Leaning for sure how things unfolded roughly 13.7 billion years ago can be really challenging. That’s the time when the biggest event of all occurred: the Big Bang. Astronomers believe that was the moment when our Universe was born, but both science and common sense raise the ultimate question: what caused the Big Bang itself?
Apparently, there is no cause at all. The great astrophysicist Stephen Hawking had an astonishing explanation while he was claiming that the Big Bang actually came from nothing. He was saying that the existence of time itself began along with the Big Bang. Therefore, it has no meaning to ask what existed before the Big Bang because there was no time for anything to exist.
A big misconception
But whether we like it or not, scientists often disagree with one another. Not all of them share Stephen Hawking’s view on the problem of the Big Bang. One of them is Michelle Taller, who is an astronomer, research scientist, and assistant director for Science Communication at the Goddard Space Flight Center of NASA. She explains in a video posted on Big Think that one of the biggest misconceptions in science is that the Big Bang itself came from nothing. So what existed before the greatest event of all?
Before the Big Bang, Thaller explains that there were trillions of atoms, and each of them had its own universe inside. Thaller also says that she doesn’t think any scientist actually believes the Big Bang came out of nothing.
The astronomer also admits that there’s no way to see the entire Universe for the moment, and scientists have to focus on the “observable” Universe, instead. This happens because of the time needed for light to travel across the vast distances of the Cosmos. Even light, whose speed is the fastest possible, needs time to reach a certain point in space.
