For arguments sake lets agree there was a Big Bang. Something exploded and matter and energy began fleeing the point of explosion, thereby birthing our universe. Now, if we follow theory the universe will continue to expand for a number of eons and then, depending on its nature either peter out until all motion ceases or it will contract, collapsing upon itself, back into a singularity only to repeat the whole process over. That’s al well and good as theories go, but has anyone ever tried to explain what is beyond the fringe of our universe? What are we displacing with our expansion? Is it nothingness, another universe, what??? Has anyone ever speculated on this?
Outside of our universe are millions and millions of abandoned “What is outside the universe” threads.
Welcome to the SDMB; do a search for this question and you will find yourself in great company.
There is no fringe of the universe. You’re thinking of the Big Bang as something similar to a hand grenade going off in a vacuum… that there’s a pre-existing “space” for the matter of the universe to take up. Not so.
actually universe is supposed to mean “all there is” , so even a multiverse universe would still be the universe.
Stephen Hawking said we would never find the end or an outside of the universe because we take it with us where ever we go. He called it finite but unbounded. Finite because it had a beggining and time’s arrow (entropy) flows one way. Unbounded because it appears infinite, unending, because of our taking it with us every where we go.
Makes my head spin!
That’s like asking what’s beyond the NEXT mountain in the Lord of the Rings movie.
(hint: the NEXT mountain)
What was there before time?
What sound does blue make? What does the letter ‘S’ taste like?
“Blooph” and “Salty Tapioca”, so’s you know.
As far as what I got out of it, and any cosmologists will correct me if wrong, when Hawking, Penrose, et al use the word universe in writings meant for us laypeople, they mean the entire space-time continuum.
Time would be an intrinsic part of our universe and did not/would not exist seperately. So to ask what was there before time or how long did the original singularity exist before the Big Bang is an invalid question.
That doesn’t mean the question is stupid, just completely unanswerable, for there is no context in which to place such questions.
That’s why we have theology and “First Cause” theories.
The Japanese have an answer for it:
Mu.