If a 'Big Bang' created the universe, then what created the stuff that created the 'Big Bang'?

Question

When I was 4 I used to lie in bed looking at the night sky and asking myself the question 'what's behind the stars?' Because I'm human and need an explanation for just about everything, I used to imagine that the extremities of the area behind the stars [the end of the black] were the 6 sides of a cardboard box - sitting in the middle of God's table and God was watching everything through the open lid! Brought up an 'Anglo Catholic' and educated by Roman Catholic nuns, I suppose God had a leading role in the characters of my imagination. These days I have no religion but my own 'higher power' and I deal direct - no middle men/women - look what religion has and is doing to the World. I'm happy to live with my cardboard box theory - it's as credible as anything anybody else has to offer - because nobody knows!

Answer 1

God is the Creator of everything in the cosmos.

Answer 2

WHATS WITH THIS GOD STUFF!!!!?!? The Big Bang theory tells us how the Universe began and is evolving. In essence, it is a theory that was created to explain two facts that we know about the Universe - it is gradually expanding and cooling. In the 1920s, Edwin Hubble found that galaxies far from our own Milky Way are moving away from us. In fact, the further away galaxies are, the faster they are receding. So he concluded that the whole Universe must have been expanding. Working backwards this means that at one stage the Universe must have come from a single point.

We also know that the Universe is cooler now than in the past. In the 1960s Arno Panzias and Robert Wilson detected the afterglow of the Big Bang, known as the cosmic microwave background [or CMB for short], which revealed that the Universe was once a very hot, hostile place. Both these discoveries led astronomers to deduce that the Universe began as an infinitely compact fireball.

The Big Bang describes how this fireball grew to form all the stars and planets we see around us now. Because of its name many people think of the Big Bang as a kind of explosion that happened at some specific point in space, but this isn't correct, as the Universe didn't spring from one central ignition point. Instead, during the Big Bang space was first created and then stretched.

The easiest way to understand this tricky concept is to think of the Universe as a fruitcake in an oven. Imagine you are a bit of fruit inside the cake. As it bakes, the cake rises and all the other bits of fruit around you move further and further away. No matter whereabouts in the cake you are, everything around you is moving away at the same rate. But unlike the fruitcake, there is no centre to the Universe.

Answer 3

The only remotely sensible idea I have read is the Oscillating Universe Theory.

All this requires is that the total mass in the universe is such that the universe will eventually stop expanding. Then it starts to collapse under its own gravity eventually creating another Big Bang.

So far scientists are unsure of the total amount of the mass in the universe but what has been found so far is only about 20% of that needed for the theory to hold.

Unless so called "dark matter" can be proved to exceed the 80% required for an ever expanding universe then I prefer this theory.

Ian M

Answer 4

Our understanding of the Big Bang only goes back to a fraction of a second after the Bang itself. We know that we don't understand the physics going on in that first fraction of a second. So there is no real scientific answer to your question. That does not mean, however, that there will never be a scientific answer---a real "unified field theory" might provide some answers. There are various speculative theories dealing with strings and 'branes, but these are far from confirmed by any observations.

It is possible that the total amount of "stuff" in the Universe is zero---the positive energy is cancelled out by negative gravitational potential energy. So it may not be necessary to actually "create" any stuff---only separate the positive stuff from the negative stuff (or "light from the darkeness", if you will).

Answer 5

I believe that the big bang was created from the remains of another universe undergoing a big crunch.
But i suppose that if you travelled further and further back in time there must have been a first big bang without a big crunch coming before, it in that case there must be some kind of loop in the programme of nature that says "if crunch = 0 then goto new crunch".
Its just the way things work nature finds a way round everything

Answer 6

Check out M-Theory. The 11 dimensional theory. It links "String Theory", with , "Super-Gravity", and explains quite a lot. What it does not do is explain the "Multiverse", that is now required to create these conditions. Your idea of a cardboard box is quite apt. Just think of lots of cardboard boxes ,(The Multiverse) , and new boxes are made each time two boxes collide. Simplistic I know, but it is sufficient enough to illustrate the idea.

Check out this link www.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-theory

Answer 7

no one knows. the hard evidence shows that the big bang most likely happened. but once you get down to the actual big bang itself thats when it becomes complete speculation. the laws of physics start to break down even though all evidence points to the big bang. so basically at that point, even though im agnostic, i dont really know what i believe, im perfectly fine with admitting that god is just as good of an answer as any scientific theories.

one theory is that there are these 11th dimensional membranes, there very very tiny and there everywhere. and when 2 of them collide they create a massive amount of energy and create a universe. so in our own universe there are countless universes being created and then splitting off from our own in the tiniest fraction of a second. believe it or not, thats a leading theory.

that sounds ridiculous to me personally. so im even ready to admit that god makes more sense then that.

basically were not going to figure this one out for a long time, so stick to your beliefs, their just as good as anyone elses.

Answer 8

Pure energy is the prime suspect in this one. Anyone who says that matter cannot be created or destroyed has obviously never heard of E=mc^2, or is at least ignorant of its implications.

When the Americans dropped two atomic bombs on Japan in August 1945, the energy released in these two explosions was generated by a total of about one gram of matter undergoing total destruction. Following this process in the reverse direction, interactions of energy can be used to create matter. Particle physicists around the world are doing it all the time in order to investigate the nature of matter itself. If humans can do it, nature can do it on a much more vast scale.

Answer 9

Why suppose that anything created the stuff that created the big bang? Suppose that spacetime just is. Philisophically nothing can be proved certain apart from our own individual existence. Everything else is just an illusion.

Answer 10

The Big Bang is the cosmological model of the universe whose primary assertion is that the universe has expanded into its current state from a primordial condition of enormous density and temperature... I know that this doesn't answer your question, I just want to highlight that this is a SCIENTIFIC question, and any supposed god does not have any place in the answer... Go back to your bible, we'll go back to our factual books.

Answer 11

The matter that now forms the universe has always been there in one form or another. Same goes for the energy that exists in the universe. We just don't know what form it took.