What was before the big bang... or creation...?

Question

So, follow the expanding universe back through time and you get to a singular point some 10 - 20 billion years ago. Not very long ago really.

If you keep up on theoretical physics and astronomy you will see that in 100 billion years every star will be so far apart that were you to look up (although the Earth would have died 98 billion years earlier) you wouldn't see a single star. In 100 trillion years everything in existance will cease to exist. There will be no light... only individual protons floating millions of miles apart from one another.

So considering that everything must cease to exist, and assuming that everything has obviously existed forever... What the hell was before the big bang? I don't need string theory or the, "Time didn't start until the big band"... yadda yadda yadda.

Do you think that there have been endless big bangs? If we just exploded one day from something the size of an ink dot could there theoretically be another one tomorrow from a dot by mars?

Zounds - "It's not that time began then, it's that everything began then."

How do you create everything from nothing. If energy can not simply appear from nothing then it had to come from something, right? If there was something it had to be somewhere. If it was somewere then how long was it there for.

Hmmm... If everything came from there then empty space came from there also, but empty space is perhaps infinate. Thus, wouldn't emptiness be expanding faster than everything else? Faster than light?

It's exceedingly apparent to me that i'm one of the dumbest people in this room... All of the really really smart people are free to go to the room next door. j/k. Good answers from 8, 9, 10, 11.

Oops... wrong thread. I meant 6,7, and 8.

Answer 1

empty space would not be infinite because according to the big bang theory space and time started with the big bang. therefore the expansion of space has a speed, and therefore cannot be infinite.

and its funny that you dont want to hear about string theory or about how time started with the big bang, those are the answers. so i dont see why you wouldnt want to hear about those.

and yes, technically if you believe in string theory then universes are being created all around you. when a big bang happens it creates space, which would be separate from our own. so you wouldnt be aware of it.

that little singularity that exploded in the big bang was caused by 2 membranes (tiny things smaller than an atom that are everwhere) collided and released massive amounts of energy.

Answer 2

This question sits right on the border of science, philosophy, religion and good ol' speculation.

If we suppose that there is more to existence than the 3dimensions-and-time that comprise the universe that our senses and current instruments perceive, then the big bang could be seen as the cofabrication of a 3dimensional-plus-time "universe" from a more complex preexisting "superuniverse".

Alternatively the problem may be that our human experience has shown us that everything comes from something, so we therefore suppose that this principle must apply to the whole universe. This reasoning may be a fallacy.

Did God do it? Maybe, but is it a good idea to ascribe things to God just because we can't currently explain them? This kind of keeps pushing God into the distance as we keep discovering perfectly good explanations for what used to be God's work. Not a good idea.

And so why does the universe exist? Why did there ever have to be anything? Possibly because a state of perfect nothingness is indeed a particular state, and why should that state be favoured? So does an infinitely complex superuniverse explain it all? Infinite complexity means it was inevitable there had to be a big bang.

Answer 3

It's not that everything will cease to exist, it will just be spread out evenly as energy. Energy and matter are interchangeable, and the second law of thermodynamics says that every moment we are losing complexity or order, like a tv losing clarity and becoming a perfect 50/50 grey.

If you assume that all ten dimensions (see sources) and everything that fill then DID NOT begin at the big bang, than you have an eternal timeline in both directions. If everything has always existed (as you ask us to assume) and everything will always exist, then the big bang would simply be a rearrangement of matter and energy.

Most scientists i believe would say that before the big bang there was *nothing*, not something the size of an ink dot. One could conceive of a "reverse" big bang where everything collapses into itself, leaving room for another big bang, but it's probably not going to happen without a lot of energy, probably more than there exists now.

So what was before the big bang? Nothing. It's not that time began then, it's that everything began then.

Answer 4

No "god" created anything. Before the Big Bang there was nothing, and someday the universe will return to this nothingness. It is not easy to comprehend there being nothing but infinite empty space, but the creation of the Universe by the Big Bang is logical based on scientific theories and evidence we know. To base the creation of everything on some higher being is just plain stupid. God didn't create humans; humans created god. People have always been lost and needed something to believe in, so they created this almighty creator to give reason for everything.

Answer 5

Right at the moment the Big Bang occurred *everything* was smushed into a singularity. A singularity is a point of infinite spacetime curvature. (Whenever you see the word "infinite" applied to something in science that's always a clue it's going to mess with your brain. . .) At a singularity space and time as we understand them are destroyed and gone. None of the physical laws we have apply inside a singularity.

Since before the Big Bang occurred all of our universe was inside the singularity, it makes no sense to talk about what came "before" the Big Bang. I know you said you didn't want that answer, but that's the way it is. The Big Bang is an event so far as we know completely severed from any outside reality or cause.

We could not have another Big Bang inside our universe because it appears that events like the Big Bang result in universes, and do not grow from them. Certainly we couldn't have one pop up next to Mars because there is no singularity there and nothing to make one from. One might hypothesize, though, that maybe black hole singularities accessible in our universe might sprout new universes that we can't detect.

People in the past have thought that perhaps our universe runs in a cycle of Big Bang followed by Big Crunch (the universe collapsing to a singularity) followed by Big Bang. If so it would be impossible to determine this due to the destruction of the universe and spacetime with it at the Big Crunch. It appears that if that has happened before this universe it is not going to happen in our universe's future because we appear to be set to expand forever.

Asking what happened before the Big Bang is like asking what is outside our universe. Both questions are unanswerable, essentially meaningless, and hurt your head if you try to think about them too long.

Answer 6

The time before the big bang is currently unknown. But many choose to believe that the dot in the big bang was a creation from god. There are many theories but there is no exact way to know.

Answer 7

Sheesh, I'm almost afraid to respond at all, what with the restrictions you've embedded in your "question." I'll play it safe though and tell it like it is --- there is no answer to your basic question about what (..if anything..) was before the BB.

Just for sh*ts and grins though you may want to do some research into quantum mechanics, particularly zero-point energy and virtual-particle pair production.

Answer 8

Why does there HAVE to be something before the big bang (if you believe this THEORY)?


What if time and space are infinite?

Answer 9

These are all questions that you will have different answers to. Some people say that god caused the big bang.

Answer 10

WORDS --- GOD SAID IT AND BANG THERE IT WAS . ALL THINGS WERE SPOKEN INTO EXISTENCE BY GOD . AS FAR AS MORE THAN ONE TIME --THAT IS POSSIBLE THE BIBLE SAID " IN THE BEGINNINGS " NOT IN THE BEGINNING . IN OTHER WORDS PLURAL NOT SINGULAR .MODERN BIBLES HAVE TAKEN THE S OFF IN SOME VERSIONS .