In relation to where the Milky Way is currently, do we know where exactally the Big Bang happened?

Question

Judging by where the galaxies are moving shouldn't we be able to calculate that point where they all exploded outward from?

And since everything exploded outward from that point there should be nothing there right now right?

Answer 1

As weird as this sounds, there wasn't any one point in space where the big bang occured...if space and time were born at the momengt of the big bang, then all of space itself was contained in that primordial tiny pinpoint. That's why when we detect the radiation from the big bang, we pick it up from ALL DIRECTIONS.
It literally happenned EVERYWHERE...according to the theory. There's another sub-exlanation to this called "Inflation Theory", which suggests that space expanded from a pinpoint into the size it is today pretty much instantly after the moment of the BB....while all the visible matter we see in the known universe only expanded away virtually at light-speed initially.

Answer 2

Your question implies that you think of the big bang as a conventional explosion with materials expanding from a central point.

It is, however, an explosion OF SPACE, not an explosion in space.

According to the standard models there was no space and time before the big bang. There was not even a "before" to speak of. So, the Big Bang was very different from any explosion we are accustomed to and it does not need to have a central point.

If the big bang were an ordinary explosion in an already existing space we would be able to look out and see the expanding edge of the explosion with empty space beyond. Instead we see back towards the big bang itself and detect a faint background glow from the hot primordial gases of the early universe. This Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation is uniform in all directions. This tells us that it is not matter which is expanding outwards from a point but rather, it is space itself which expands evenly.

The fact that the universe is expanding uniformly would not rule out the possibility that there is some denser, hotter place that might be called the centre, but careful studies of the distribution and motion of galaxies confirm that it is homogeneous on the largest scales we can see, with no sign of a special point to call the centre.

Answer 3

The thing about the Big Bang is that it didn't happen in one specific point in space; rather it happened at every specific point in space. The best analogy that I've heard is that to a surface of a balloon. If you were to paint points (galaxies) on the surface of a deflated balloon, and if you were to begin inflating the balloon, all of the points would begin expanding away from each other at a uniform rate, but there would be no single point on the balloon that you could say is the center. This is why multi-dimensional models, such as string theory and M-theory are at the fore-front of cosmological thought in modern physics.

Answer 4

The big bang is not an explosion from some point in space that scatters debris into an existing point; rather, the whole universe itself is expanding. In other words the big bang took place everywhere.

To give you an analogy, imagine drawing a bunch of galaxies on the surface of a balloon. You have now created a two dimensional universe which exists on the surface of the balloon. When you blow the balloon-up the distance between galaxies on the balloon expands. So, to a two dimensional being on the balloon, it looks as though all galaxies are receding.

Answer 5

There are many misconceptions surrounding the Big Bang theory. For example, we tend to imagine a giant explosion. Experts however say that there was no explosion; there was (and continues to be) an expansion. Rather than imagining a balloon popping and releasing its contents, imagine a balloon expanding: an infinitesimally small balloon expanding to the size of our current universe.

Another misconception is that we tend to image the singularity as a little fireball appearing somewhere in space. According to the many experts however, space didn't exist prior to the Big Bang. Back in the late '60s and early '70s, when men first walked upon the moon, "three British astrophysicists, Steven Hawking, George Ellis, and Roger Penrose turned their attention to the Theory of Relativity and its implications regarding our notions of time. In 1968 and 1970, they published papers in which they extended Einstein's Theory of General Relativity to include measurements of time and space.1, 2 According to their calculations, time and space had a finite beginning that corresponded to the origin of matter and energy."3 The singularity didn't appear in space; rather, space began inside of the singularity. Prior to the singularity, nothing existed, not space, time, matter, or energy - nothing. So where and in what did the singularity appear if not in space? We don't know. We don't know where it came from, why it's here, or even where it is. All we really know is that we are inside of it and at one time it didn't exist and neither did we.

Answer 6

You are thinking of universal expansion in terms of motion. In fact, something else is going on.

SPACE itself is expanding. You could stand ANYWHERE in the universe and everything would seem to be moving away from you.

Which isn't to say that things aren't moving in addition to space expanding, but you can see how the expansion of space adds a wrinkle to things. Because everything seems to be moving away, we have no way of telling whether things are also physically moving or by how much, except by watching them for a very, very long time and comparing them to other moving things.

As a matter of fact, given that we are essentially stationary viewers on a universal scale, we don't even always have a good idea how far away things are, except by measuring how fast they're moving away. So in that sense a lot of our distance estimates may turn out to be way off, if there's a lot of motion in addition to expansion.

To make matters worse, we can't even see the whole universe! You would think that since nothing moves faster than light that we'd recieve light from everything in the universe, but that pesky expansion of space gets in the way again. Because space itself is expanding, even light has to essentially travel 'upstream' to get to us. We can see things about 14 billion light years in all directions, but many estimates of the actual size of the universe are ten times that size. So we can't even guess where the big bang occurred by measuring the centre from the edges.

Some physicists argue as well that the location of the big bang is actually EVERYWHERE. Since during the time of the big bang it took up ALL of space it is therefore meaningless to suggest there are parts of space that were not 'in' the big bang. There are other ways of looking at the universe where this kind of argument makes a lot of sense, actually.

From another point of view it's nonsense, however. Even balloon analogies fail... if expansion is like a balloon then (like a balloon) there is a smaller, original volume. If expansion occurs then there must be a place from which it is occurring and therefore an original, unexpanded spot. Even if this origin is not specifically where the big bang occurred or even if it is not inside our universe, it must exist SOMEWHERE. Even if we can never find this spot. But maybe that's all muddying the water a bit.

I'll let you decide for yourself what makes sense to you! Hope that helps!

Answer 7

We don't know for sure if there was a big bang. Since the big bang originates with a metaphysical singlarity, there are a number of different interpretations of what the big bang might have been and they have no idea where it may have occurred since there is no point of reference to base the universe's movement on. The orginator of the theory, no doubt, regrets having entitled it Big Bang.

Answer 8

the large Bang became a lot less a bang and larger a ramification. That boom became of a singularity, all that existed became at that aspect and prolonged to create the Universe we word now. subsequently, the large Bang befell everywhere - there's no "centre" to the Universe (keep in mind the Cosmolgical idea - the Universe is isotropic and homogeneous).

Answer 9

We did not explode out from a point into space, so no. The big bang happened where you are right now, and it happened where I am right now. Theoretically it was an expansion of space itself.

Answer 10

It is impossible to guess where the big bang happened, because every point in space moves away from each other, they don't all go in one direction. The best way to replicate this motion is to get a balloon and draw dots all over it, as you fill the balloon with air, you'll see every dot move away from each other.