• Question: What do you thing happened a second before the big bang?

    Asked by nessy123 to Adam, Joanna, Marcus on 22 Nov 2012.
    • Photo: Joanna Giles

      Joanna Giles answered on 22 Nov 2012:

      A second before the big bang? Well a second before the big bang time didn’t exist, so theoretically “a second before the big bang” itself didn’t exist. So I’m going to say – nothing. And that might seem like a simple answer, but try to imagine nothing…I don’t think it’s possible! I don’t mean a big black space – because that is black and that is space. Nothing at all…..woah my head might explode trying to imagine it…

    • Photo: Adam Paige

      Adam Paige answered on 22 Nov 2012:

      Theory suggests that before the big bang our physics laws would not work, which would make it impossible to guess what happened before the big bang. But I do know of one theory which has a suggestion of what came before. It is the idea of a Big Crunch!

      The Big Bang is an explosion that created our universe and caused it to expand outwards very rapidly. However, all the matter in our universe creates a gravitational attraction that is trying to pull everything back together (stopping the expansion and causing contraction of the universe). If there is enough matter (and therefore gravity) in the universe then eventually the universe will shrink and collapse on itself in a big implosion. All matter would eventually end up back in a single point (the reverse of the Big Bang) – and this idea is called the Big Crunch. Some scientists have suggested that as a universe ends in a Big Crunch it bounces back, exploding outwards in a new Big Bang creating a new universe. So possibly there have been many universes which grow, slow down, shrink to the point of collapse and then explode into new life again. And if so, one second before the Big Bang there would have been a Big Crunch.

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