What was it like before the Big Bang? What is “nothing” and how could something come out of “nothing”? My name is Marek, I’m 6 years old and I’m interested in animals and space.
Dear Marek
This is an important question, but one that is difficult even for physicists to answer.
Out of nothing
According to current understanding, the Big Bang arose out of nothing. There was no time and no space. So one cannot ask what came before or what lay beyond it. It was a day without a yesterday, a point with nothing around it. It was simply ‘nothing’. However, we cannot really imagine this. When we imagine “nothing”, we automatically picture something – usually something black. But that is not “nothing”. Our brains always imagine something. We cannot switch that off. However, this has more to do with us as human beings and the way we think. There’s always something around us, which is why ‘nothing’ is unimaginable to us.
Until further notice
Whether the Big Bang really came from nothing, however, is no longer so certain today. There are observations from space probes (the Hubble Space Telescope, James Webb, Planck and others) that raise some doubts. At the moment, we simply don’t have a better explanation. We’re waiting for a few bright minds like you to refine this Big Bang theory. Perhaps then, ‘nothing’ will disappear too.