Do you think their was a pusher in the beginning that lead to a chain and reaction catalyst in the universe?

@Psychoticenlightment: It could potentially be a time loop, but personally I think that the observable universe is either embedded in a much larger and older space, and/or exists as an abstraction on some more fundamental substrate.

@Psychoticenlightment: We can't see outside, that's the problem. Once gravity wave detectors are really good, it should be possible to see back to about 1 second after the Big Bang, but that's as far as we'll ever get in terms of observation.

I've heard speculation that gravity might be able to propagate in a theoretical higher-dimensional space (explaining why it's so weak compared to the other forces), in which case gravity wave detectors could potentially observe objects in parallel universes, but I don't know how much stock I put in that.

@crossproduct: [quote]... it should be possible to see back to about 1 second after the Big Bang[/quote]

I thought we could already see further back than that, to a few (billionths) nano/pico seconds.

@suzie1960: Optically, we can't see further back than 380,000 years because before that everything was an opaque plasma. Everything before that is currently theoretical.

@crossproduct: I didn't mean 'see' in the optical sense. I was thinking of how far back the theories take us.

@suzie1960: in that sense, yes, it goes back to the point where quantum gravity becomes important AFAIK. Physics up until that point is pretty solid, so it's probably accurate, but the universe is full of surprises (like people discovering inflation, for example).