If, at some point in the past, space ceased to exist, then there would not at that point have been any place to put anything, whether matter or energy. Indeed, neither matter nor energy can exist in the absence of space and time. Thus, Hawking, Ellis, and Penrose’s singularity proofs (interpreted as a realistic depiction of the history and spatial geometry of the universe) implied that a material universe of infinite density began to exist some finite time ago starting from nothing—or at least from nothing spatial, temporal, material, or physical.
