If there was nothing before the big bang, then how did nothing explode and make something?

Question

I mean......Im just really confused......I dont believe in God, but does anyone have an idea of what MIGHT have happened?

Answer 1

In order for nothing to happen nothing had to appear in something.light creates gravity,gravity propagates faster than light,Time occures after light passes its own fold.Space becomes a gel.

Answer 2

Anne Marie! Yes! Duality. Yin/Yang.... It must exist for time to exist. (then/now).

Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you.

Answer 3

Scientists say this.

Everything in the universe just decided to clump into a speck so small it was practically nothing. Then, that nothing exploded into everything we see today.

Me, I believe in God and creationism, that God created everything.

Answer 4

I suggest you read up on this postulation then come back and ask. Who says something cannot come from nothing. Haven't you heard of "vacuum fluctuations".

Answer 5

The answer is: We don't know. And this will probably be one of those questions we will never be able to answer. We might come up with some good hypothesis but we'd never be able to test it or observe it unless, new universes were somehow being created constantly. In any case to get anything resembling a scientific theory on this will not be answered in out life time. (Although the God concept is just as accurate as any other idea people will come up with to explain it).

Answer 6

OK, matter cannot be created out of nothing. The theory is before the bang there was a tiny little spot of matter. The bang happened when it expanded into what we know today as space. It was proven that space still expands, and that, when it expands to the maximum, it will substract again, into the same tiny little spot. And it will all happen again.

That's the theory.

Answer 7

tough question.

i am open to answers.

as it can easily be shown that all religions are phoney, what's left is math and astronomy.

so far, we are doing okay, but not great...

got any ideas?

Answer 8

By Dr Chris Lintott

Co-presenter, BBC Sky At Night, St Louis, US  

Cosmic microwave background could hold clues about the Big Bang

A team of physicists has claimed that our view of the early Universe may contain the signature of a time before the Big Bang

Answer 9

Very difficult to get one's head around this one, but there is a problem with your question:  and that is your use of the word "before" which is meaningless when applied to big bang cosmology.

There is no "before" the Big Bang, because Time itself was created in it.

I know that is completely counter-intuitive, but there it is...  If you want to explore the matter further, then you have to delve into multi-dimensional mathematics, string theory, and branes.  Last October's Scientific American article about multiverse theory would be a good start...

Answer 10

Nothing in this case does not mean nothing as in normal English. Do you know the difference between kinetic and potential energy?

Answer 11

1)  We don't know that there was nothing before the big bang.  We just know our universe wasn't there.  Our universe may have emerged from the collapse of a previous universe.  We can't see outside our universe, so it's hard to tell exactly what happened.

2)  Nothing exploded.  The big bang was an expansion of space, not an explosion.  It took thousands of years to expand and cool enough to even get hydrogen, and everything came along after that through basic laws of physics (like gravity) and chemistry.

Answer 12

hey i don't belive in god either!

anyway, about your question. there are a multitude of theories discussing what happened. here's a question: could "nothing" exist before the universe was made? how could anything, including nothing, actually exist if there was no universe. the nothingness would be before time started. could something, including nothing, exist before time had started? and what would nothing exist in? nothing has to exist in something, and there wasn't something for it to exist in. nothing is the wrong word, because nothing can in some ways be something. afterall, "nothing" does exist in the universe, it just isn't there. make sense? i know it sounds weird, but thats the best i can explain.

so it was that no something existed, and that nothing, even *nothing*, existed.

the other theory is that the big bang occurs at the imediate end of the previous universe. the universe colapses in a supermassive black hole. the black hole can not exist, because the universe isn't there for it to exist in. therefore, the black hole ceases to exist, and a new universe is made.

there are a multitude of theories surrounding this question, but no one will ever know what the correct answer is. we can only theorize.

Answer 13

In order to come to grips with the big bang theory you must first commit yourself to a study of stars...how big they are, how they illuminate the sky...their age...their life span...their massive "MASS."

Our star, the Sun, is roughly 4.5 Billion Years Old, and will live as it is for about 5 Billion more years until all of its Hydrogen Gas is consumed. At that time it will expand in size to 4 or 5 times its present size and consume Mercury, Venus, and the Earth (all of the closest planets)... The Sun will begin consumption of all available Helium gas, converting it into other materials, and when the helium is gone, it will move onward to other materials until finally the mass of the Sun is comprised of the densest possible materials and atomic furnace within the Sun goes out. The Sun will become dark.

Now, some stars are smaller than out Sun, and some are much larger. When stars burn out, strange things happen. Multiple burned out stars may collesce, gather together. And at some point the simply massive forces pressing down on the core of the dead star may exceed the point of criticality and produce an immense explosion. The big bang might have been something like this.

One other note...

It has never been said that "everything" was created by the Big Bang. It has been said that "most of what we see was created by the Big Bang." There is an immense amount of material in space that we canot see. God, if you please, has nothing to do with it, neither does Allah, Confucius, Budda  or the Aztec Indian Sun God.

Also, it helps if you realize that our Sun contains 99 percent of all of the mass in this Solar System...Now, go out and pick up a few buckets of sand or rock...Then look around you...We are talking about immense amounts of Mass within the Sun.  And, if you realize that there are millions and millions and millions of stars out there, the explosion we are talking about was a real doozie.

Answer 14

You ever hear of the vacuum in a light bulb holds infinite energy as with all vacuums... the vacuum of space could have been around forever but the point that matter is created through energy which is in infinite supply in a vacuum.... anyway my theory is somehow something unleashed/unlocked the power of vacuum energy which is still going on today well here is some info on it....http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_ener...

Answer 15

Hi Justin!

I have an idea.

It's untrue that something cannot be created from nothing.  The sum of + 3 and -3, for instance, is zero.  Zero can be divided into plus three and minus 3.

Although none of the answerers here has the faintest notion HOW this could have happened, I suggest to you that this may well be WHAT happened.  By some process not currently understood, nothingness came to be divided into positive and negative energy.  Mathematically, as I just demonstrated, it could be so.

Unlike you, I do believe in God, and since no one knows HOW it happened, the possibility that God caused this to happen cannot be excluded.  To me, it is not necessary to invoke God to explain the mysteries of the universe.  No one has yet offered any other compelling explanation either.