Possibility that time started at the Big Bang

Determine whether the cosmological Big Bang marks the beginning of time; specifically, establish whether temporal duration and ordering did not exist prior to the Big Bang such that time "started" at that event.

Background

The paper opens by framing a central uncertainty about the relation between time and the Big Bang: whether time itself began at that event. The author introduces McTaggart’s distinction between the A-series (future–present–past) and the B-series (earlier–later) to structure the analysis and later proposes a presentist fragmentalist framework to reconcile an ontologically privileged present with special relativity.

While the paper develops tools (such as a definition of a rate of temporal flow and a fragmentalist interpretation) to model temporal behavior near the Big Bang, the foundational question of whether time began at the Big Bang is explicitly acknowledged as unresolved at the outset.