The Universe springing into existence.” The opposite is true. There is no first moment of time,

 There’s another way in which the giant firecracker idea misleads us, because even scientists often talk about the “universe springing into existence.” Well, it didn’t, as far as we can tell. The opposite is true. There is no first moment of time, just as there is no smallest positive number. In physics we have equations and laws of nature that describe how one situation changes into another, but we have no equations that show how true nothingness turns into somethingness. So, since the universe did not spring into existence, it has always existed, though perhaps not in its current form. That’s true, even though the apparent age of the universe is not infinite, but only very large. And, even though there’s no first moment of time, we can still measure the age.