At some point in “time” there were no suns, planets, galaxies, cosmic dust… nothing. At some time there was absolutely nothing. How did this all come about?
Nobody knows.
Pretty much THE question.
“Where the fuck did all this (arms wide) come from?”
Oh. Well I guess we can close this thread.
Nobody has any real idea.
However, here is no reason to say that there was “nothing”. Nor indeed is it clear what it means to say “at some point in time.” Current thinking starts the clock at the big bang. There was no time as we know it except when the clock was running. The clock only exists when the universe does. Which is why we talk of spacetime as a single entity. No space, no time.
SO how did the big bang occur if absolutely nothing existed? And how did it create so much matter?
There was no point in time when nothing existed. The existence of an arrow of time derives from the state of the universe, so you don’t have time if nothing exists. You can find talks and articles by Sean Carroll on this. Much of it is, frankly, beyond me - but he’s an interesting guy, and a good speaker.
But probably what you’re getting at is more the “why is there something rather than nothing” question. That’s something I don’t think there’s any satisfactory answer to. Of course, that doesn’t mean there’s not a Wikipedia article about it.
Cite?
Since we really have no concept of anything outside of space and time, it would be impossible for us to conceive of anything there could be without describing it in terms of what we know, which is space and time.
You sure about that?
I’d like to add, in addition to “we don’t know what was before the big bang”.
We don’t know what the rules were.:dubious:
We always say, “something can’t come from nothing”.
Well, that’s true " here"and " now". But before here and now started, we don’t know what was possible.
We conceptualize everything in where and when terms. In the continuum that spawned us, those terms may not apply.
Taking “God” as shorthand for “the universe,” this pretty much sums up what is known of the time before time and space:
Well right, it would be like describing a modern smartphone to someone from 2000 BC. The only concepts they’d have to explain such a thing would be “The Gods” or “Magic/Sorcery”.
“No no, it sends a signal…”
“Like what, with small demons or birds?”
By extension, the follow up question is, why did the big bang occur when it did? If there were no events to mark the passage of time, when did the big bang take place, and why did it wait so long?
Why didn’t it happen soonere? What did the big bang have to wait for, before it was ready, and what changes were taking placed in preparation for the event?
And why did it happen*** there***, and not somewhere else?
Um, that is why I said it isn’t a given that nothing existed. It was you that said there was nothing, not me.
The amount of space and matter is something of a scale thing. When you look inside matter as we know it - it is, to a very good approximation, empty. Even things like neutron stars are almost completely comprised of empty space.
It happened at Zero on our celestial clock and time is a function of the Universe, so there was no ‘time’ before the Universe began and it wasn’t ‘waiting’.
As there was no “Time”, there was no “sooner”.
It happened everywhere we know of, not at some “there” point.
The idea that something can come out of nothing is utterly irrational.
If there is nothing, then there will continue to be nothing. There is no other possibility.
If there are laws of nature which have a tendency to produce space/time/matter, then there is not nothing: there are laws of nature. Then the question remains as to where these laws of nature came from. Ad infinitum.
The idea of the universe coming out of nothing for no reason is less rational and less believable than any miracle recounted in any religion.
The only possible conclusion is that there has always been ‘something’. Of course, when we say ‘always’ we assume the existence of time, but if ‘something’ created time, then there must have been ‘something’.
Thomas Aquinas, back in the 13th century, gave this line of argument:
- There exist things that are caused (created) by other things.
- Nothing can be the cause of itself (nothing can create itself.)
- There cannot be an endless string of objects causing other objects to exist.
- Therefore there must be an uncaused first cause, which is called God.
Philosophers and theologians have been debating and arguing these issues in great detail and at great length for centuries.
Don’t imagine that there is anything you could say on the subject that hasn’t already been said in thick, closely-reasoned volumes by distinguished professors - and then disagreed about and argued against in other thick, closely-reasoned volumes by other distinguished professors. 
Given unlimited time an unlimited situations, it’s possible we’ve already done this thread in the past.
The idea that something can come out of nothing is utterly irrational.
How do you know what is rational when it comes to the creation of a universe? You don’t know anything about it; let alone if it makes sense in some way you can call rational. To presume you can understand the creation of the universe through rational argument is silly.
Rationality is a fun game, but there’s no reason to expect it can explain the creation of something we know almost nothing about. Currently, neither dark matter nor dark energy have any rational explanation, yet we believe they are the vast majority of “what exists.”
Rationality can’t even explain what the universe is let alone how it came to be.
Forget about matter. Matter is just frozen energy, and right after the big bang energy is all there was.
And perhaps the sum of energy in the universe is zero. If so, there is no reason for the Big Bang not to have happened.
There is also speculation that our universe is a baby universe pinched off from another which is pinched off from another. It would be universes all the way down. In fact universes could evolve, with universes with natural constants most suitable for producing other ones more prevalent than others.
I don’t know if Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle applies outside our universe, but if it does nothing is not a stable state. That’s the reason for quantum foam.