What was before the 'Big Bang'?

Question

This question has been bugging me for so long and I am truly amazed at how no one else apart from me wants to know. I know there was a big black void before the Bang but how was that void even there in the first place? Anyone has any theories?

I want to know HOW was there even that void? I mean WHY is there even that void in the first place??

Answer 1

Well you can join the masses that have no answer to this very question, Man can not imagine what was there and what it looked like because mans mind is to small to imagine what nothingness would look like, No matter what you try to imagine it always comes back to something, You will have those who are physisists and math people who think they may know but in the end its only numbers and still dont explain what nothingness is or how it looks, Man will never be able to answer that question, No matter who they are, or what they do


SG

Answer 2

There are two major theories.
One is the oscillating universe theory which says that every universe begins from a big bang and eventually ends in a Big crunch to start a new universe with completely different laws of physics. However recent data points to the fact that there is not enough matter in the universe to snap back into a primordial atom and hence it will not have an end.
The second is the static universe theory, in that it does not have a beginning nor an end. This may be explained by a closed time loop in that the universe looped around to the past at the beginnig to create itself.
Finally, if there were anything before the Big Bang, it was nothing. This is related to the idea of space-time. Only after the Horrendous Space Kablooie did time begin. Once time began space could expand.

Answer 3

Perhaps String theory..... this is a theory that attempts to answer everything – everything that we observe in the Universe, both on the large-scale and on the subatomic scale.

"Nobel Prize winner Steven Weinberg admires string theorists, but says he wouldn't touch it himself:
'They're trying to take the next big step by pure mathematical reasoning, and it's extraordinarily difficult. I hope they succeed. I think they're doing the right thing in pursuing this, because right now string theory offers the only hope of a really unified view of nature. They have to pursue it, but the progress is glacially slow. I'd rather study continental drift in real time than be a string theorist today. But I admire them for trying, because they are our best hope of making a great step toward the next big unified theory.'

But in order to assimilate five different mathematical versions of string theory, Edward Witten had to introduce an 11th dimension. However, as string theorists soon found out, adding another dimension led to yet another startling implication – there may be more than one Universe!

What caused this Big Bang, and what preceded it has never been satisfactorily explained. A Big Bang occurring out of nothing is something most physicists can't stomach. But as you may have already guessed, string theory may be able to shed light on the mystery.

Today, some string theorists are toying with the idea that the Big Bang is the manifestation of the collision of branes – two or more parallel Universes colliding headlong, releasing a vast amount of energy and matter which eventually condensed to form the galaxies, stars, planets, you and I. In this way, the Big Bang is far from being unique. Big Bangs are just a by-product of the endless cycles within the cosmos. They happened before, and they will happen again. If correct, string theory answers how we got here – a truly powerful theory of everything indeed."

This has been copied and pasted from the channel 4 website

Answer 4

This simple, schoolchild query has exercised the intellects of generations of philosophers, scientists, and theologians. Many have avoided it as an impenetrable mystery. Others have tried to define it away. Most have got themselves into an awful tangle just thinking about it.
The problem, at rock bottom, is this: If nothing happens without a cause, then something must have caused the universe to appear. But then we are faced with the inevitable question of what caused that something. And so on in an infinite regress.So we are faced with the problem of what happened beforehand to trigger the big bang. Journalists love to taunt scientists with this question when they complain about the money being spent on science.

Remarkably, modern science has arrived at more or less the same conclusion as Augustine, based on what we now know about the nature of space, time, and gravitation. It was Albert Einstein who taught us that time and space are not merely an immutable arena in which the great cosmic drama is acted out, but are part of the cast-part of the physical universe. As physical entities, time and space can change- suffer distortions-as a result of gravitational processes. Gravitational theory predicts that under the extreme conditions that prevailed in the early universe, space and time may have been so distorted that there existed a boundary, or "singularity," at which the distortion of space-time was infinite, and therefore through which space and time cannot have continued. Thus, physics predicts that time was indeed bounded in the past as Augustine claimed. It did not stretch back for all eternity. It turns out, however, that there are physical events which do not have well-defined causes in the manner of the everyday world. These events belong to a weird branch of scientific inquiry called quantum physics.

Mostly, quantum events occur at the atomic level; The rule of law is replaced by a sort of anarchy or chaos, and things happen spontaneously-for no particular reason. Particles of matter may simply pop into existence without warning, and then equally abruptly disappear again. Or a particle in one place may suddenly materialize in another place, or reverse its direction of motion. Again, these are real effects occurring on an atomic scale, and they can be demonstrated experimentally.

It is, of course, a big step from the spontaneous and uncaused appearance of a subatomic particle-something that is routinely observed in particle accelerators-to the spontaneous and uncaused appearance of the universe. But the loophole is there. If, as astronomers believe, the primeval universe was compressed to a very small size, then quantum effects must have once been important on a cosmic scale. Even if we don't have a precise idea of exactly what took place at the beginning, we can at least see that the origin of the universe from nothing need not be unlawful or unnatural or unscientific. In short, it need not have been a supernatural event.

Well, I didn't promise to provide the answers to life, the universe, and everything, but I have at least given a plausible answer to the question I started out with: What happened before the big bang?
The answer is: Nothing.

Answer 5

It is generally believed that the Big Bang commenced from a 'singularity' where the entire Universe occupied very little if any space and was infinitely dense. Black holes also have singularities at their centers and the gravitational attraction there is unimaginable both because of the infinite concentration of mass and the close proximity to it. Within a singularity (whatever that really means) all laws of physics break down and time and space are distorted such that description and calculations (by known means) is impossible. Therefore it is only possible to speculate as to whether there was time or space (or other Universes?) before the Big Bang. If the Universe is massive enough (with enough gravitational attraction) it may slow its expansion and contract back to a singularity. Because Nature loves a pendulum it might be speculated that a new expansion will begin (perhaps with reversed polarity?). Your guess is as good as mine.

Answer 6

OOOOOOOOOOOH...

This is the first time anyone has ever asked this question isn't it. And, your research of the topic consists of, if we could please ask, what?

Since the Big Bang theory positions the creation of most of the objects in the entire Universe at one particular point in space some 13 Billion years ago, wouldn't it make perfect sense to ask someone on Yahoo that was let's say at least 25 Years old, 13 Billion years ago, because then they would know what happened just before the Big Bang and could tell us all about the situation back then. MMM-m-m... Let's see....Bubba, sitting over there against the wall is the oldest guy in this bar, let me ask him and I will pass along what he knows.

Is there any possible way that this question is related to a similar question people ask in Yahoo..."What will happen after the end of everything?" And do you seriously believe that there is anyone walking around out there that can answer that with any degree of certainty? Can there be any use in accumulating thousands of "I don't know" answers?

Answer 7

My theory is that before the big bang there was a couple molecules floating in nothing each molecule its own universe then they all hit each other one day and created a primordial atom that grew and reproduced and made our universe. I think we might be a molecule floating until we all get destroyed and make another universe like a giant circle.

Answer 8

The English language is amazing. It allows you to make what "seems" to be a question, by putting the words "what", "was", "before", "the", "big", and "Bang" together. But in real physics, that string of words makes no sense. It's like asking, "What is the difference between a raven?", or "What smell comes before 3?".

There is no "before" the Big Bang.

Answer 9

Some people think that there was another universe that existed before the big bang happened to form our universe, the universe before the big bang kept expanding until it finally collapsed in on it's self and was swallowed into a super massive black hole until the super massive black hole couldn't contain the energy and blow up and created our universe.

Answer 10

well one can say that there was some sort of life forms in the universe of ours but they were ,i suppose, less complex organisms. big bang must have occurred between 2 planets having life and when they had an accident most of the important minerals and resources essential for life were droped on a piece of rock which formed the earth