the big BANG

[vinphetamin]

I don't understand what existed before the big bang to make it so. It makes about as much sense as Michael Jackson's surgery. (I am not stoned, this is something that has bothered me for years).

[Haitch]

Nobody does, they are still trying to work it out. I sometimes wonder where the universe is. The big bang had to happen somewhere and when the universe formed it had to be inside that something. Maybe there's a "super universe" something that contains a whole host of different universes. If that's the case where did that come from & who put it there? Quantum mechanics tries to explain the beginning of the universe but I think it's still got a long way to go and I haven't got to grips with it enough to think I could explain it to someone else.

[Hippy]

At the risk of heaping coals on my head from the "Brief History of Time" brigade, the simple answer is that there was no "before" the Big Bang as time as we know it did not exist. Like matter, time existed in a totally diferent form and needed to "Bang!" in order to migrate into what we know (hahaha) today.

It's a bit like the old infinite chestnut. It is not a complete explanation, but our finite brains can think of the surface of a sphere as being infinite, if you forget about the repetitions of routes across it.

Stay safe and live long.

[bomekked]

? Ask Stephen Hawkins.... better still, read his book. I tried to do this once [FAILED MISERABLY]

[snotmonkey]

does it really matter that much, if the answer was given to us tonight by aliens travelling half way across the universe at multiple factors of light speed i'll still have to go to work on monday.

[lisaj]

Everything in the universe has a gravitational field that attracts everything else, even if by an infintessimal amount. Everything moves closer together, at an accelerating rate, until it all collides into one large mass, that by its own gravity diminishes in size until it explodes in a huge fury of energy. Hence, Big Bang. Everything then expands by that explosive force, until the effects of all that gravity slow it down and start pulling it all in again. Repeat ad infinitum. That's a commonly accepted theory anyway, but by no means the only one.

[TheHitMaker]

Another theory is that there was nothing before the big bang. This is not a whole lot of empty space, but no distance, no time, no "I'm Sticking With You", nothing. The last theory I saw suggested that for some reason not understood by anyone so far, a bit of positive energy and a bit of negative energy suddenly came into being. These could have cancelled each other out but didn't - they caused a massive explosion (the Big Bang) which caused the universe as it started. It then expanded at a massive rate (and is still going) and somehow (don't ask me, I've read the books, but I can't remember) the Universe as we know it was created. There is nothing outside the Universe - it is all that there is. Maybe. More theory states that you can't get to the edge of the Universe, as it is curved in 4 dimensions - you just keep going round and round! Hope that helps - I know I'm still confused.

[TemptedSoul]

A quote, non-scientific: "In the Beginning there was nothing, which exploded." Does that answer your question?

[lisaj]

To reply to TheHitMaker: the problem with this theory is that of the conservation of energy. In the universe there is persistent conservation of energy (ie. constant universal energy with no increase or decrease), and given this, there is no way that billions of galaxies could have exploded out of a single spontaneous pair of a proton and an electron.

[Zalzadar]

Somebody statet (I've got a link to the website for the ones who want to ask the author a few questions) that IN A BLACK-HOLE a piece of space get's 'cut off' from normal space and will function as a new universe (with slightly different physical laws). But that leaves us another question: when we live 'inside' a black-hole where is that black-hole located, and the 'parent'-universe of that universe? etc. etc.