Hope this is the right section to post this question since I saw a thread here regarding Betelgeuse. Anyway, here goes…
Let’s assume for a moment the Big Bang theory explains the organ of the universe. The theory states that the universe was created when a singularity only a few millimeters in size violently exploded 13.7 billion years ago, sending out everything we now know as the “universe”, which for this post refers to all of the physical matter (planets, galaxies, etc) which exists in space.
But how did the space get here?
One explanation is that the singularity’s “bang” created all space and time. However, if the space the universe fills (like objects in a box) wasn’t created until the BB, where did the singularity occur? It had to be somewhere, correct?
Another explanation is that the explosion that was the BB actually took place at a fixed point in space, which would mean space predated the BB.
Either way, the question remains…what created the infinite and colorless void that we perceive as space?
The question has perplexed me ever since I first looked into a telescope and watched space missions when I was young, and while I know it’s likely unanswerable, I thought I would pose the question anyway.
You could say that the Big Bang occurred “somewhere”… but that somewhere was everywhere. And all of space and time, so far as we can tell, came into existence at the Big Bang.
Yes, that’s hard for us puny humans to grasp intuitively, but it’s what the math suggests. And if you think about it, any of the other alternatives are even harder to grasp. Brains evolved for figuring out what fruit is ripe and where the tigers are likely to be hiding just aren’t well-suited for questions like the origin of the Universe, and it’s amazing that we’re able to figure out as much as we have.
The way I had it explained to me in community college astronomy class is that space and time are properties of the Universe, and so concepts like “before the Big Bang” or “the space the Universe occupies” are meaningless, because they didn’t exist until the instant the Big Bang occurred.
When I consider “eternity” or “infinity”, it hurts my brain because I can only understand “an hour” or “inside/outside”. Nevertheless, I tend to do it a lot. Lately this has taken the form of wondering about alien life. If there are no beginnings and endings in existence, there must be/have been/will be other sentient life somewhere/time. Yep, hurts the brain.
See, we were SO good at figuring out where the tigers were, that we stayed on a different continent!
That particular site appears to be BS, but cosmologists really do take the possibility that the Universe is a torus (or rather, a three-dimensional equivalent of one) seriously. If it is, it’s bigger than we can see, but we can’t rule it out.
Also, it may be that the universe is topologically a torus, but that it doesn’t have the shape of one. We think of a torus as being a donut shape in 3D space, but really it’s about what happens on the surface. If you go off the left edge, you reappear on the right edge. The same goes for top/bottom edges. The edge itself is also arbitrary–it could be put anywhere.
Although donuts and variations are the only real-world objects with these properties, there’s no need for it to exist at all. It’s possible to just have the surface with these special connectivity properties, without it being embedded in some higher dimension. It just… is.
Slight quibble. A singularity – either the one at the time of the Big Bang or the ones at the center of black holes – is not “a few millimeters” in size. In theory, it’s a mathematical point having no size at all. In practice, a singularity might be physically constrained to the diameter of a Planck length (1.6 x 10-35 meters) which is an awful lot smaller than “a few millimeters”!
Obvious followon question: if we’re inside a black hole, why are we not observing everything being drawn into the singularity at its center? You cannot stop the ultimate gravitational attraction.
Answer: Maybe we are. Beyond the event horizon, spacetime becomes so distorted that the radial dimension pointing to the singularity becomes timelike, and the time dimension become spatial. Everything in the universe is (maybe, according to this hypothesis) being inexorably drawn into the singularity that lies in the future. You cannot stop time.
The conceptual problem is your “objects in a box” thought. There is nothing = no thing that is outside the Universe. There is no box that contains the Universe. Or equivalently, the Universe is the box and everything in it.
That’s not really a legit theory; that’ more like the armwaving of some goof on youtube. As @chronos said, the entire universe that we know sprang into existence from a singularity at the moment time began. Asking what was “before” then implies the idea of “before” is even meaningful pre-Big Bang. It isn’t. Asking “where” the singularity was sitting implies that the idea of “where” is even meaningful pre-Big Bang. It isn’t.
Many useful things can be said about after the singularity existed and began to expand. At which point the ideas of before and after and the ideas of here, there, and someplace else all became meaningful.
Lately this has taken the form of wondering about alien life. If there are no beginnings and endings in existence, there must be/have been/will be other sentient life somewhere/time. Yep, hurts the brain.