Planck time is the smallest "increment" of time the human mind can conceive. It is a measure of time, not time itself.
These theorists are saying before there was time, there was time. How can time be before time became? The Standard Model says there was a beginning of space and time. And that model seems to be holding up pretty well. Yet theorists such as Hawking, Steinhardt, Borde, and Vilenkin insist time doesn't begin; space doesn't begin: They just always were. And the physical universe, by the same rule, is eternal — it just goes on forever.
But if the universe is eternal, then how did it develop its laws? You don't get lawful behavior out of an infinite regression, back to a beginning that never was....
Such an approach obviates the two greatest scientific/philosophical questions man can ask: Why are things the way they are, and not some other way? And why is there anything at all, why not nothing?
Thank you so very much for writing Texas Songwriter, and for your kind words of support!
But you last question, the question of G.W.F.Leibniz, should be pondered by every person who asks these questions. Leibniz was a 17th century mathematician and philospher who asked, "If there is no God, then why is there anything at all?" He did not have the advantage of the Einsteins contribution, nor Eddington, nor Hubble, nor Wilson and Penzias, nor COBE, nor WMAP, nor much of the other empirical findings that scientifically support the truth of a beginning. He propagated the Principle of Sufficient Reason. He reasoned that nothing happened without sufficient reason......a permutation of the Law of Causality. Everything in the universe is contingent, and thus one must look beyond the universe for that sufficient cause. That sufficient Cause is God whose existence is only explained by reference to Him. That is to say God is a metaphysically necessary Being.
These are not easy topics but if one is interested in truth one must first admit metaphysical truth (as opposed to the physicalist, atheist, materialist) such as God, the soul, sentience, mental processes, abstract ideas, all which must be denied by the materialist.