What Came Before The Big Bang? Thomas Hertog - #513

Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

Brian Keating

Physics, Natural Sciences, Science

4.7 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 6 September 2025

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Please join my mailing list here 👉 https://briankeating.com/list to win a meteorite 💥 In a sweeping conversation drawn from his collaboration with Stephen Hawking, Thomas Hertog explores the radical “no-boundary” theory—a vision of the cosmos with no singular beginning, evolving laws of physics, and a past that isn’t fixed until observed. Rejecting the untestable multiverse, Hertog and Hawking built a fully quantum cosmology that embeds the observer within the equations, predicting inflation and replacing anthropic guesswork with a falsifiable framework. Hertog explains how time could emerge from something deeper than the Big Bang, why constants of nature may be dynamic, and how holography hints the laws of physics themselves might fade away at the origin. He then turns to the experiments—from next-generation CMB polarization to gravitational wave backgrounds—that could confirm or refute this bold vision, challenging us to see the universe as a living, evolving system whose history we help to shape. — Key Takeaways: 00:00 Intro 01:03 Thomas’s first reaction to Hawking’s theory 03:38 Hawking’s model of the Big Bang 07:20 The no-boundary proposal 22:18 The role of conscious observers in cosmology 24:34 The wick rotation and its implications 29:29 The future of physics and experimental tests 37:57 The experimental minimum 40:04 The holographic principle 43:57 Work Thomas would like to share with Hawking 49:11 Outro — Additional resources: 📚 On the Origin of Time by Thomas Hertog: https://a.co/d/ftze4JC — ➡️ Follow me on your fav platforms: ✖️ Twitter:⁠ ⁠⁠https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating⁠ 🔔 YouTube:⁠ https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1⁠ 📝 Join my mailing list:⁠ ⁠⁠https://briankeating.com/list⁠ ✍️ Check out my blog:⁠ ⁠⁠https://briankeating.com/cosmic-musings/⁠ 🎙️ Follow my podcast:⁠ ⁠⁠https://briankeating.com/podcast⁠ — Into the Impossible with Brian Keating is a podcast dedicated to all those who want to explore the universe within and beyond the known. Make sure to follow/subscribe so you never miss an episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	The central quantity behind quantum cosmology, after all, the feel of quantum cosmology
0:05.0	is the attempt to think about the universe as a whole from a proper quantum mechanical perspective.
0:11.0	Picture this, Cambridge, 1998.
0:14.0	A young postdoc sits across from the world's most famous living physicist, Stephen Hawking.
0:19.0	The great physicist delivers words that
0:21.7	would shape both of their careers for the rest of their lives. Thomas, said Stephen,
0:27.4	the universe doesn't have a unique history. What followed was a complete paradigm shift,
0:32.6	from thinking about cosmic history as a fixed timeline to understanding it as something that
0:37.6	crystallizes only when we observe it. As Thomas puts it,
0:41.3	The past is a wave function until you're asking a question, in which case the wave function
0:46.9	crystallizes to a history. That statement was revolutionary. It implied that conscious
0:51.4	observers might retroactively select which cosmic histories become real.
0:56.4	This isn't science fiction.
0:57.9	It's Stephen Hawking's final theory.
1:00.1	Develop with his closest collaborator, Thomas Hurt.
1:02.9	Thomas, take me back to that very first conversation with Stephen Hawking about the universe, possibly not having a unique beginning or history. What was your honest,
1:12.7	emotional and intellectual reaction to that bold claim? First of all, I was just a beginning PhD student,
1:19.1	so I was flabbergasted to finally meet Hawking and discuss with it. And it was the first time I met
1:24.9	a scientist, a cosmologist, who I felt was very much driven by the great old philosophical questions and trying to mold these into modern cosmology, try to elaborate on these using modern scientific methods.
1:41.8	And to me, this felt a little bit like a homecoming.
1:45.0	I had always sort of searched for a very fundamental field in physics,
1:50.0	and here was Stephen just doing what I had dream of doing.
	...

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