#197 - Brian Keating - What Came Before the Big Bang & Does Time Exist?

Brian Keating joins me to explore one of the deepest unanswered questions in physics: what is time, and why does it only appear to move in one direction? Brian argues that time may not exist as a fundamental feature of reality and explains why understanding space, matter and energy does not mean we understand the universe itself.

We discuss what may have existed before the Big Bang, why something cannot truly come from nothing and how Brian’s work with the Simons Observatory could detect gravitational waves produced during the universe’s earliest moments. Brian also explains the limits of scientific proof, what dark matter really means and why films such as Interstellar remain scientifically implausible despite their attention to detail.

The conversation then turns from cosmic time to the human experience of it: mortality, family, meaning and attention. We discuss UFO disclosure, collapsing trust in institutions and whether artificial intelligence can ever reproduce the embodied human insight that allowed Einstein to transform physics. Brian argues that AI remains a tool built to serve humanity and that we must stop apologising for humanity’s greatness.

The first 100 people in the U.K. to join Brian Keating’s Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message newsletter here BrianKeating.com/peter are entered to win a 4.3-billion-year-old fragment of the early solar system— older than Earth itself, delivered to your door. Winners must live in the U.K. only due to shipping restrictions.

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TIMESTAMPS

00:00:00 - Time Doesn’t Exist

00:00:52 - Looking Outward—and Inward

00:01:41 - Why Physics Cannot Explain Time

00:04:59 - What Happened Before the Big Bang?

00:07:46 - Why Interstellar Is Scientifically Implausible

00:10:06 - Why Time Only Moves Forward

00:18:10 - Something Cannot Come From Nothing

00:21:27 - Where Does the Universe Exist?

00:23:03 - Reaching the First Trillionth of a Second

00:29:21 - Science Can Disprove, Not Prove

00:32:09 - What Dark Matter Really Means

00:38:30 - The Experiment Brian May Never Finish

00:42:03 - Detecting the Birth of the Universe

00:48:14 - Looking Inward for Meaning

00:52:15 - Why Mortality Makes Life Precious

00:54:29 - If Life Had a Forward Button

01:01:26 - UFOs, Belief and the Evidence Problem

01:12:24 - We Are Wasting a Civilisational Opportunity

01:21:03 - Why AI Couldn’t Recreate Einstein

01:32:44 - Holding a Piece of the Early Solar System

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