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?
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