what caused the "big bang"? in the first place in space?

Answer 1

Here is simply what science said:

In the tiniest fraction of time, too short to be measured, the universe was born by a huge explosion called the big bang which was approx. 13 billion years ago.

Reason: It was an enormous amount of energy packed into an unimaginably small space, but in a fraction of a second the universe inflated. it grew from smaller than a pinprick to larger than a galaxy. The universe has been explanding ever since.

NOW ...
I believe that science is the tool to discover God's work, although many people would disagree, but this is what i believe.
This universe must must must have been created, because where this matter in this pinprick would come from, if you went before the big bang .. what was there .. where is all matter .. how it all come to place .. how it all worked together .. Science will never answer this even in a million years.

Hope that helped ...

Answer 2

My goodness there is soooo much scientific illiteracy in the other answers here! >:-(

First, a quick comment to CMDII, whose answer was particularly ill-informed and factually lacking. Why is it that True Believers and science deniers such as yourself ask "what caused the big bang" as some justification that your god created the universe? What caused YOUR god to exist?

Now on to the original question, which seems more sincere. The first thing I need to point out about the big bang is that it was not an explosion INTO space, but an explosion OF space. It was not the case that all matter & energy started at some point somewhere and then spread out. Rather, all of physical space itself started out as a point. It just happened to have a lot of energy in it, and as space expanded, that energy thinned out, eventually congealling into matter which in turn congealed into stars, galaxies, etc.

So where did all of it come from? Well, nothing. If you add up all the mass & regular energy in the universe, then add in all the gravitational energy (which is negative from regular energy), the sum total of the universe comes to...zero. So even the big bang did not violate any physical laws against the creation of energy or mass.

The currently accepted model of the big bang, called inflationary theory, is our most accurate model of the universe. It has been able to predict with amazing accuracy the density, distribution of mass & energy, and chemical makeup of our universe. It has also been quite successful in modelling earlier states of our universe, which we can verify by looking into deep space. (When you look a billion light-years into space, you are also looking a billion years into the past, since it took that long for the light to travel to us from there.) As such, the inflationary theory of cosmology should be given due attention with regards to its prediction of how our universe came about.

How exactly that occurred is a bit too long and technical for this forum, but I would HIGHLY recommend the book "The Inflationary Universe" by Alan Guth, one of the main developers of inflationary theory. It is written at an educated layman level (no physics formulas or such) but does an excellent job of explaining inflationary theory, its predictions, and the tests & observations used to confirm it. The chapter on our universe's origin is extremely interesting. Check your local library for a copy, or get it from Amazon at the link below.

Answer 3

The big bang is a theory. So, no one really knows what the cause is (was). But there is more and more evidence for a "center" of the universe that everything seems to be moving away from, implying an "explosion-type" phenomenon that caused radial expansion of the known/visible universe.

Along the same lines, people's belief in religion is based on faith. There is no factual evidence for the existence of a God (wow, I'm going to "burn" for this one). But, there is also no evidence for the lack of existence of a God.

Addendum to a previously posted answer:

To address the answer "If you add up all the mass & regular energy in the universe, then add in all the gravitational energy (which is negative from regular energy), the sum total of the universe comes to...zero." --> This is a false statement. Gravitational energy is not "negative from regular energy." In fact, with the inclusion of general-relativistic considerations, such limitations may prevent measuring the geometry of space-time (which includes gravitational forces) in negative energy regimes. This just means that there is no "negative energy."

Answer 4

The Big Bang Theory is currently the dominant scientific explanation for the origin of the universe. It was first proposed in 1927 by a Belgian priest named George Lemaître.
We found a collection of sites about the Big Bang theory in a Yahoo! Astrophysics subcategory called Universal Origins by searching on "big bang." This mind-boggling array of resources proved a little too scientific, so we tried to find a simpler place to start.

A fascinating physics study module called Violence in the Cosmos provided us with some Big Bang basics:

Ten to twenty billion years ago, the universe consisted of a compact ball of hydrogen -- protons, neutrons, electrons, and their anti-particles -- plus radiation. There were no differentiated planets, stars, suns, galaxies.

Five billion years ago, the compact hydrogen soup blasted apart with huge force, matter was hurled in all directions, and the universe doubled in size. This expansion of the universe is still going on.

The blast caused a major decrease in the density and temperature of the universe after which no new particles could be formed. Then the particle wars began. Particles and anti-particles fought it out in a frenzy of self-destruction. The universe was left with a greatly reduced collection of positively-charged nuclei and negatively-charged electrons in a vast plasma soup.

Although plasma (ionized gas) rarely occurs on Earth's electrically neutral surface, 99% of the matter of the Universe still exists in a plasma state.

The Big Bang produced the light elements hydrogen and helium. Heavier elements are usually produced in the violent processes associated with the death of stars.
Despite later discoveries by astronomer Edwin Hubble and Nobel Prize-winning scientists Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson that appear to support Lemaître's theory, the theory remains controversial and alternative explanations for the origin of the universe abound

Answer 5

Ok, What I am about to say will startle you. Let look at an answer that some scientists will say. This answer will go something like this.
" There was a large source of Combustable material that for some reason collapsed in on itself causing abuild up of heat which caused an exploion. That is the big bang."

I am not saying this is the only explanation out there but it is one.
Now, there is one flaw in any of the scientific answers. That is "What caused the cause of the big bang?" Every sicentific answer has a cause but no one can answer how the cause occured. It only leads to more and more mystery.
The one True and correct answer which leaves no mystery, "none". It is the one answer that most sicentist stear away from because it is the only answer that give a final conclusion that can not be logically disputed except by ignoring the posibility or because of disbelief. This answer is

---->"GOD"<-----
"GOD caused it to happen, because he wanted to create and ultimately create you and me."

An answer with finality.

Answer 6

Actually, the most recent theory is that "Big Bangs" creating new universes occur all the time when parallel universes rub up against each other.

Answer 7

Other than speculative suppositions about 11 dimensional froths of bubbly cosmonium, theories of the universe invariable only deal with the time during which our universe has existed. Like Zeno's foot race, they approach ever closer to, but never quite reaching, time t=0. The simple answer then is, it is not known.

Answer 8

Nobody really knows. We do know that many stellar bodies explode when certain conditions are met. Apparently a singularity containing all the matter and energy in the universe is not stable. Good for us!

Answer 9

No build up of gas and engery.

Theory states that infinate "points" of energy will form in nothing, the point became unstable and released this enegery and the Universe was made.

Answer 10

I have often wondered that and have questioned that theory. How can they even think to guess, to even guess, that is the creation of the universe as we know it today? How could we know how the universe was created from this spec of dust? I think it's conceded to pretend to know the origin of the universe just because there is no one to disprove that theory.