# What happened before the universe was born? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 6, 2006, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-before-the-universe-was-born/383016 "2006-12-06T02:05:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![chowder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/977dab/32.png) [@chowder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chowder)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2006, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-before-the-universe-was-born/383016/21 "2006-12-06T16:42:05Z")
[QUOTE=Chez Guevara] The Bouncing Universe theory on the linked page argues that the universe came into being with a bug bang. While it is easy to jest about a spelling mistake, there is something resonant about the Bug Bang idea. It would explain a lot to me if someone could prove that the universe was formed as a result of a software malfunction in somebody’s computer system. I wonder if the error has been fixed yet. [/QUOTE] Nope, not fixed as yet. When it is there’ll be another bloody big bang ---
**Author:** ![CurtC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ce73a5/32.png) [@CurtC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CurtC)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2006, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-before-the-universe-was-born/383016/22 "2006-12-06T16:55:42Z")
[QUOTE=Lissa] I don’t understand this, just like I don’t understand the concept that the universe might be finite. As matter is neither created nor destroyed, everything had to be \*somewhere _before the Big Bang. I know that time is a man-made construct, but I can’t understand the concept of there being_ nothing \*before the BB. [/QUOTE] A couple of comments here. First, time is not a man-made construct. It seems to be an inherent property of the universe. Very closely tied to the idea of space… Second, space itself was created at the BB, according to the prominent idea. Your comments make it sound like you envision a pre-existing space that the BB happened within, but that’s not it. ---
**Author:** ![Roboto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b77776/32.png) [@Roboto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roboto)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2006, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-before-the-universe-was-born/383016/23 "2006-12-06T18:02:13Z")
Before the big bang, it was just god hanging around in his bedroom, bored off his ass. Then he got a really cool idea . . . ---
**Author:** ![CurtC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ce73a5/32.png) [@CurtC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CurtC)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2006, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-before-the-universe-was-born/383016/24 "2006-12-06T18:16:34Z")
[QUOTE=Roboto] Before the big bang, it was just god hanging around in his bedroom, bored off his ass. Then he got a really cool idea . . . [/QUOTE] What took him so long? Presumably, he waited an infinite amount of time before starting. ---
**Author:** ![Senor\_Pina](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ac8455/32.png) [@Senor\_Pina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senor_Pina)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2006, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-before-the-universe-was-born/383016/25 "2006-12-06T18:54:44Z")
[QUOTE=CurtC] A couple of comments here. First, time is not a man-made construct. It seems to be an inherent property of the universe. Very closely tied to the idea of space… Second, space itself was created at the BB, according to the prominent idea. Your comments make it sound like you envision a pre-existing space that the BB happened within, but that’s not it. [/QUOTE] Time isn’t a man made construct but our perception of it is… that’s not to say that we get to choose how we perceive linear time for the most part, but it’s part of our physiology. It’s thought that prior to the Big Bang all that existed was a single point within which there was no time, and there will again be no time after our universe ends. ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2006, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-before-the-universe-was-born/383016/26 "2006-12-06T19:08:44Z")
[QUOTE=Lissa] I don’t understand this, just like I don’t understand the concept that the universe might be finite. As matter is neither created nor destroyed, everything had to be \*somewhere \*before the Big Bang. [/QUOTE] But the Big Bang was a singularity. The thing about singularities is that the laws of physics as we understand them, including the one that says “matter is neither created nor destroyed”, break down at them. It’s weird and philosophically unappealing to a lot of physicists and cosmologists, but we seem to be stuck with a universe that has singularities in it. ---
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2006, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-before-the-universe-was-born/383016/27 "2006-12-06T19:34:00Z")
[QUOTE=cmyk] The meaning of life, of course 😉 [/QUOTE] Oh, that’s an easy one: There isn’t any. Off-topic, but am I the only one who thought the OP meant “What happens before the universe is boned?” (which is a much more interesting question, I think :D) ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2006, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-before-the-universe-was-born/383016/28 "2006-12-06T19:42:45Z")
[QUOTE=cmyk] The meaning of life, of course 😉 Unless you’re happy with 42. [/QUOTE] I am not. I refer you to that other Great Philosopher of the 20th Century, [Mr Natural](http://philebus.tamu.edu/pipermail/scl/attachments/20030116/d2f87a6b/natural.jpg), who, when asked what it all means, replied, “Don’t mean shit.” Words to live by. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2006, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-before-the-universe-was-born/383016/29 "2006-12-06T20:15:20Z")
> [@](#): > > What took him so long? Presumably, he waited an infinite amount of time before starting. This question is an old one, and so far as I know, it was St. Augustine who first came up with the answer (held to by physicists today) that time is a part of the Universe, and therefore did not precede the Universe. This can be a difficult concept for people to grasp. We’re so used to time, that many people, when they encounter the idea that time had a beginning, immediately postulate some sort of “meta-time”, which retains all of the same problems as time. Nope, 'twasn’t that, neither. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2006, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-before-the-universe-was-born/383016/30 "2006-12-06T20:21:37Z")
It’s turtles, turtles, turtles – **all the way down!** ---
**Author:** ![KlondikeGeoff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3e96dc/32.png) [@KlondikeGeoff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KlondikeGeoff)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2006, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-before-the-universe-was-born/383016/31 "2006-12-06T20:22:09Z")
[QUOTE=Roboto] Before the big bang, it was just god hanging around in his bedroom, bored off his ass. Then he got a really cool idea . . . [/QUOTE] It wasn’t even that structured…God was cleaning the gunk out of his trouser cuffs, and one little pebble struck the ground, and _viola_… Some years ago _Sky & Telescope_ Magazine ran a contest to come up with a more apt name for the Big Bang. After receiving hundreds of suggestions, they finally concluded there was no better name. They listed a few of the entries, and my favorite was: Bertha D. Universe. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2006, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-before-the-universe-was-born/383016/32 "2006-12-06T20:24:26Z")
[QUOTE=Chronos] This can be a difficult concept for people to grasp. We’re so used to time, that many people, when they encounter the idea that time had a beginning, immediately postulate some sort of “meta-time”, which retains all of the same problems as time. Nope, 'twasn’t that, neither. [/QUOTE] I guess this means my “meta-meta-time” postulate still stands then. After all it’s one meta louder. ---
**Author:** ![Corner\_Case](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/corner_case/32/234_2.png) [@Corner\_Case](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corner_Case)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2006, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-before-the-universe-was-born/383016/33 "2006-12-06T20:49:29Z")
> [@Q.E.D.](#): > > Off-topic, but am I the only one who thought the OP meant “What happens before the universe is boned?” (which is a much more interesting question, I think ) I thought it was “What happens before the universe is bored?” which leads to “boned” which leads to “born”. > [@The Sonoran Lizard](#): > > Aw, C’mon, I wanna get bornded from a black hole! If you were of African-American woman non-cesarian born then… But more seriously… Before the Big Bang it seems that “nothing” couldn’t exist. If nothing existed then there would be nothing out of which to create something. Something needed to exist because nothing couldn’t. Considering the creation of particles at the quantum level from ‘nothing’, I vaguely remember **Chronos** or **Q.E.D.** reminding posters in another thread that a zero-potential energy field is still a field (I hope I stated that correctly). This suggests that something can form from nothing because the field changes. What changes the field? I don’t know. It strikes me that at the lowest level that perhaps the universe is made up of fields of energy interacting. Some are non-zero, other fields are zero and appear to be “empty” space. There could be truly no “empty” space because - with no fields acting in an area then that area is effectively not part of the universe. Are there theories that point to this idea or discredit it? ---
**Author:** ![Lissa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/85f322/32.png) [@Lissa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lissa)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2006, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-before-the-universe-was-born/383016/34 "2006-12-06T22:04:00Z")
[QUOTE=CurtC] A couple of comments here. First, time is not a man-made construct. It seems to be an inherent property of the universe. Very closely tied to the idea of space… [/quote] Please explain further. Of course things age-- a star has a “lifespan” which ends when its fuel is exhausted-- but is that what you meant? > [@](#): > > Second, space itself was created at the BB, according to the prominent idea. Your comments make it sound like you envision a pre-existing space that the BB happened within, but that’s not it. See-- that’s the part I can’t understand. I can’t wrap my mind around _nothingness._ It’s easy for me to invision that all of the stars, planets and other celestrial bodies were created during the Big Bang, but space itself? My puny mind insists that space had to be there. ---
**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2006, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-before-the-universe-was-born/383016/35 "2006-12-06T22:13:42Z")
At that point, you’ve got to be religious or philosophical because according to current science there was no before. Just wasn’t, plain and simple. No meta-time. Nothing like that. And that’s as far back as our science in this universe can go. But… what’s to say our universe is the only universe? If you were inside of a black hole (well, not in the singularity), I imagine that’d be your entire universe as far as any science could ever detect. Obviously your universe started in ours, but you’ll never know that, and can’t. Well, unless your soul is evaporated from that black hole and ends up born again in our universe. But then you’ve got to start all over. Every once in a while I come across fairly decent articles about our universe just being a simulation, which is also something you’d never notice. So maybe before the universe existed, our processing bandwidth was reserved for looking at porn on a higher plane. ---
**Author:** ![cmyk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmyk/32/3353_2.png) [@cmyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmyk)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2006, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-before-the-universe-was-born/383016/36 "2006-12-06T23:29:03Z")
[QUOTE=Q.E.D.] Oh, that’s an easy one: There isn’t any. [/QUOTE] Yeh. I realize that. Even though I was half-joking… if you really give it some thought, the fact that the universe exists at all is one thing. The fact that it just so happened to be configured in such a way that it made it possible for life to arise AND that it is able to form an appreciation of itself and it’s insignificant place within the very universe that spawned it is another thing entirely. It will never cease to blow me away. Even more so than the fact the universe exists at all. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2006, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-before-the-universe-was-born/383016/37 "2006-12-06T23:50:57Z")
[QUOTE=Roboto] Before the big bang, it was just god hanging around in his bedroom, bored off his ass. Then he got a really cool idea . . . [/QUOTE] Where was his bedroom? ---
**Author:** ![cmyk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmyk/32/3353_2.png) [@cmyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmyk)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2006, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-before-the-universe-was-born/383016/38 "2006-12-07T00:00:01Z")
[QUOTE=Princhester] Where was his bedroom? [/QUOTE] Upstairs. He was still living with his parents at the time. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2006, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-before-the-universe-was-born/383016/39 "2006-12-07T00:54:15Z")
Where was the house? ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2006, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-before-the-universe-was-born/383016/40 "2006-12-07T00:55:38Z")
Look, sorry, this is GQ, I shouldn’t be playing this game here. I’ll stop. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-before-the-universe-was-born/383016.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-before-the-universe-was-born/383016.md?page=3)