• Question: What came before the Big Bang? What caused it to happen?

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      Asked by :) to Daniela ?, ☣ Danna, Jonny, Juan, Lindsay on 14 Jun 2016. This question was also asked by ImIbby.
      • Photo: Lindsay Robinson

        Lindsay Robinson answered on 14 Jun 2016:

        Hi 🙂

        That is a really difficult question and one that cosmologists have lots of different views on.

        The Big Bang Theory is just a theory so lots of people who know about these things have their own versions of this.

        If we go with Einstein and Stephen Hawking (they seem like intelligent people !) then if I understand it correctly then nothing existed before the big bang.

        The entire universe was a single point (a singularity). At this point, all the rules of physics don’t work any more. The universe beings to form from this and time begins as space starts to expand.

        It’s not surprising that there’s a lot of discussion around this!

      • Photo: Jonathan Hunter

        Jonathan Hunter answered on 14 Jun 2016:

        I think Lindsay has covered everything there nicely!

      • Photo: Danna Gifford

        Danna Gifford answered on 21 Jun 2016:

        Great answer from Lindsay. The Big Bang Theory says that the big bang is when time was created, so by definition there was nothing before the big bang, not even time. Scientists have an idea about what happened to the universe starting about 10^-36 seconds after the big bang, but what happened before that is unclear. There’s a great article about it that you can read here:
        http://www.space.com/31192-what-triggered-the-big-bang.html

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