This will make your head hurt.

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Assuming the evidence supporting the big bang is correct, I am confused about what existed before that. One cannot assume there was nothing because the concept of nothing would not exist. It would be the absence of nothing. But how can you have nothing if nothing does not exist? You could not say that came from another universe because that still brings up the same question where did that come from. If a person is religious (which I am not) they would say that this is where god comes in, but where did god come from another god? If there is a solution would we even be able to comprehend it, maybe it is forever above our understanding? But I don't like that.

What happened before the Big Bang is up for conjecture, but the current wisdom states that there was literally nothing before the Big Bang.

Just because the human mind can not truly envision "Nothingness", that does not mean that there was nothing before the Big Bang.

However, for the sake of argument, it is safe (and probably more correct) to state that "Nobody knows what, if anything, existed before the big Bang", and leave it at that.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPl0KOPV5Kw[/youtube]

The old idea used to be the universe would collapse in the "Big Crunch", eventually leading to another "Big Bang". Rinse. Repeat.

But hey... this is barely-evidenced theory at best... we're still working on it.

If Time didn't exist prior to the Big Band than there was no "before".

Maybe it's tempting to think that for some reason a Singularity sat there for a while before something triggered a massive energy release, but I'm not sure about that.

Anyway could we see the reverse of this in Blackholes? It seems like it's a cliff where space and time abruptly end and everything is ultimately crushed. Just a thought that while there is no "before" time previous to the big band maybe Blackholes are a place with no "after' for whatever falls into them.

I'm more curious on how the Big Bang was started...

I think no human could say.

Oh the brain-bashing joy of cosmology

One astro lecturer said 'there was no before because time did not exist'
I think modern day physicists love to make mysterious comments like that to look smart, when I know full well that there is no actual understanding in their heads either. It's all theory based on maths, and not possible for a sane mind to actually visualize.

I am not convinced by the current big bang theory. What does not add up for me is inflation. I doesn't feel right. It feels like a way to force 2 pieces of a puzzle together that just don't belong. And is seems a bit too easy that just because the universe is expanding now, that you can necessarily go backwards all the way to just a singularity.
It occurred to me that the Universe fluctuates, and when I asked the lecturer if this was a really stupid idea, she said 'alternating universe - I'll address that later' and she never did.
And when I asked another lecturer about something I had read - that space is not the same everywhere, and that our solar system can pass through an 'energy cloud' (maybe a region in space that had energized particles left over from a supernova or something), I was hoping he'd say something like "that's not possible because ......." , or ' that could be a phenomenon known as....'. Instead, he poopoo'd the source of the idea, and embarrassed me in front if the class.
This from university lecturers with a PhD.

I think that the energy cloud is a very plausible idea, and that it is possible that it can affect the activity of the sun, all magnetic fields in the solar system and maybe even the weather on Earth. THAT'S WHAT I THINK. AND I WOULD RATHER ACCEPT A LOGICAL REASON WHY NOT FROM A NOBODY THAN A SNOOTY DISMISSAL FROM A SMART ASS PHD. He lost all of my respect after that.

The theory says that before the big bang the whole universe was compressed into something the size of a proton? If I remember correctly...

So there was a proton with huge mass.

But I like thinking about this. If there was no time before the BB then there was no before from the perspective of our universe. But maybe there was something different there. Or maybe our universe expanded within another universe and that other universe is now pushed to the outer regions and we'll never see it.

Actually, the easiest way is to not think about it.

Isn't it enough to enjoy the beauty of the stars on a clear night without having to invent reasons for them being there?

The problem with infinity is that it means we are repeated an infinite number of times. I find that hard to believe. Or maybe my puny brain simply finds that hard to grasp.

It seems to me that the Big Bang theory does not actually tell us anything about "creation".

It simply means that in our best model of the universe, the bit that represents "time" has a stopping-point in the direction that represents "backwards".

It could mean that the universe didn't exist before then, or it could just mean that our model doesn't describe what happened before then, or it could even mean that the word "before" has no meaning in this situation. The theory doesn't have an opinion on stuff like that.

If there "did" happen to be "something" "before" the Big Bang, it doesn't have to necessarily be a sentient God. It could be something else.