# Why did Big Bang happened? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 26, 2004, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-big-bang-happened/276786 "2004-11-26T20:48:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![SentientMeat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2004, 9:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-big-bang-happened/276786/21 "2004-11-29T09:57:19Z")
There is (or, at least, there _need_ be) **no such thing** as BEFORE time itself. The Big Bang was neither Big nor a Bang, and yet we have allowed the term of ridicule from a dour Yorkshireman who _got it wrong_ to become the utterly misleading term of choice for the initial state of the universe. I suggest a far less misleading term is [timeless singularity](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=203743). (or “near-singularity”, at least.) The initial state of the universe may be one of _timelessness_, such that the universe has effectively existed _for ever_. ---
**Author:** ![Dunderman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecb155/32.png) [@Dunderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dunderman)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2004, 10:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-big-bang-happened/276786/22 "2004-11-29T10:02:02Z")
Because you touch yourself at night. ---
**Author:** ![glee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b5a626/32.png) [@glee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glee)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2004, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-big-bang-happened/276786/23 "2004-11-29T12:11:29Z")
> [@afton](#): > > Simple question really: > > Why did Big Bang happened in the first place? > > I asked this question to my lecturer who has Ph.D in physics > but he didn’t know the answer. > > Anyone knows? I have some simple questions: - why do you consider asking a question about an event involving all matter in the Universe, which took place billions of years ago, is ‘simple’? - are you asking for the physics of the event, or are you trawling for the existence of God? - are you coming back to comment / explain yourself? ---
**Author:** ![Bippy\_the\_Beardless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ac8455/32.png) [@Bippy\_the\_Beardless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bippy_the_Beardless)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2004, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-big-bang-happened/276786/24 "2004-11-29T16:25:07Z")
Well, either it was so probable an event that it couldn’t not happen or there was something that ‘lit the fuse’. The something could be something from “not the universe” or something within this universe that managed to go backwards in time as far as possible. ---
**Author:** ![Loopydude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e56c9b/32.png) [@Loopydude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopydude)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2004, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-big-bang-happened/276786/25 "2004-11-29T16:51:58Z")
> [@SentientMeat](#): > > There is (or, at least, there _need_ be) **no such thing** as BEFORE time itself. The Big Bang was neither Big nor a Bang, and yet we have allowed the term of ridicule from a dour Yorkshireman who _got it wrong_ to become the utterly misleading term of choice for the initial state of the universe. > > I suggest a far less misleading term is [timeless singularity](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=203743). (or “near-singularity”, at least.) The initial state of the universe may be one of _timelessness_, such that the universe has effectively existed _for ever_. Yeah, but then these quantum cosmologists go and posit parallel branes, and stringy ultra-dense balls, or even totally flat, cold epochs that obviate Inflation, and simply require reconfiguration of a few variables through apparently spontaneous changes in state. I take this all to mean the universe (or multiverse, if you really want to get wild) could possibly evolve through multiple epochs, or cycle periodically from cold and empty to hot and dense, etc. Oh, and then some toss in this idea of a sort of less coherent state, from which what we experience as 3+1 spacetime spontaneously arises from a more versitile configuration of strings as a kind of emergent phenomenon. These timeless, spaceless universes just boggle me completely. I can figure out how you can have spontaneous “changes” when there’s no time, or when time isn’t time but something else. How do you get change when there’s no way to talk about before and after? Well, apparently you can, though I am utterly lacking in the mental capacity to grasp it, even in a rudimentary fashion. I suppose these other possibilities make about as much sense to me as a “timeless singulatiry”, but suffice to say, people now dare to talk about physics “before” (whatever that really means) the event we call the “Big Bang”. Excuse me while I dose myself with ibuprofren. ---
**Author:** ![Mathochist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c89c15/32.png) [@Mathochist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mathochist)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2004, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-big-bang-happened/276786/26 "2004-11-29T17:29:35Z")
> [@Bippy the Beardless](#): > > Well, > either it was so probable an event that it couldn’t not happen > or there was something that ‘lit the fuse’. > The something could be something from “not the universe” or something within this universe that managed to go backwards in time as far as possible. Or you could stop regarding it as an “event” and just take it for what it is: an inevitable singularity to which all infinite past-directed geodesics in a locally-Minkowskian 4-manifold must converge. It’s just geometry, not an explosion. ---
**Author:** ![SentientMeat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2004, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-big-bang-happened/276786/27 "2004-11-29T18:33:39Z")
> [@](#): > > **Loopy** :How do you get change when there’s no way to talk about before and after? I share your confusion in many respects, **Loopy** , but there can be ‘change’ from a _spatial_ viewpoint without time in the same way that a rainbow “changes from red to violet”, spatially and timelessly. In the same way, the initial state of the universe can represent a _spatial_ “junction” with other branes or whatknot, and cycling from 1 to N dimensions can be thought of as being equivalent to cycling from red to violet. Of course, ti may well be that we will never find much _evidence_ for such a view of the initial state of the universe, and we must simply content ourselves that it is mathematically consistent. But the idea of dividing all that exists into the “timed” and the “timeless” is not new - indeed, it was cogitated upon by Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century. We might simply live in (one of) the regions of the universe where time exists. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2004, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-big-bang-happened/276786/28 "2004-11-29T18:40:36Z")
> [@glee](#): > > - why do you consider asking a question about an event involving all matter in the Universe, which took place billions of years ago, is ‘simple’? It _is_ a simple question, it just has a complex answer, like a lot of SD questions. In fact I might like to see them take this one on. As to the other stuff you asked **afton** I obviously don’t know. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-big-bang-happened/276786.md?page=1)