In the beginning, there was an explosion. Bang!… and the entire universe was formed. Right? Wrong. You see, the origin of the universe is far more complex and mysterious than a simple explosion. When you ask, “What Happened Before The Big Bang?” it’s just one of countless questions you can ask. Take these questions, for instance:
- Why is there something rather than nothing?
- How did everything begin?
- What was there before the beginning?
- Where did the material that created the Big Bang come from?
- What happened in the first instance to create that material?
- Why are we here?
These questions I asked above have been circulating in the realms of human curiosity for countless generations. And we’ve been actively sending probes and telescopes to space, like James Webb and hubble. These telescopes have presented us with images and data that have helped us understand the universe to an extent.
Day in and day out, we’ve diligently scanned the skies, capturing breathtaking images of distant galaxies, nebulae, and celestial phenomena. We’ve even measured the redshift of distant galaxies, allowing us to peer back billions of years into the past. And with all these magnificent discoveries, we still have numerous unanswered questions. Let’s try to answer one today: What Happened Before The Big Bang?
Theories Around The Big Bang
First off, some scientists go with this idea that the entire universe might have originated from a previous incarnation of emptiness—a cold, dark, and empty universe similar to the one that may be awaiting us in the distant future.
Another theory is that there is no actual first man or woman; no special event sparked the universe into existence. But Instead, the universe has always been and will always be, existing in a state of perpetual existence. It suggests that the concept of “before” and “after” loses its meaning, as the universe persists in a state of an unending existence.
Next, we have that our universe is just one among an infinite number of parallel universes. And then, each universe within this vast ensemble may have different properties, leading to a staggering array of diverse realities.
Or maybe everything we perceive is nothing but a sophisticated program created by an advanced civilization or a higher intelligence. Scientists who follow this line of thinking, proposed that an “advanced civilization“ with incomprehensible computing capabilities could create a “simulated reality“ that is indistinguishable from the “real“ universe.
You see, Our Universe is very strange; we’ve got particles popping in and popping out of existence everywhere. There’s something, and then “pop,” nothing.
We’ve got dark matter and dark energy, and for some unknown reason, they make up a significant portion of the entire universe, and we don’t even know what they are. Or how to explain them. They don’t emit, absorb, or reflect light, and yet we can still see their effect on large-scale structures like galaxies.
And of course, we’ve got The Big Bang. Which tries to explain the origin of our universe. That all that we see now, the stars, planets, galaxies, space, time, and basically everything, came from an incredibly hot and dense state approximately 13.8 billion years ago. A Singularity.
Yeahhh you get the flow,
That the universe rapidly expanded after the singularity popped and continues to expand to this day. During this expansion, the fundamental forces and particles that govern the cosmos came into existence.
All of these, raises a whole lot of questions:
- Did the Big Bang happen inside space, or was it the beginning of space itself?
- Where did it happen, and how did it happen?
- Why did it happen in the first place?
We may have an idea of what happened “After” the Bang, But what happened “Before” the Bang is where we are left hanging.
Going back to the initial theory we talked about at the beginning of this chapter, about a previous incarnation of emptiness, a cold, dark, and empty universe similar to the one awaiting us in the distant future, could have been the source of our very own Big Bang.
I know many of you may not agree with this, but let me explain what I’m trying to say.
First off, I want us to look at how the concept of “Material” or “Thing” or ‘Physical matter” came into existence. Considering the origin of stable matter, well, it becomes clear that they did not exist during the initial stages of the BIG BANG. And they didn’t even exist for thousands of years after the Big Bang event.
The early or infant universe was a dense and very hot environment, filled with energetic articles that prevented the formation of complex matter. When the universe eventually cooled and expanded over time, conditions became favorable for the formation of the first atoms to form. From then, simpler particles combined to create sable atoms like hydrogen and helium.
If we go further back in time, the first long-lived particles, “Protons and Neutrons,” emerged. And these are the particles that formed the building blocks of ab atomic nuclei. All of this is not like any material thing we see now in the universe, right? We’ll need to go further then.
And we have “The Grand Unified Epoch.” we are diving into speculative physics here, cause our current experiments, cannot generate enough energy to observe this process directly. But however, there are still some pretty good hypothesis for this. Well, during this era, Matter and Antimatter, were both equal counterparts. Each matter particle, like a quark, had its antimater sister to play with. And they were both identical, but differed in few aspects. And anytime the two siblings encounter each other, they’ll annihilate instantaneously, and transform into some sort of pure energy. In this era, these particles would constantly encounter and create new particles and destroy themselves.
And yeahhh, the question: How did these particles, even come into existence in the first place?
According to quantum mechanics, an empty vacuum, corresponding to spacetime, is always teeming with different energy fluctuations. And these fluctuations, is what give rise to particles spontaneously appearing, only to vanish shortly thereafter. The existence
The spacetime vacuum state is a strange realm where different particles are continuously being created and annihilated, seemingly emerging “out of nothing.” And this case has led scientists to consider that a spacetime vacuum, or would I say a quantum vacuum, is not an empty void, but a dynamic entity in its own right. And this is why some scientists believe that you can actually get something from nothing.
To truly answer the question of how something could arise from nothing, we’ll need to explain the quantum state of the entire Universe at the beginning of the Planck epoch. All attempts to do this remain highly speculative. And yeah, you’ll have to watch my video about the Plank Epoch Here.
Conformal Cyclic Cosmology
Roger Penrose, introduced a controversial and thought-provoking debate in 2020, known as “conformal cyclic cosmology,” to describe a cyclic universe. His model, envisions a universe that goes through series of endless cycles of expansion (The Big Bang) and then contraction (The Big Crunch).
He was inspired by the mathematical relationship between the universe’s hot, dense state during the Big Bang and its cold, empty state, predicted to happen in the distant future. Penrose’s suggested that these different states, become identical when taken to their extremes, in a mathematical sense.
This idea proposes that a cosmos filled with matter can originate from a state resembling absolute nothingness.
In this line of thinking, the big bang seems to emerge from what seems like “ALMOST NOTHING.”
This happens when all the matter in a universe is absorbed by black holes; they’ll eventually dissipate into photons, leaving behind an almost empty universe in the process. The twist is that this emptiness is still a “physical universe,” albeit one remarkably devoid of traditional matter.
And the key to this concept is what we refer to as “Conformal Rescaling,” a problematic mathematical process that aligns the spacetime of the hot, dense state and the cold, empty state while disregarding their sizes. In these super-extreme environments, both space and time lose their conventional meaning, which is quite unsettling. But it then offers a new way to understand the fundamental nature of spacetime.
CCC (Conformal cyclic cosmology) comes from the old cold state to the young and hot state, and they challenge our conventional understanding of cause and effect. Time looses its significance, because these states exists in a totally different timeline.
It raises a deep question about the nature of existence and the origins of the universe’s cycles.
As for how these cycles began, well, I have three possibilities:
- No physical explanation,
- An endlessly repeating cycle with each universe causing the next,
- Or a single repeating cycle where each cycle is self-explanatory.
Penrose’s vision aligns with a continuous sequence of new cycles influenced by quantum theory. They involve random quantum events that result in different variations between them, potentially leaving traces that our experimental physicists can detect.
Penrose’s concept connects with the idea of parallel universes and the many world interpretations of quantum mechanics; in this case, our universe is part of a multiverse, where different universes produce a different outcome, filled with infinite possibilities that unfold endlessly in a cycle of existence.
While Penroses idea might still be debatable and flawed in some aspects, it has provided us with a very good view of the universe, including claims of detecting traces in cosmic data.
While Penrose’s concept has generated interest and debate, it remains a topic of ongoing discussion and exploration within the realms of physics and philosophy. It leads us to contemplate the fundamental question of why something exists rather than nothing, challenging our understanding of reality at its core. Additionally, it connects with the idea of parallel universes and the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, where our universe is part of a vast multiverse filled with infinite possibilities that unfold endlessly in a cycle of existence.
Probabilistic And Deterministic Nature Of The Universe
In our universe, we have two modes, on which it operates; The Deterministic and The Probabilistic. And both of them play a fundamental role, in shaping our understanding on how the universe works and where it might have originated from.
Determinism asserts that every event and outcome in the universe is governed by predetermined conditions and natural laws.
With complete knowledge of the universe’s initial state and governing laws, we can predict future events with certainty.
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The probabilistic nature is particularly evident in quantum mechanics.
At the subatomic level, particles exhibit inherent randomness and uncertainty. This challenges the strict determinism of classical physics, introducing quantum indeterminacy. Particles can exist in multiple states simultaneously and exhibit characteristics like wave-particle duality. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle defines fundamental uncertainty, limiting our ability to precisely know certain pairs of properties. This inherent uncertainty challenges our understanding of reality.
These two perspectives, determinism and probability, seem distinct but await reconciliation. This is where we need a kind of theory to link them up. The quest for a “theory of everything” seeks to unify these perspectives, harmonizing the order of the “deterministic laws” with the inherent randomness of “quantum mechanics.”
Theories like string theory and loop quantum gravity, aim to bridge the gap. You can watch my video about it “Here.”
One influential philosophical argument is rooted in classical metaphysics, where the principle of “ex nihilo, nihil fit” is often invoked. This Latin phrase translates to “out of nothing, nothing comes.” —Parmenides of Elea.
Philosophy has enriched our understanding by introducing arguments such as the “teleological perspective,” which suggests an intelligent designer or grand cosmic plan.
All of these are not conclusive but they do offer us a hint to what the actual origin of the universe is. And……that’s it. As always, thanks for reading today’s write-up, and also subscribe to our channel to get exciting topics like this.
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