What existed before the big bang?
What existed before the big bang? It is difficult enough to imagine a time, roughly 13.7 billion years ago, when the entire universe existed as a singularity. According to the big bang theory, one of the main contenders vying to explain how the universe came to be, all the matter in the cosmos — all of space itself — existed in a form smaller than a subatomic particle. Once you think about that, an even more difficult question arises: What existed just before the big bang occurred? The question itself predates modern cosmology by at least 1,600 years. Fourth-century theologian St. Augustine wrestled with the nature of God before the creation of the universe. His answer? Time was part of God’s creation, and there simply was no “before” that a deity could call home. Armed with the best physics of the 20th century, Albert Einstein came to very similar conclusions with his theory of relativity. Just consider the effect of mass on ti
