For whatever poor and unlearned reasons, I still insist that someone show me nothing. Nothing is as much an absolute as an infinity. I have problems with so called absolutes. They are fine markers or place holders, But you generally have to ignore them for actually doing anything in this world. I guess this makes me an anihilist. I don't believe in nothing. I also question our concept of beginnings. It is a part of a basic problem, It goes something like this, In the beginning, There was supposed to be a god and nothing. (ignoring of course "the waters" ) Now god is supposed to make stuff, things, things so there would be something rather than nothing+god. Now there would be if we go by this mess, God(arguably something, in this context) + Nothing (Ok, that is weird, but wait...) + someThing (Way out weird, I mean to weird for Sunday school weird.) So under this construction We have nothing AND something AND God. But if the go back to that "first" moment, There was God AND Nothing. What are we to make of god then? All these paths lead to SOMETHING being prior in and of existence. Where is Nothing? Ever?

Our description of Nothing is as incomplete as the Vacuums we create. We can never quite get rid of substance. Our linguistic intuition may be correct in that, Nothing, is impossible.

The universe is expanding at an accelerated rate, faster then the speed of light. This is due to dark energy, which supposedly makes up around 70% of the universe, and I would presume that number is increasing.

The universe coming from "nothing" likely is directly related to String Theory and Quantum Mechanics. Basically random quantum fluctuations causing the universe to appear, and is basically a complicated form of nothing lol. Maybe astrochuck can explain this more. I replied to his comment so let's see if he will reply back.

Btw, I watched a number of youtube videos in regards to the universe, learning about what I disclosed above, as well as the 10 dimensions, the Many Worlds Interpretation, Schrodinger's cat, the Boltzmann Brain, the Simulation Argument, Vacuum Decay, The Big Bounce, Heat Death, The Big Rip, The Fermi Paradox (very interesting), Iron Stars, Black holes, the Dark Era, and other topics related to the universe. It is very intriguing and weird. I like it.

OK, I am not a physicist, I am a gardener. I believe the universe came from nothing.
Lightning comes from nothing. Simplified, a cloud starts as electrically neutral. It polarises, if it gets blown in 1/2, you have 1 positively charged cloud and one positively charged cloud. OK, a cloud is something, but my thoughts run along the lines that if something similar happened in the void. There is nothing, then it splits into energy and anti- energy. The instantly cancel each other out and nothing remains. Occasionally they don't cancel each other out, separate and merge with other energy or anti energy. Then if there were some attraction, so energy attracted energy and anti energy attracted anti energy this formation could accelerate. The potential would be infinite as nothing is infinite and you get this growing amount of energy basically it could be infinite as well. Reverse e=mc2 and you could form some matter. Is the size of the new energy/matter is constantly growing there would always be more on the edge than in the centre and the gravitational force would cause constant expansion, drawn to the edge of the new universe rather than being pushed out from the centre. Occasionally some pockets of anti energy/anti matter interact with energy/matter and cancel each other out, wow, black hole. Look how ice crystals grow, once started they continue to form, catalysts can accelerate formation. Totally loose random thoughts that I can't substantiate. Back to my gardens.

The nothing from which the universe sprang is called a singularity. One dimension and then bang. Events prior to the big bang are unknowable having been obliterated by the start of time in the big bang.

I believe space is part of the package. Think of a two dimensional model, the surface of the balloon being blown up and expanding. the surface of the balloon is getting bigger and that two dimensional space is increasing with the expansion. I think that scientists generally (mostly) believe that in the simplest version of the big bang theory space and time originated with the big bang. So time and space both started at the same time.

However there is still lots of controversy about whether there was anything before the big bang, multiverse etc etc.

I am not a physics cosmology expert so maybe someone can clarify better than me

I did this in philosophy class 20 years ago. I freaked out. How can there be an end to space and how can there not be an end to space. If there was an end what would be on the other side of that wall where it ends, nothing or more space?

We percieve and there is always that which we do do not percieve. We are swimming a sea of perceptions. What is it, that which I do not know? A lot lol

First answer, we don't really know. Second answer, equilibrium.

I am a physicist. I am not a theorist like Lawrence Krauss, my specialty is experimental physics. Nevertheless, I am extremely interested in cosmology and fundamental questions. I teach both physics and astronomy at the high school and college level. The simple answers to your questions are:

1. No, the Big Bang created what we know of as space and time. We don't know what happened before what is called the Planck time. 10*-44 seconds. What happened before then we can only speculate until we understand quantum gravity which we don't right now.

2. There was no space nor time at the Big Bang. I sometimes encourage my students of thinking of the Big Bang as expanding into time not space. Space itself expanded and made the "universe".

One question for you which is aimed at helping your recognize how it works. Where was the big bang? Could we pin down where it started or is there some other answer to that question?

Kind of a build from what others are saying (and not pretending to be a physicist here). There are two types of expansion. Physical expansion and expansion of the known universe. The latter is the part ive learned more about and describes the universe as several billion lightyears across, however the big bang only occurred 14bil(ish) years ago so light hasn't had time to reach us from the furthest points(thus we can't see them or know what they contain). Pre big bang is undetermined, however. We can calculate very close to it but beyond that, physics as we understand it breaks down. This isn't to say it's wrong just incomplete. "Nothing" is hard to know from what we have to test so, it's all up in the air before big bang.

The answer to your first question is, we don't know. Our physics holds up reasonably well until we get within a small fraction of a second before the 'bang'.

Folks who support the notion of the Big Bang (an unfortunate name) suggest that some 10 billion to 20 billion years ago, a massive blast allowed all the universe's known matter and energy—even space and time themselves—to spring from some ancient and unknown type of energy. A glorified name for this thing that caused the 'singularity' to start its inflation period is a quantum fluctuation. Don't worry about it -- no one knows anything about it beyond hypothetical speculation.

So why did I say it was an unfortunate name? Because explosion is an inaccurate description of what we think happened. We call that initial burst of energy inflation. Don't worry about that either. It gets complicated.

Anyway, the theory says that, in the instant -- a trillion-trillionth of a second -- after inflation began, the universe expanded with incredible speed from its tiny original size to astronomical scope. Expansion has apparently continued, but much more slowly than in that minuscule brief initiation, over the ensuing billions of years. However, it appears that the rate of expansion is actually accelerating and we have some neat and confusing bullshit to cover that too. Don't worry about this either. Just know that the Universe appears to be expanding at an accelerating rate.

Getting back to that initial inflation, our physics no longer holds for the period of early inflation. That's why I said we don't know what really happened. Hell, we can't even be certain how the universe evolved after the big bang. Fortunately, we have some pretty good ideas that hold up under scrutiny for that. During that initial inflation, there was no light. The event was opaque. Things began to cool and as they did matter appeared. Just hydrogen at first. Space didn't exist before the event. The event generated space and time ahead of the cooling. Obviously if there was no space or time, no matter could exist, right? This could go on for a few hundred thousand words, so I'll stop it right here.

The answer to question number two is the same. We don't know. I won't expound on this part because anything I have to say would be pure speculation with no supporting information, no evidence.

NOTHING by definition, does not exist,therefore all that's left is existence i.e.matter,energy,etc.
Our universe is a spontaneous event ,amidst an infinite number of universes with different physical properties. The events that caused our universe to explode into existence,are unknown, but make no mistake, it was from something,be it a black hole from a completely separate universe or different dimensions rubbing against each other,or who knows what.

1 - As I understand him and many other physicists, space was created at the big bang. It didn't expand into something. The expansion (bang) was the creation.
2 - It's not expanding into anything. It's expanding/enlarging it's own existence (and it's currently about 93 billion light years across - "known" ). Although, a lot of people aren't content with this and think there's a multiverse... it's comprised of an infinite number of universes, with each one being its own "bubble".

I too have these questions. Constantly. If there's no god, we had to come from something, and I really want to know what. Did the universe come into being and then transform itself into something that could understand itself via humans and other (maybe) self aware life forms? Are we like neurons in the mind of the universe?? Mind blowing. But I want to know.

The was no beginning of the Universe, the matter that is here has always been here, and always changing.
The Universe is not expanding, when you here that it is - they are referring to the "known universe" - which is essentially everything we can see from Earth. aka the remnants of the big bang.

what a great question,! if you or I could answer that then we would win the noble prize, my understanding is that the universe will end when it becomes too "cold" for anything else too happen. i.e. atoms freeze and no motion is possible. this is the opposite of the so called "big bang" where the confined universe is indeed empty, but still contains energy including "time" which has yet not begun, but in a single point. Any geniuses out there ? I would also like to know why the great scientists can not answer this question, are you the one?

[en.wikipedia.org] - may enlighten!

Hi RobH 86,I was led to believe there was pure energy before the big bang,which was a residue from a former universe that collapsed,but like you I am a layman and know next to nothing about science or physics.