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What created the Big Bang?
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Question Date: 1999-05-27 | | Answer 1:
This is the hardest question of all, and right now
NOBODY has a good answer to it. All known laws of
physics break down at the time of the big bang,
and all we can do at the moment is speculate. We
DO know that at this time gravity (which is due to
the warping of spacetime) is subject to fuzzy
quantum mechanical effects, and this suggests that
space and time themselves become poorly defined
concepts. It might not even make sense to ask
questions such as "what happened before the big
bang" or "what created the big bang" because the
very notion of time might be breaking down at that
point. Currently the best hope of attacking this
problem is a very abstract theory called "string
theory" or "M-theory", which is an attempt to
unify all the fundamental forces of nature,
including gravity, into one single quantum theory.
However, nobody can yet write down the
mathematical equations which describe this theory,
and there is no way to use it to tackle this most
interesting of questions. If somebody tells you
that they know what happened at the time of the
big bang, or what caused it, don't believe them.
We still don't know!
| | Answer 2:
If the Big Bang theory is true, no one, to my
knowledge, has offered a scientific theory to
answer that question.Since science deals with what
can be observed, the Big Bang theory explains the
observed behavior of the universe. But, since the
Big Bang itself was not observed, a good theory to
explain what created the Big Bang cannot be
offered.
| | Answer 3:
Good question. I don't think anyone can answer
that, assuming that the question even makes sense.
Time did not exist before the Big Bang, so it
doesn't make sense to ask about things "before",
since there is no "before" the Big
Bang.
But that's not exactly the same thing
as what you're asking.
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