Hi CRAIG, 
 
 On 13 May 98 you wrote to me and said:
 
 PF>> there were no black holes or neutron stars before the big bang. There
 PF>> was nothing except a dot containing the universe because space and time
 PF>> didn't exist yet.
 CM> Hold on, there's no way that we can know what happened or was here
 CM> before the big bang.  
If you go to ASTRONOMY echo you will find people who are more knowledgeable, 
patient and better at explaining the almost unexplainable than I. Nothing was 
before the big bang because time began to exist at the Big Bang. There was no 
`before'.
 CM> Perhaps the universe collapses upon itself, bangs
 CM> and starts all over or may be some thing different.  
That was considered a possibility but evidence is gathering that this 
universe cannot do that. There is probably not enough mass to arrest and 
reverse the expansion. Understanding and knowledge of this is growing 
pidly.
 CM> If we were just a
 CM> dot what was beyond the borders of the dot?  Did it have time volume
 CM> excetra?  
Nothing could be `just beyond' the dot in the same way nothing can be beyoned 
this universe. the dot was not sitting in space, because what was to become 
space was contained in the dot. Don't expect to get your head around this 
without a lot of study and effort. Because we are three dimensional 
creatures, it is very difficult to understand four dimensions. A starting 
point would be to imagine being a two dimensional creature trying to 
comprehend three dimensions.
 
 CM> I don't know and have yet to find a paper that tried to define
 CM> the mind boggling complexity of such a statement. 
They are there. Get Stephen Hawking's writings. I can netmail you some stuff 
if you are serious about trying to understand it.
 CM> It is probably the
 CM> hardest problem to tackle other than explaining what is time.
The human brain is almost incapable of understanding four dimensions. A lot 
of the understanding is available through mathematics only. I have a feeling 
that there are people who understand it well enough to know what time is. 
_patrick_                 (email: patrick.ford@amiga.gen.nz) 
             Team *Amiga*
--- Spot 1.3a #1649
(3:772/235.3)
---------------