argue that time is infinite and others argue that it is finite.
Others argue whether the Big Bang is where it all began or if time existed prior to this event. The latest in the field of brane cosmology explains The Big Bang as an occurrence of two giant membranes colliding, thus birthing our universe. Perhaps the best explanation, in my opinion, is from none other than Steven Hawking. He discovered time within our universe began with the Big Bang.

In A Brief History of Time and elsewhere, Hawking says that even if time did not begin with the Big Bang and there were another time frame before the Big Bang, no information from events then would be accessible to us, and nothing that happened then would have any effect upon the present time-frame.

Scientists have come to some agreement on descriptions of events that happened 10−35 seconds after the Big Bang, but generally agree that descriptions about what happened before one Planck time (5 × 10−44 seconds) after the Big Bang will likely remain pure speculation.

Time MINI mini series Part 4: Time and the "Big Bang"

Little is known about the earliest moments of the universe's history

Scientists have come to some agreement on descriptions of events that happened 10−35 seconds after the Big Bang, but generally agree that descriptions about what happened before one Planck time (5 × 10−44 seconds) after the Big Bang will likely remain pure speculation.

Stephen Hawking is perhaps the most famous cosmologist today studying time.
Upon occasion, he has stated that time actually began with the Big Bang, and that questions about what happened before the Big Bang are irrelevant.

Even if time did not begin with the Big Bang and there was another time frame before the Big Bang, no information from events then would be accessible to us, and nothing that happened then would have any effect upon the present time-frame.

Some argue that our measurable, quantified “time” concerns the elements beyond the visible universe.

Afterall, there may also be parts of the universe well beyond what can be observed in principle.

Some theories, each of which are untested hypotheses, include the Hartle-Hawking boundary condition in which the whole of space-time is finite; the Big Bang does represent the limit of time, but without the need for a singularity (one specific point where the event occurred).
Brane cosmology is another story. The word “brane” refers to a giant oscillating membrane believed to house individual universes. Brane cosmology models contend that this "inflation" of the universe is due to the movement of branes.

The pre-big bang model; the ekpyrotic model, in which the Big Bang is the result of a collision between branes; and the cyclic model, a variant of the ekpyrotic model in which collisions occur periodically between them.
Chaotic inflation occurs: in which inflation events start here and there in a random quantum-gravity foam, each leading to a bubble universe expanding from its own big bang. This my dear friends- is a segway into theories of parallel universes.

Time MINI mini series Part 3: The Arrow of time

I could be sued for reproducting this picture. I know that. I am usually smarter than that. BUT I dont intend to redistribute it for money blah blah blah.... I just thought it was an amazing way to illustrate our discussion.

It’s not exactly cupid’s arrow, but time DOES indeed have a direction. The past lies behind us: fixed and unchangeable, while the future lies ahead and is not necessarily fixed. When we gaze into the universe we absorb this principal since we can only see as far into the universe as light can travel.

It is in essence- looking back in time.

A bit of physics for you to show how this is present in the different ideological branches:

The main areas of physics suggesting that time is an arrow include: the Second law of thermodynamics, which states that entropy must increase over time; the cosmological arrow of time, which points away from the Big Bang, and the radiative arrow of time, caused by light only traveling forwards in time. In particle physics, there is also the weak arrow of time.

The thought that time is a topological form is indeed strange, but very prevalent in Big Bang cosmology…

The "visible" universe

In Big Bang Cosmology, the observable universe consists of the galaxies and other matter that we can in principle observe from Earth in the present day, because light (or other signals) from those objects has had time to reach us since the beginning of the cosmological expansion. The portion of it that we (humans, from the perspective of planet Earth) are able to observe is determined by whether or not the light and other signals originating from distant objects has had time to arrive at our point of observation (planet Earth).
The edge of the observable universe is now located about 46.5 billion light-years away
Estimates of the matter content of the observable universe indicate that it contains on the order of 1080 (10 to the 80Th) atoms. The vast majority of the energy density is contributed by dark matter and dark energy.