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

Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

Sep 06, 2025•54 min

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Episode description

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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.

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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