What came before the 'Big Bang'? Also, isn't nothing still something though?
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answers:
roberto say: we have no instruments to elicit data about what preceded the big bang
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Tucker say: Mzmzmz
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Ryan say: There was no "Big Bang".
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goring say: nothing, because the Big bang is just a theory which confuses the actual Creation as portrayed in the Biblical record of Creation.
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High Flyer say: An oscillating universe. Big bang and expand. Then when it reach its maximum, it contract back to its minimum and then the big bang starts again.
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Little Big Man say: It was the Little Bang, and yes it is my friend.
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Jeffrey K say: There was no before. Time began with the big bang. It is like asking what is north of the north pole.
Nothing is nothing. No space or time or matter. But quantum mechanics might permit or require tiny universes to pop into existence from nothing. This process can not be understood in classical terms.
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Raymond say: "Nothing" is not something.
However, we do know (from experiments) that "nothing" is unstable and will eventually break down to "something" (and the corresponding "anti-something" thus keeping things balanced)
The Big Bang theory is not about "the start" of the universe. It is, more simply, a theory based on the hypothesized effect of the expansion of space on the energy content of the universe:
Same amount of total energy + more space to spread it out = the energy density goes down with time.
When we use the theory backwards (to try and understand the past), we note that the universe was much denser (and hotter) in the past. When we look very far, we see in the past and, sure enough, the universe was denser back then.
At each critical level of density, things change. The same way that if you take ice and you keep heating it until its temperature goes above 0 C (32 F)... it suddenly becomes liquid (it changes state).
The energy does the same thing. Above a certain temperature, the electrons cannot remain in orbit around protons, and the universe becomes opaque ( = not transparent). Higher still and protons cannot exist (the quarks get knocked around by the energy density), and so on until no matter can exist, none of our common forces can exist and...
there comes a point when we do not understand how gravity and time can work. This density is called the Planck density (from the name of a scientist who calculated such things) and, if you follow the calculations of the Big Bang model, existed around 13.8 billion years ago (13,800 million years).
That moment is called the Planck Time. Because we do not know how time works at that moment, we cannot use the word "before" at that moment. It does not automatically mean time did not exist. For all we know, the universe could have been expanding eternally "before" that moment; after all, the Planck density is NOT infinite (there is no singularity within the domain of the Big Bang model, only "before").
At the Planck Time:
-- space was already expanding,
-- the initial energy already existed,
-- the density was not infinite (it is a number that has been calculated)
-- matter did not yet exist (it was too "hot"); matter comes later.
and this last one is conditional (it includes "if"):
-- IF the universe is presently infinite in size, then it was already infinite in size at the Planck time.
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I think that, one day, someone will understand the link between gravity and time (someone will "unify" the two into one "thing" that we do not yet understand) and we will be able to understand further back (until we hit the next wall).
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Hawking had imagined "particles of time"; working with spacetime (the 4-dimension space where time is one dimension), he imagined an "instanton", the smallest particle of spacetime. At the exact "time = 0" (just "before" the Planck Time), this instanton was a special particle from which all time directions were "future",
the same way that the North Pole is a special geographical point from which all directions are "south". That is what he meant.
On Earth, you cannot go north of the north pole,
in spacetime, you cannot go before the "before pole" where all directions are "future".
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Ronald 7 say: I don't know, but it was Nature
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runningman022003 say: Without "something" to move or change, time itself makes no sense. Nothing is something but...so what?
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? say: True is that at this time nobody really knows, including scientists who do not like to admit things which they don't know. Using simple logic, in case that we believe in causality and that there was a cause for a big bang, cause on its own is not 'nothing', therefore something rather than nothing must have existed prior to the big bang.
I do not believe that anybody has the right to claim it was nothing just because we do not understand it.
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F say: Most days, it's another American sit com like Third Rock. Young Sheldon is normally after.
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Cosmo say: The big bang sounds like two fat ppl fcking ############
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geezer say: There had to be ''something'' there before the Big Bang or it couldn't have happened.
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Climate Realist say: Whatever caused the big bang came before the big bang. I doubt that there was a singularity. A singularity would require an enormous amount of energy to crack. That much energy could make a Universe without a singularity.
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Jennifer say: God made the big bang. God thought of the big bang.
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MysteryGuy say: Well we don't know.
And there was Singularity, which was infinity dense. Nothing was happening. Entropy was 0. Time was 0. If time is 0 how can something happen before it???
then something we again don't know what, sparked the singularity. The singularity with such density and mass was really unstable and so it sparked and the arrow of time began to flow, entropy started.
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Robin say: the 70s show
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quantumclaustrophobe say: We have no way of knowing what there was *before* the Big Bang occurred; technically, time (for us, at least) started with the Big Bang. There's no way for us to reference anything before.
And, also technically - "nothing" is something in our universe... a cubic meter of space - with no atoms in it, no photons, no particles of any kind - still contain points that exist in our universe; fields that exist all around us would still be in the cubic meter of 'nothing'. If you placed a 1-kg weight in that cubic meter, it's mass would bend space/time - and that would be evidence that the Higgs field exists in that cubic meter...
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az_lender say: They asked Hawking that question in a lecture I attended. He composed his answers on his computer while the chairman of Caltech physics made jokes. Hawking's answer to that particular question (yours) was that it's like asking what's north of the north pole.
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say: EL SHADDAI
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drake say: The big bang may be the origin of time, therefore, it may not make sense to ask what happened before the big bang. However, this isn't completely verified. What is verified is that the big bang is the furthest point back in time of the entire universe that scientists know about currently. Therefore, simply put, scientists don't know what happened before the big bang if such question makes sense.
Nothing is not anything/a single thing; whether it be the absence of a unicorn or the absence of everything. Under the logical tautology "a or not a", nothing either is or isn't. If it isn't is its everything other than is, which is isn't. Is or not is. If it isn't, it is not a thing.
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say: Something started from nothing, but nothing has to start from nothing, right?
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AdamTheAtheist say: A singularity.
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Acetek say: read this
https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswitha...
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Pavel say: Before the big bang existed something eternal, thats a fact.
I think it was something simple, like a black hole and a white hole and our laws of physics are made of something analogic to 1ns and 0s.
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