i don't suppose time would exist outside of the universe, if what you mean by outside of the universe as being nothing. that is what i meant.
time exists in unison with space....Einstien called it spacetime. it doesn't seem that you can really have one with out the other.
gravity is a consequence of spacetime being curved by mass. the geometry of spacetime is curved in such a way that massive objects are brought together or towards other massive objects. this curving of spacetime is a property that massive objects have on spacetime.
so if there ever was or is such a thing as nothing outside the universe or at some infinitesimal instant "before" the big bang this nothing would really be nothing, no spacetime, no mass, no energy just nothing. but yes once space became existential then time would also be right there.
what interests me about the idea of nothing before the big bang and or the nothing that the universe is expanding "into" (quotations around into and "before" because it seems hard to understand how something expands into nothing when there is nothing to expand into) is that one can think of nothing as being a kind of barrier to the existance of something especially if one stipulates that all there is "is" nothing.
if the uncertainty principle is a valid physical law when there is no universe, just nothing then "something" could very briefly flit into existance virtually out of nothing. how such a something would then over ride the brief time allowed for its existance to go on to become a universe with respect to the uncertainty principle is hard to say.

regards tim

• That is one of the theories of universe creation - yanniru - March 5, 2003 - 21:27 UTC
  • That is one of the theories of universe creation - sagefr0g - March 5, 2003 - 22:10 UTC