What was out there before the big bang? was it nothingness no stars no anything no black holes?

Question

This is a concept I truly don't fathom. Maybe because I've lost a lot of friends & am contemplating my own existance & don't prescribe to any religion.

Answer 1

I would say that you seem to be looking for answers to existential problems. You won't find them in physics, unless your existential problem is what you should do with your life and you chose a career as a scientist.

Cosmology does not answer any questions as to where we or the world came from and likely never will. It only tells us that the Cosmic Microwave Background and the Hubble Redshift and a slew of other observations can be QUANTITATIVELY explained with a physical model based on general relativity and a few other ingredients that can be calculated all the way back to a trillionth of a second. But trust me, you wouldn't enjoy most of the details of those calculations. They are very much like watching paint dry, especially the nuclear physics part.

Some people treat this model as if it was a religious dogma. It isn't. It's just a (albeit enormously large) bunch of formulas in textbooks and science papers. The next discovery that is around the corner can change this model substantially and turn some of its predictions upside down. The beauty of science is THAT IT CAN CHANGE. Scientist love it when knowledge changes! We do not expect to leave this world with the same cosmological model we had when we came into it.

Do you really want to base your existential needs on a mathematical model? One that is expected to change at least two or three more times before we find the final answer?

Don't. If you are in an existential crisis, what you need are people to talk to, to go out with. You need fun, not physics.

On a technical level, I would have to say that between where you are now with your understanding and where the physics community is, you would have to spend at least four to six years of daily work on learning physics. It is not an impossible task to bridge this gap, but it is one that you need to do on your own. There will be no quick answers here on Yahoo or in any books on the topic that are "true" in the ultimate meaning of the word "truth". If all you want are quick answers, all you will get are quick lie.

You may get a kick out of this podcast from Berkeley, though.

http://webcast.berkeley.edu/course_details.php?seriesid=1906978459

This is physics made as simple as possible by a really great guy, Rich Mueller who knows what he is talking about. If you like what he has to say, tune in to other, more professional classes and see what you can get out of them. Either they will ignite your curiosity for real or you will get a feeling how complex a matter you are dealing with and that the real thing does not address your real needs.

Good Luck and take care!

Answer 2

Black holes can only "eat" what's within the reach of their gravity. According to the available evidence, the universe is still expanding, not collapsing into black holes. However, there is a theory that the expansion might eventually stop and the entire universe might collapse in a "big crunch", triggering a new big bang and starting the process over again. We may never know, because so far there isn't even any proof that the expansion is slowing.

Answer 3

There are hundreds to perhaps thousands of theories as to what was there before the "Big Bang". Below is one opinion (with link)

A new theory for the origin of the Universe is intriguing astronomers with the idea that a "Big Splat" preceded the Big Bang.

It proposes that there may be an unseen parallel universe to ours.

The idea, which is still at the development stage, may provide hints about what happened before our Universe exploded into existence some 15 billion years ago.

The theory has been outlined in the past few days at the University of Cambridge in the UK and the Space Telescope Science Institute in the US.

Answer 4

Before the BB, there was only a reservoir of energy, affectionately called the Quantum. In the moments preceeding the BB, only unit values of energy are allowed to occupy space there. This is due in part to G. Rel. and Uncertainty. Relativity acknowledges that each component is cocooned in its own reference frame with its own internal watch. When components combine and are not easily dissociated, the clocks synchronize. Uncertainty provides superpositions of states. Before I describe what happened during the event, let me take a moment to explain the nature of the Quantum. It has the ability to stretch o'er the entire cosmos and at the same time be observed as a point in space. This is because only when we observe something is that thing required to form. Principles like this one only apply to objects below 30 degrees of magnitude. Once again we are confronted with Uncertainty, not to mention wave nature. As matter flowed out of the quantum, it was not restricted to a single point in space. This accounts for Hubble's observation of an expanding universe by allowing regions to populate at different intervals. This in turn provides an explanation for why the universe has no center or no edge. Matter flowed out from different regions, because to it the region was the single point to exit. Differentiating between each point leads to multiple realties. However, in the absence of factioning, realities converge. Thus, one universe was created. There were no black holes pitted around emptiness. There were no tachyons zipping about. And there was no single volume of matter that exploded. This is hard to accept. In 50 years, the world will understand how matter forms. Is some of this conjecture? Of course. But no principle was violated in doing so. To argue that the universe is too vast to account for matter in all places demonstrates that the individual does not understand Uncertainty.

Answer 5

Hey, how do you think that the little piece of dust or the spec came into being? The big bang makes no sence at all! I mean, things don't go from chaotic to orderly. Just think of something you like, take it apart, put it in a box, and blow it up. What do you expect? It to be put back together and al brand new looking? NO! It will look worse than before. So there would not be anything if there was such thing as a "Big Bang".

Answer 6

There wasn't anything, atleast I don't think. Who knows.
Right before the actual expansion of the big bang, there was an atom called the Primeval Atom. It was composed of the four basic energies; weak/strong force, gravity, and the electromagnetic force. The broke up as the process (expansion) progressed.

The important thing is not to focus on what happened in the beginning, trust me I've boggled my mind as well. Lets face it, you or I aren't stephan hawking or qualified in physics, which means we know less. Until we understand those principles along with others.. we won't know. We may never.
It's cool to think about, just don't worry about it. Have fun with it.

Answer 7

There's one theory that the universe is cycling through expansion/compression. The Big Bang is a result of extreme compression: BOOM, all the matter flies about, expands to some point, then starts falling back in on itself into a big ole ball of mass until BOOM again.

So if you're a fan of that one, then before OUR Big Bang, there was a universe in the final stages of extreme compression. But that doesn't explain where all the matter came from in the first place.

Crazy stuff, that infinity.

Answer 8

We can't really know.... we've managed to trace what the big bang was like a very short time *after* it occurred, but we have no real knowledge of time zero, or what there was before that.

It's difficult to imagine any "nothingness", no mind, no light, no color - because those entities go into what makes us who we are.

Answer 9

Some scientists believe that the universe explodes sending matter out into space, than contracts due to it's own gravitational pull and bring all matter back into one point to once again explode

Answer 10

I think a big bang occurs every trillion years. It begins, grows expands, blows up, just like that! In between, I'd say there is a big cloud of dark matter.