For those who want a short version of why time can't be infinite in a QM universe
http://www.einstein-online.info/spotlights/path_integralsThat formulation does special things to time
The replacement might seem artificial and implausible. In a way, it corresponds to transforming the time coordinate into just another space coordinate. Fact is, it makes the Feynman recipe give the right answers. There's even an exact proof, found by two mathematical physicists, Konrad Osterwalder from Switzerland and the German Robert Schrader: They proved a theorem showing that the properties of a quantum theory formulated in the space-time of special relativity can indeed be reconstructed exactly by using the Feynman recipe on an imaginary-time version of that same space-time.
So now your question is could any of that be done on an infinite volume of space and an infinite time.
The answer is obvious .... NO because the path integrals become unbounded in the sample given above in the link the particle is now going from infinite point A to infinite point B via infinite points in between and the description is meaningless.
So under path integrals Infinite time = Infinite space and it is a standard question asked routinely by people studying and thinking about QM
http://physics.stackexchange.com/questio...mensional-spaceNote this echo's back to the particle-in-a-box you start out with in QM (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particle_in_a_box)
You have to define a box or no calculations are possible.
In other words QM is explicit you have to define a finite space or a finite time (and defining one defines the other) as stipulated by path integral mathematics.
So unless you are arguing to crush QM out of existence at the beginning of the universe or you are arguing that path integral function is wrong then our universe must be finite in size and time.
The CMBR creates the real problem because it was there at the beginning of the universe we have to be able to create a path integral on it and that has implications .... for some it may also explain why the CMBR becomes the "universe observer".
You can go much deeper than this but I think that is sufficient to show you the problem.
Rede since you are the scientist try Lubos explaining it
http://motls.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/edward-witten-and-ivarepsilon.html ... he gives you multiple prescriptions to the problem and they all end the same way.
I should say that those who don't like science but understand it usually try to explain it away like the philosopher Mortimer J. Adler did
http://rogercostello.wordpress.com/2007/07/23/is-time-finite-or-infinite-time-before-the-big-bang/
Our present techniques of observation and measurement, and the technical facilities they employ, do not permit us to penetrate the past beyond the time, some fifteen to twenty billion years ago, when the big bang occurred.
What is being said here is not that past time is limited (finite rather than infinite), but only that our knowledge of past time is limited — limited to a time beyond which our observations and measurements cannot go. Time may extend back infinitely beyond that initial explosion of matter, out of which the present shape of the cosmos has developed, but unless some radical alteration in our techniques and instruments of observation and measurements occurs, we will never be able to penetrate the veil that hides the infinite past from us.
From a janitor perspective that is absolute garbage because I am not a philosopher and I have absolutely no data or any reason to even make a guess if time extends backwards and well may I ask does GOD have a GOD to a religious person.
The answer to both questions is the same ... the question is stupid or at least not answerable.
