Question about pre-big bang?

Question

So I have been thinking a lot recently about the universe before the big bang. Something had to exist before the big bang. Atoms and such. So have atoms and the laws of the universe existed forever then eventually created the big bang? Forever makes no sense to me, it most certainly seems like everything has to end, including the universe, and everything included in the universe. But for anything to exist...there had to be a start...right? ahhhh, my head is going to explode.

Keep god out of this....please!!!

Answer 1

i think the same way. something had to start it all (i personally believe god but whatever u believe is fine)

Answer 2

1. there was no time before the big bang. actually, there was nothing before the big bang. it was the beginning of spacetime, so prior to the big bang...well actually there was no prior. and if there was there wouldnt be anything in existence.

2. no laws of physics can calculate what happen at T=0 or directly after. the smallest measurable amount of time is called planck time, and is a little more than 10^-44 seconds. it is the time it takes light to travel planck length, which is the smallest distance possible (in theory) and is 1.61625281 x 10^-35 meters. so at any amount of time less than planck time after the big bang, the universe was smaller than planck length. meaning our physics mean nothing, they do not work. if you try to work out the equations you get answers that make no sense at all.

Answer 3

....as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we  know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there  are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the  ones we don't know we don't know."

(leave it alone...your head WILL explode) unless you're going to dedicate your life to physics

Answer 4

There is no "pre-".  When it comes to perceiving the universe at its limits we are confounded by the fact that it is all that ever was or ever will be.  It cannot be contained within or compared to anything.  As counter-intuitive as it may seem, there can be no "before" to "everything."  You can't force the universe to be confined to your limited conceptions.  Nobody can.  It's an enigma that humbles us and I believe the wise thing to do is just accept the fact that we can never completely understand it.  I don't believe this is just a conditional limitation.  I believe it is equivalent to a physical law.  Conceptually, I put it in the same category as division by zero.

Answer 5

Time itself didn't exist "before" the Big Bang, so there was no before.  Like the first poster said, the universe doesn't need to fit into our very limited ability to think about it.  It is what it is even when we can't grasp it.

It is kind of like asking, where were you before you were conceived?  You weren't so the question is flawed assuming an answer that does not work.  Before the Big Bang is a flawed question in the same way, only replace you with everything that was, is or will ever be.

Answer 6

there are two problems here, which are inseparable in practice: being and knowing. the situation seems to be that whatever happened "before" the big bang, if anything, all evidence of it in our universe as it currently exists has been erased by the process itself. so we don't really know if our problem is that we can't see it, or that it's not there. on the other hand it's not really clear how it could be said that something that we can't ever observe, even in principle, actually existed, so maybe there is not really a meaningful distinction to be made. if this seems like a long way of saying I don't know, I suppose that's because it is.

if I can say something practical though, there was certainly something before atoms: plasma, a hot mixture of ions and electrons. and high energy particle physics gives some clues about what happened in the early universe, before that. no one is pretending that that research is complete yet, so it may yet suggest how this problem can be resolved nicely.