If the big bang theory is correct what existed before the big bang?

Answer 1

Little bang maybe !!

Answer 2

Tut tut! This is one of those questions you're not supposed to ask!

I watched a TV programme once where a couple of scientists were answering questions asked by an audience. One of the people in the audience asked a question very similar to yours and they simply shrugged the question away and said 'it was off the topic', which meant they didn't have the answer.

The problem with trying to explain the origins is that you end up with an even bigger problem to explain what happened before that point in time - whether your explanation is God or the Big Bang the question of what happened before is always going to materialise.

To protect their theories, scientists make even more amazing suggestions such as saying there have been an infinite number of universes and that these are continuously expanding and contracting. If you believe that - you'll believe anything.


Basically we (as the public) ask them questions and the scientists are giving us answers and not necessarily the correct ones. It's a bit like asking people on Yahoo Answers what the meaning of life is. Lots of people can make theories and some of them can be so convincing that you feel it is 'the' answer.

So I'm not going to give a satisfactory answer - because there isn't one yet. And I don't believe in lying to people to make them feel good and think that we're making progress towards understanding our universe and our origins.

Science has helped us to advance our technology significantly over the last 3 centuries. We have learned a lot through chemistry, biology and physics. But science has a tendency to trip up when it tries to explain these bigger problems. I mean, how do you go about measuring the universe, which is infinite, when all we have are finite resources available.

I just want to point out here that I am not religious and so I do not support the story that says God created the world in 7 days and then created Adam and Eve. But I also don't believe in the solutions our scientists offer. Perhaps the answer lies in philosophy or perhaps the problems of the universe are so vast that we will never have anything at our disposal to solve them.

I'm sorry to disappoint you.

Answer 3

Space has existed for billions of years. It does not have a time in years as time only exists for the human race.

The standard model of the Big Bang theory proposes that the universe emerged from a singularity, at time zero, and describes all that has happened since 0.0001 (10-4) of a second after this moment of creation. The temperature of the universe at that time was 1,000 billion degrees Kelvin (1012) and had a density that of nuclear matter, 1014 grams per cubic centimetre (the density of water is 1 gram per cubic centimetre). Under these extreme conditions, the photons of the 'background' radiation carry so much energy that they are interchangeable with particles. Photons create pairs of particles and antiparticles which annihilate one another to make energetic photons in a constant interchange of energy in line with Einstein's equation E = mc2. Because of a small asymmetry in the way the fundamental interactions work, slightly more particles were produced than antiparticles - about one in a billion more particles than antiparticles.

It is necessary to understand that the Big Bang did not begin as a huge explosion within the universe. The explosion created the universe. A popular misconception is that it happened within the universe and that it is expanding through it.

Einstein's Theory of Relativity. This is a theory of spacetime, offering a complete mathematical description of the universe. Relativity, along with Quantum Mechanics, is considered to be the most complete and accurate theory ever devised, mathematically describing such diverse phenomenon as the constant speed of light and the formation of black holes. Einstein's equations tell us - apart from many other things - that the universe is expanding, and that by going back in time there must have been a time when all the galaxies were very close together. And further back when all the stars must have been touching each another, merging to make one great fireball as hot as the inside of a star at 15 million degrees Kelvin (Kelvin is absolute zero temperature). Einstein's equations actually go further back than that, to a time when all the matter and energy of the universe emerged from a single point of zero size, a singularity. This is how the Big Bang theory describes the birth of the universe.

Answer 4

This is a complex question, so, let's first remove any religious, or philosophical models from the equation.
Next, the theory makes the grave assumption that all things are moving outward from the same point in space, which happens to be OUR perspective. But, in order to validate the theory, we would have to know where the 'center of the universe' is located...and we don't. We may be seeing only one of many streams of motion. If that's the case, then we can throw the Big Bang Theory out the window. But, if we are seeing the ONLY stream of motion, ie: all things are moving away from the same point, then there is another problem: The theory implies that, at one point of time, all matter in the Universe was compressed into a single space as small as the period at the end of this sentence.
Which gets us to the next issue: You can't teach algebra to a dog. It is not wired by Nature to comprehend algebra. In the same light, we are not wired to comprehend beyond a certain level of understanding and this concept, of the compression of all matter (including 'dark matter')to a miniscule point, is one of those things that are beyond theoretical comprehension. Easy to theorize...impossible to comprehend. So, let's say it wasn't one teeny-tweeny point. Let's say everything compressed to a more comnprehendable space that was, let's say, 50 light years across. What caused that? Based on theoretical models, once things expand to a certain reach, they will contract and the "bang" will occur again.
Others, here, have said that what happened before the Big Bang is irrelevant and I think it is relevant, although we will only ever get "theoretically" close to understanding it. But, everything is everything. Everything is connected in time and space and what we have today is a direct result of what happened to whatever existed before. If someone could go back and change what existed before, then what would exist now, if anything, would be different than what we are experiencing. Good, thought-provoking question...

Answer 5

Although its a theory, however many things in the present suggests the Big Bang incident. Theoritically nothing existed before Big Bang. None from the periodical table. None of the nature's Four forces. Not even electron, Proton, neutron.

All the answer would be given by String theory. We have to wait for it. Coz our brains are too limited to think beyond certain parameters.

Answer 6

We can define the universe as everything there is, so in that case there is nothing outside of it. We also say that space and time both started at the Big Bang and therefore there was nothing before it.

Another definition for the universe is the observable universe - which is the part of it that we can technically see. We cannot know what is outside of that (since we can't observe it), but we think that physics works the same everywhere and so we think that it should be very similar to the observable universe. We actually think that the universe might be infinite in extent, and so goes on forever, even though we can only see a finite part of it.

We can speculate in meta-physics or in religion about what was before the Big Bang, but again, we cannot use science to tell anything about it as physics as we understand it breaks down at that point.

Answer 7

Simply put:
Matter gets sucked into black holes, which inevitably collide and feed off one another. When all the matter has been sucked in and there is nothing left for the final black hole there is a whopping great big bang and the matter is thrown out in its raw form. Then the whole process begins a new; atoms, gases, planets, stars, black holes. So its not a big bang; its more like “The Big Bang – Again”

Just don’t wait around for the next one.

Consider the time scale though, just for a second; kind of puts a lifetime in perspective eh.

Answer 8

The real answer is we don't know.

Cosmologists and astro-physics believe that everything was created as a consequence of the big bang. That is to say space itself with its dimensions and even time itself. So there was no "before" as time as a concept didn't exist.

If you want to read a great book about it that won't send you to sleep try Simon Singh's The Big Bang. It really describes the battle between Steady State and Big Bang camps, and explains it in such a way as not to make your brain hurt.

Answer 9

Nobody knows. the big bang is only a theory but it is the best one we have on the evidence. We know that galaxies are moving apart so the cosmos is expanding. The conclusion is that it all must have started from one place hence the big bang. However it is possible that the cosmos is pulsating and eventually the galaxies will start coming together again. We do not know which is why studying it is so exciting

Answer 10

The singularity.
In the same way that all the matter of a massive collapsing star is concentrated in a single point at the centre of a black hole, so was all the matter of the universe. At that point NONE of the laws of physics, including time, apply.
There's a similarity with the Vedanta, (Hindu writings about 3,000 years old), which says that the universe has always been here. It's just that; now you see it, now you don't.
When the universe is in a passive phase - called the in-breathing of Brahm - "All the matter in the universe is concentrated in one tiny object, so small that the eye cannot see it".
Then you get the out-breathing of Brahm, when, "All this matter is flung out of the centre and the universe can be seen again."
It all takes a bit of getting you head round!
Jon C

Answer 11

Hi big bang theory? I thought of this question when I first heard of this theory too. I think expansion of our universe is caused by natural forces,quantum physics, says we're going this way at the moment and that's it, not nothing then Bang.