What happened before the Big Bang?

Big Bang theory has several major flaws that love to get ignored. First and foremost, logic would indicate, is where did the material from the bang come from, and what caused it? Since matter and energy cannot create itself, it had to originate from somewhere. Yet something had to exist from eternity, because something cannot, logically, create itself out of nothing. This "something" must not be dictated by the universes physical laws, including time, because prior to the theory of the big bang time did not yet exist, correct? Neither did the physical universe. So whatever started the big bang is not bound by the physical laws of the universe, nor is it bound by time.

According to Big Bang mathematical models, the model falls apart at zero time.

Another flaw is cosmic inflation. You want to try and tell me something can travel faster that light? You then better rethink the constant "C" in all equations then. Nothing, according to science, can travel faster than light. But to meet their needs, they bend the rules to fit observation.

What atheists want you to believe is that nothing at all existed, but then, all of a sudden, out of know where, BANG!!!!!!!!!!

I thought matter could be neither created nor destroyed, huh?

The Big Bang theory is based on assumptions of what the universe looked like at some point far in the past. We call this the "beginning" because the Big Bang theory does not allow us to go further back than that time. In fact, our current understanding tells us that time, as we perceive it, cannot be extended before that time. This does not mean it does not exist. It simply means that we do not understand what it could have been like. It also means that we do not know what the word "before" would mean, when time itself cannot be understood. That is why most people (including myself, at times) say that there is no "before", before the Big Bang. The "Big Bang" is not a moment. For example, it was not an explosion. It is an expansion of space and the universe itself. It is still going on. We put the "beginning" at the first moment when we can understand what could be going on. As we run the clock backwards, we find that the universe, in the past, was hotter than today. If you go back far enough, you'd find that the temperature was so hot that we would not even understand what that means. (look up Planck Temperature). At that temperature, each point of the universe would have so much energy that each single point would be a black hole. And honestly, what goes on "before" each point is a black hole -- we do not know. Some scientists are working on theories that might extend the Big Bang theory into its "past" (explaining how the universe got to be in the condition needed to start the expansion) and on other theories that would replace the Big Bang theory (by finding other conditions for the "beginning" that could still explain expansion, without reaching the unexplainable temperature). But we have no way yet of verifying these theories. Years of work ahead.

According to cosmologist Stephen Hawking that is like asking what is North of the North pole. It is a reference point which we can arrive at through mathematical models, where guessing what happened before is simply still guessing even if it is more comfortable. It is obvious that there are problems with the model. For one the exponential expansion. there is no evidence of it, it has never been observed but it turned out by leaving it out of the theory the Universe would have been no bigger than a basketball, and that seems wrong to everybody. Next we have new discovery like the Hubble image of the Galaxies 78 billion light years away, that is a real problem in a Universe that current models say is 12 billion years old. The truth is we do not even really know what is going on now much less what happened before. Andre Linde a Russian cosmologist had a theory of multi universes you should check it out. It is a big puzzle and it is true there is much yet to put together.

Before the Big Bang (which wasn't big and didn't go bang) there was the chaos of the multidimensional Cosmos which consists of infinite dimensions all interacting with each other to form new universes all the time. Some of these universes pop into and out of existence in just a flash, some exist but have very different physics which do not allow chemical or electron reactions. A very few of them are just as conducive to life as our own. Actually the number of universes is infinite and the chances are there is an exact copy of you out there doing the same thing you are.

Actually I just made that up. No one really knows.

I remember once watching a labor-day parade, sitting next to a gutter in which a worm was making its way totally unaware of me or the parade, much less what happened before the big bang or even what happened that morning. I think we have about as much chance knowing what happened before the big bang as that worm. Unless, of course there is a God who knows and wants us to know at some point in our existence. He would have to be a God who can talk to worms and make them understand. Unless, of course, we are more like God than worms are like us.

Maybe the big bang was really a big squirt. Maybe this universe was totally empty and the fabric between it and another universe got punctured and matter from the other universe squirted through, making it appear that all this matter and energy came from a single point. You have to imagine that in more than a three dimensional cognition.

See how complex it gets when you contemplate such unimportant mysteries? There are many problems much more worthy of the effort.

The media, the public, especially creationist, they all don't really grasp some of the ideas of the Big Bang.

Actually some preliminary data suggests the CMB is lopsided. If that is the case the universe may have had some characteristics when it was smaller than an atom moments after the Big Bang. If true we might be able to extrapolate some characteristics of the universe before the Big Bang.

that's an interesting question, and it is one which is not easy to answer, as we do not have enough information to answer it at this time. however, consider this, a few hundred years ago we still thought the earth was only a few thousand years old. if you're truly interested in finding out what happened before the big bang, i would encourage you to go to college and study astrophysics. do post-graduate work in quantum mechanics. learn everything you can about the universe. formulate your own hypotheses about what happened before the big bang. have it reviewed by your intellectual peers and published in scientific journals. who knows? you might be the one to determine what happened. can you say, "nobel prize for science"?

There is no "before the Big Bang".

The Big Bang is the origin point for all of space AND TIME.

There simply can not be a "before the Big Bang" any more than there can be a "West Pole" or an "East Pole".

I mean it sounds logical...there is a North Pole and a South Pole, so there should be an "East Pole" and a "West Pole"....shouldn't there?

But there are no such places...there can not be such places. Longitude and latitude do not work that way. The very expression "East Pole" and "West Pole" are meaningless.

Same is true for "before the Big Bang".

You're assuming time exists as a separate measure of existence. All things exist in four dimensions together, length, height, width, and time, nothing can exist without all of those four. Can you imagine something that exists with just height, width, & time, but not length? Or some other combination of just three? No, everything that exists exists with all four. So without matter to take up length, width and height, time did not exist. When matter came to be (through spontaneous quantum generation), so too, did time.

You're essentially asking what was in the time before time, it's a nonsense question.

Maybe there had been another whole universe, God took it down and restarted it with the Big Bang, like a kid building and knocking down and rebuilding things with blocks.

God has no beginning and no end, so he could do anything he wanted for all eternity.

There is no "before the big bang." At least, not from our perspective from this side of that event. We can never know anything past a certain point in time, and nothing from that era can possibly have any effect on us now. So, it is fruitless to ponder such questions.