Can the term "before" by applied the energy that made up the universe?

Question

Ok I saw a video about string theory in which they talked about a possibility of the existence of the universe could of been a result of two membranes colliding with one another.

But I thought time started at the big bang.

Would things have happened in succession to lead to the big bang, or not since "time" didnt exist?

I am really confused as to how you describe what happened before the big bang since time itself began at that instant

Answer 1

From the point of view of what is now accepted in physics, the universe began at a certain instant. Before its beginning there was no time, no space, no energy and no matter. This is not something that we can grasp very easily, but that is what we think occurred. That certainly leaves the question of what preceeded that, but we, in our universe, have no way to get any information from before this event. Ever.

That means that we will never be able to probe to what might have been before.

This may not seem quite logical in a conventional sense, but this is where we are in modern cosmology. Of course, science does move on, but this event does seem a very Very VERY formidable barrier.

Answer 2

Time, space, matter, and energy did not begin to exist at the big bang.  They got their present meanings from it.  The amount of energy involved was high enough to define the relationship between matter and energy, presumably time and space, too.

Clearly, something existed before the big bang.  Otherwise, we would have to assume that the entire universe popped out of nothing.  The problem is that we can't describe what existed.  It's beyond our understanding of the universe.  But it was still there.

So yes, in some scale of time that we don't perceive, there was something before the big bang, and there was a time standard that could define it.  We just can't say what it was.  Since everything we know exists as a result of what happened after the big bang, we may never be able to describe what came before it.