If something can't be created out of nothing how do you explain The Universe before The Big Bang happened?

Answer 1

In our confinement within the Universe, we cannot picture or even suppose anything outside of it. So causality is an issue we must be willing to dismiss when considering the origin of the Universe. As unsatisfying, frustrating, seemingly opposed to physical laws, and counter-intuitive as it may seem, I think it is reasonable to abandon the entire concept of the Universe being caused. We can't consider what happened before. There was no "before". I know this sucks, but perhaps this is the Universe's way of putting us of our place.

BTW, scientists are very uncomfortable with an acausal Universe. The guy above me reminded me of this. Sounds all very impressive and erudite, doesn't it? What he doesn't tell you is that there is no evidence to support ANY of those theories: M theory, string theory, parallel Universes, 11-dimensional constructs, etc, etc. I am most frustrated with how physicists today can advance themselves academically by coming up with concocted math in order to justify invented physics. In my opinion, it is all a high level mathematical equivalent of saying, "Two plus two equals four, so my theory works." I think it is all garbage. They have hit the wall. The causal explanations they give, totally unsupported by any facts, are just a way to dodge the question they know they can't answer: how did it *all* begin? Not only do I think they are all wrong, but even worse, they are not practicing science. I believe this will be revealed with time.

Idiot, not slamming you, but Hawking is one of the leaders in this nonsense. He and others think they can just opine on extraordinary notions and everyone else takes it as gospel. This multiverse stuff is a cheap and I think, intellectually dishonest way of skirting the whole question. Where did *those* Universes come from? And again, there is no evidence at all; just wild speculation and academic arrogance. I'm getting fed up with scientists' inability to say "We don't know. We probably never will. That is the nature of a Universe."

And for the record, God is the dumbest explanation of all. Cherry, the bible doesn't explain anything at all. It *asserts*, based on ancient myth and superstition, passed down through the ages. The Genesis story is not only impossible, it is laughably ridiculous.

Answer 2

An excellent query. According to some theories our universe did not absolutely result from nothing. Hawkins showed the possibility of different universes interacting with each other. So, the start up for our Big Bang may actually be from the refuse of other universe(s) into our own. The mulitiverse theories of the many attempts to find the theory of everything also imply extra-universal interaction with our own.

Yet, there is no concrete data to explain anything before event 1, the start of our universe. High energy and nuclear physics along with astronomy are attempting to answer that question. All present theories that I am aware of seem to limited by the initial conversion of some forms of light into matter as we know it. Yet to imply any writ connection would be contrary to our present Dewey definition of Science.

Answer 3

Just because we don't understand the conditions that existed "before" the big bang, does not mean that there was "nothing".

You see, the sentence I've just written is actually nonsensical. Time was not created until the moment of the big bang - so there was no "before" - but that is a virtually impossible concept for us humans to grasp. The most we can say is that nothing within our realm of understanding or experience existed before the bb.

It's a good, fascinating question - but not one that anyone alive, dead or likely to exist in the future will ever be able to answer. Sadly :-(

Answer 4

Something can be created out of nothing. This happens all the time on a submicroscopic level. It's just that random fluctuations in reality mean that the larger something is, the less likely it is to appear out of nowhere.

I personally don't believe in the Big Bang, but those who do would say there was no before. Things get less and less eventful all the time. Therefore, time could be seen as going faster the closer to the beginning you go. Time is like space in this conception - endless but limited.

Answer 5

(PhD Physicist responds) Actually Babylon the Great has it pretty good. One branch of physics is String Theory, which says that our universe is 11-dimensional. That our universe exists as a surface -- a "membrane" -- within a larger hyperuniverse. Our universe was created when two objects in the hyperuniverse collided and formed the membrane. All the energy in our universe came from the collision. Since time is one of the 11 dimensions of the membrane, it was created at the same time as the membrane, so there really was no "before" the big bang.

Many physicists believe in God, and some feel that heaven is the hyperuniverse outside our own.

Answer 6

This can be explain from the statement:
"The step from zero to one belongs to God."
Humans are time bound (finite) while God is infinite.

How the universe is created may have some explanations but the creation of God, "the Creator" can't be explained because He is infinite.

No finite creations can explain an infinite Creator.


From the Bible Passage: Luke 12: 54 - 59

54 He also said to the multitudes, "When you see a cloud rising in the west, you say at once, `A shower is coming'; and so it happens.

55 And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, `There will be scorching heat'; and it happens.

56 You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky; but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?

Answer 7

The universe is multi-dimensional and one of these dimensions is Time.

Not only did all the matter and space in the universe appear at the big bang, but so did all the Time!
So there is no 'before the big bang'

Since the human brain is too small to fully grasp these concepts, and even most physicists will admit this, this is the closest I'm likely to come to having a 'faith'

Answer 8

There may be a hidden parallel universe.

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.

Paul Steinhardt and colleagues at Princeton University propose the so-called "ekpyrotic model". It explains important details about the nature of our Universe such as why the cosmos is expanding the way it is.

M-theory

For the uninitiated, the ideas are difficult to grasp. At their heart is string theory, the idea that the fundamental building blocks of space and time are tiny vibrating strings. String theory has excited theorists in the past few years although it has remained very much untested.

Steinhardt's ideas about the origin of the Universe are based on an extension of string theory called M-theory.

M-theory does not do away with the Big Bang. The evidence that everything emerged from a 'fireball' with a temperature of 10 billion degrees, expanding on a timescale of one second, is now very compelling and uncontroversial.

Instead, M-theory looks at events before the Big Bang, proposing that the Universe has 11 dimensions, six of them rolled up into microscopic filaments that can, for all intents, be ignored.

Professor Sir Martin Rees of Cambridge University told BBC News Online: "Steinhardt and his colleagues offer a fascinating idea, invoking the idea of more than one universe embedded in higher-dimensional space."

The action of the Universe takes place in five-dimensional space. Before the Big Bang occurred the Universe consisted of two perfectly flat four-dimensional surfaces.

One of these sheets is our Universe; the other, a "hidden" parallel universe.

According to the Princeton researchers, random fluctuations in this unseen companion universe caused it to distort and reach towards our Universe.

The floater "splatted" into our Universe and the energy of the collision was transformed into the matter and energy of our Universe in a Big Bang.

According to Professor Sir Martin Rees: "All these ideas about the ultra-early universe highlight the link between cosmos and micro-world - the ideas won't be firmed up until we have a proper understanding of space and time, the 'bedrock' of the physical world."

Answer 9

Einstein's theories of relativity theorised that if a particle was to go quicker than the speed of light, then its molecular properties would be changed by the strange things that happen when you go that quickly. The matter that made that object would become energy. If matter can become energy from going very quickly, then surely it can do the opposite, and energy can become matter. This is what is theorised happened right before and after the Big Bang. Matter went very very quickly (quicker than the speed of light) and so started to become energy. After the Big Bang, where huge amounts of energy were quickly dispersed as the Universe expanded they had room to move and so slowed down, forming matter, and so eventually, everything around us.

Answer 10

The net energy of the Universe may be zero. That means the net mass of the Universe is also zero. If the only two somethings in the Universe add up to zero, then what it that was created from nothing?