Ask Gugel Anything About the Big Bang

[Gugel]

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- Did anything exist before the big bang?

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This is an unfair question. Did you exist in the year 1863? What did you eat for breakfast on July 23, 1863? etc. In the same way, time did not exist before the Big Bang. There is no indication that anything existed prior to the Big Bang.

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- How do we know the universe is expanding? Couldn't there be some other explanation for the redshift or whatever it is we're seeing? Couldn't we be stuck in a local random swirl of some infinite universe, like turbulence in a pond?

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When we look out into space, we see most stars receding from us. What's more, the further they are away from us, the faster they are receding. This is happening in every direction. From the current available data, it also seems that every other star/galaxy is experiencing the same phenomenon (everything is receding from it and the further away, the faster). A swirl would not exhibit these properties (a significant number of stars/galaxies would be moving in the same direction as us).