What existed before the Big Bang?
Most of my life, the Big Bang Theory has pretty much dominated the “beginning of time” argument. In essence, all matter, energy, etc., began as one event. Before that, there basically was nothing. I never could accept that logic. It just didn’t make basic sense. However, eternity is another concept that blows my mind completely, so I had no compelling counter argument. However, apparently others had the same issue. What came before the Big Bang? Well, Physicist Sean Carroll has been working on that for us. They even drew a nifty picture:
Courtesy NASA amd Universe Today
Now, according to what’s going on, there was this very large explosion about 13.7 billion years ago. This explosion was so powerful it’s been pushing the universe in an expanding nature every since. What has happened of late is they have figured out that the uniform expansion is not so uniform. It’s weighted to one side. But, that fluctuation is not much of an issue. The math involved still explains the “beginning of time”. It just doesn’t for me. However, I have noticed a sublte change in how our existance is referred to over time. Rather than calling it “the universe”, it’s now being called “our universe”. Subtle as it may be, it suddenly leaves open the door to multiple big bangs and eternity. As hard as it is to comprehend, there probably is no “beginning of time”. This subtle change to “our” universe leaves that option available and makes “our” Big Bang something I can swallow. It suddenly becomes purely a mechanism not much different than the creation of a star.
But, that brings the whole debate full circle to what created the need for a “Big Bang Theory” in the first place. Where did we come from? Why are we here? Who or what created all this? We’re as far away from answering that question as we were in 1980.
MSNBC just caught up with my blog:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28638720/