# Before the Big Bang: why the huge silence?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/before-the-big-bang-why-the-huge-silence/674684
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [November 24, 2013, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/before-the-big-bang-why-the-huge-silence/674684 "2013-11-24T17:59:25Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 4
### Author:  [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)
#### Post date: [December 22, 2014, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/before-the-big-bang-why-the-huge-silence/674684/61 "2014-12-22T02:13:40Z")
> [@Smapti](#):
>
> It’s my understanding (as filtered through what I remember of the community college astronomy class I took 11 years ago) that the phrase “before the Big Bang” is an oxymoron, because time itself is a product of the Big Bang.
>
> So the answer to your question is “Mu”.
Also, the whole thing is a rather hypothetical model put together by a mix of very abstracted physics and arcane maths.
It’s like asking what’s outside the crystal spheres of Ptolemy’s astronomy. Who knows? That’s as far as the math got, and if we did know, we’d probably know the model is off.
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### Author:  [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)
#### Post date: [December 22, 2014, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/before-the-big-bang-why-the-huge-silence/674684/62 "2014-12-22T02:26:34Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#):
>
> There is no reason even to assume that our puny ape brains, forged as they were on the savannah in Africa, are capable of grokking the answer in the first place.
That.
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### Author:  [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)
#### Post date: [December 22, 2014, 6:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/before-the-big-bang-why-the-huge-silence/674684/63 "2014-12-22T06:27:24Z")
All the various Multiverse theories just beg the question. Where did the Multiverse come from? Is it just part of a bigger Multi[sup]2[/sup]-verse? And is that just part of a Multi[sup]2[sup]2[/sup][/sup]-verse?
Is it really Multiverses all the way up?
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### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [December 22, 2014, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/before-the-big-bang-why-the-huge-silence/674684/64 "2014-12-22T16:14:50Z")
> [@Senegoid](#):
>
> All the various Multiverse theories just beg the question. Where did the Multiverse come from? Is it just part of a bigger Multi[sup]2[/sup]-verse? And is that just part of a Multi[sup]2[sup]2[/sup][/sup]-verse?
>
> Is it really Multiverses all the way up?
There’s no up or down in space. It’s Multiverses all the way sideways.
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### Author:  [@ZenBeam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZenBeam)
#### Post date: [December 22, 2014, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/before-the-big-bang-why-the-huge-silence/674684/65 "2014-12-22T17:37:30Z")
> [@John Mace](#):
>
> There is no reason even to assume that our puny ape brains, forged as they were on the savannah in Africa, are capable of grokking the answer in the first place.
On the other hand, there’s no reason to think we are _not_ capable, either. Not knowing the answer in no way implies we couldn’t understand it if it were told to us.
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### Author:  [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)
#### Post date: [December 22, 2014, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/before-the-big-bang-why-the-huge-silence/674684/66 "2014-12-22T18:03:34Z")
> [@Kamakiri](#):
>
> Okay, maybe not the “huge silence,” but a silence, anyway. Just for the record, I’m an atheist firmly planted in the real world, don’t believe conspiracy theories in general, and usually trust smart, accredited scientists to not blindly make stuff up or quote 2,000 year-old books written by semi-literate monks.
Space-time is itself a result of the big bang and you should, as other posters have indicated, include your concept of “before” in that.
As for your critique of the quality of writing in the scriptures, none of it was written by monks, it is some of the best literature ever written (you should try Ecclesiastes for starters, or Psalms) and is far more literate, even in translation, than most gifted writers could hope to produce.
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### Author:  [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2014, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/before-the-big-bang-why-the-huge-silence/674684/67 "2014-12-23T01:03:30Z")
Incidentally, none of the Bible was written by monks.
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### Author:  [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2014, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/before-the-big-bang-why-the-huge-silence/674684/68 "2014-12-23T01:37:23Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#):
>
> There’s no up or down in space. It’s Multiverses all the way sideways.
Wrong forum. You want the second Multiverse to the left.
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### Author:  [@rsa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rsa)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2014, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/before-the-big-bang-why-the-huge-silence/674684/69 "2014-12-23T03:07:25Z")
All these theories and speculations interest me as much as anyone, however there is really only one answer to the question that is unassailable.
What allows any and all of these possibilities to exist are THE LAWS OF PHYSICS. That is the one prerequisite for everything else, real or imagined.
You may say that there is no evidence that the laws of physics are static. While true, this simply means that the “laws” include one or more randomized variables (or randomizing functions.)
You might argue that the laws of physics are no different than God. While I believe that this is what Einstein meant when he referred to “God” or “the Old Man”, the laws of physics don’t imply any supernatural “super-nature”. By definition, nothing can be more natural than the laws of physics.
YMMV.
Peace
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### Author:  [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2014, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/before-the-big-bang-why-the-huge-silence/674684/70 "2014-12-23T04:59:49Z")
If I am very much mistaken, the world-line for a singularity is parallel to the t-axis, meaning time is not progressive until the singularity “explodes”. After the Big Bang, the orientation of the universal world-line regresses toward zero, so that where we are now is whatever is the “normal” slope of the t variable (which varies throughout the universe, depending on the certainty of our current vector and gravitational gradient.
Which means to me that the timeframe of the events subsequent to the Big Bang are very dilated relative to what we are familiar with: to speak of the early femtoseconds after the Big Bang ignores the time dilation that must have been present in the early universe, those initial femtoseconds might well seem to us like zillions of years in relative time.
So there was simply no time at all relative to the original singularity. The other part, well, I might have that all mucked up. It is much easier to understand when you have had some decent acid – as long as you do not notice any squirrels nearby.
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### Author:  [@bardos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bardos)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2014, 7:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/before-the-big-bang-why-the-huge-silence/674684/71 "2014-12-23T07:44:17Z")
The Huge Silence: Could it be that before the Big Bang there just wasn’t much to talk about?
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### Author:  [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2014, 11:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/before-the-big-bang-why-the-huge-silence/674684/72 "2014-12-23T11:42:31Z")
Instead of the “What’s North of the North Pole” analogy, I like to offer the following analogy:
Science can tell us many things about objects that weigh 100 grams and things that weigh 10 grams and so on, all the way down to the most infinitesimal weights. But science has nothing to say at all about objects that weigh -1 grams, not because science is ignorant about the problem, but because the question is ill posed. If you ask why the sharp dividing line exists at exactly 0 grams between productive inquiry and ill posed problem space (as opposed to say, 18 grams or -4 grams), the answer is rather obviously that it’s embedded in the fundamental structure of the universe.
Similarly, we are able to speculate productively about things that happened microseconds after the big bang but not at all about things that happened 1 second before because “1 second before the big bang” is a similarly ill posed concept. Our language doesn’t allow for accurate encapsulations of the topic so we say things like “time was created at the big bang”. In reality, time was “created” at the Big Bang in the same way mass is “created” at 0 grams.
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### Author:  [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2014, 12:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/before-the-big-bang-why-the-huge-silence/674684/73 "2014-12-23T12:07:03Z")
I can remember when the notion of what was before the big bang was universally dismissed as a nonsensical question, but that is not the case any more.
There are even hypotheses of e.g. an inflationary period happening _before_ the big bang, and corresponding predictions about the macro structure of the universe.
But, of course, the real reason so many people bring up the issue of “before the big bang” is because what they are really getting at are philosophical questions of how come anything exists at all.
And that’s something beyond our current understanding, maybe it always will be – could we ever explain something without mentioning prior states or pre-existing laws?
(This is not to advocate religious explanations. I’m an atheist and for me “OK, first there was a god…” clearly doesn’t help in terms of explaining why anything exists)
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### Author:  [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2014, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/before-the-big-bang-why-the-huge-silence/674684/74 "2014-12-23T14:40:18Z")
Without going back and reading the entire thread, it seems to me that whatever there was preceding the Big Bang must have been dynamic, since it passed from a state that did not explode to one that did, crossing some kind of a critical threshold that enabled the Big Bang to occur exactly when it did. Figuratively, something lit the fuse.
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### Author:  [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2014, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/before-the-big-bang-why-the-huge-silence/674684/75 "2014-12-23T16:56:08Z")
> [@jtur88](#):
>
> Without going back and reading the entire thread, it seems to me that whatever there was preceding the Big Bang must have been dynamic, since it passed from a state that did not explode to one that did, crossing some kind of a critical threshold that enabled the Big Bang to occur exactly when it did. Figuratively, something lit the fuse.
That is the naïve perspective. Nothing(ness) is homogenous, isotopic and uniform. What we have observed from those kind of systems is that they are unstable and tend to develop imbalances and irregularities. Perfection is death, the only way you can go from there is imperfection/decay.
Which is to say that Nothing became Something because it _had_ to. It is the natural order. Any putative _causa prima_ is superfluous.
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### Author:  [@Rachellelogram](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rachellelogram)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2014, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/before-the-big-bang-why-the-huge-silence/674684/76 "2014-12-23T17:57:32Z")
Everyone knows that, prior to the big bang, there was the gnab gib. And it was doog.
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### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2014, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/before-the-big-bang-why-the-huge-silence/674684/77 "2014-12-23T18:08:41Z")
> [@eschereal](#):
>
> That is the naïve perspective. Nothing(ness) is homogenous, isotopic and uniform. What we have observed from those kind of systems is that they are unstable and tend to develop imbalances and irregularities. Perfection is death, the only way you can go from there is imperfection/decay.
>
> Which is to say that Nothing became Something because it _had_ to. It is the natural order. Any putative _causa prima_ is superfluous.
Actually, the latest, greatest cutting edge hypotheses all say that Nothing is impossible. Quantum fluctuations make that so. The universe was not created out of Nothingness because there can never be nothingness. It’s Something all the way down. Or possibly sideways. Over under.
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### Author:  [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2014, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/before-the-big-bang-why-the-huge-silence/674684/78 "2014-12-23T18:17:49Z")
> [@eschereal](#):
>
> Which is to say that Nothing became Something because it _had_ to. It is the natural order. Any putative _causa prima_ is superfluous.
Well, what do you mean by Nothing? If you mean the absence of anything, including laws, it’s difficult to see how we can reason from that basis.
It seems to reason in the way you describe we’d have to at least presuppose a discrete state, some sort of progression of states (i.e. time), and some reason why the universe must follow the law that uniform states are unstable.
Or, another point: in the palm of my hand right now is an infinity of Nothing. Why doesn’t any of it become a Big Bang?
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### Author:  [@Nelson\_Pike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nelson_Pike)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2014, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/before-the-big-bang-why-the-huge-silence/674684/79 "2014-12-23T18:18:45Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#):
>
> There is no reason even to assume that our puny ape brains, forged as they were on the savannah in Africa, are capable of grokking the answer in the first place.
There is nothing puny about our brains, on the decisive evidence of the spectacular advances of the mere 500 years of the modern scientific era.
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### Author:  [@HoneyBadgerDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HoneyBadgerDC)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2014, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/before-the-big-bang-why-the-huge-silence/674684/80 "2014-12-23T18:23:13Z")
Once it reaches this level you might as well be talking to teenagers smoking pot, at least it will be entertaining.
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