Does the CMB contain any clues to what caused the Big Bang? Does a mathematical model theorize it?
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$\begingroup$ I know for sure 100% that all mass definitely was as small as a little pinhole... $\endgroup$– GambleNerdFeb 6, 2016 at 3:50
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7$\begingroup$ I won't vote-to-close yet, but please look at all the other times a similar question has been asked and try to make your question more focused. E.g. astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/1484/…. astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/13541/… $\endgroup$– ProfRobFeb 6, 2016 at 9:12
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$\begingroup$ @GambleNerd Be careful with what you "know". The Big Bang didn't happen at a single point. It was the expansion of the Universe in the sense that objects moved away from each other. $\endgroup$– Sir CumferenceFeb 6, 2016 at 21:04
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2 Answers
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Caveat: I'm not a cosmologist, so this answer may not reflect the forefront of scientific knowledge/accuracy, but I have some knowledge so thought I'd share it and hopefully someone can correct me if I'm wrong.
The Big Bang theory states that everything is moving away from everything else, so it must have started closer together. We know from the Cosmic Microwave Background that everything was very dense and hot and small.
You may have heard that the universe started in a singularity. This means one point at which all matter was in the same place. In this state, all information in matter is lost. No particle can be labelled as having a position or size or spin, because every particle is in the same state as every other particle. This means we lose all possibility of having any information about what happened before this. There are many theories of what could have been before this, but no matter how simple/beautiful/mathematically rigorous the theory, it is physically impossible to know anything about it so they are impossible to test. In some definitions this makes these theories not actually science, as the scientific method involves making testable predictions.
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$\begingroup$ @ FJC thanks for answering. Instead of physical proof are mathematical proofs used by Astronomers to rule out possibilities? Maybe simulations on powerful supercomputers? $\endgroup$ Feb 8, 2016 at 23:43
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$\begingroup$ "universe started in a singularity. This means" that's where I stopped reading... We don't know what is a singularity. Our current theories fail there; they fail to give us predictions of any future experimental results; thus current theories are scientifically useless in saying anything practical about singularity. What you say is unfalsifiable, thus it is not science at all, only an opinion or a story. $\endgroup$ Feb 13, 2016 at 23:55
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1$\begingroup$ @kubanczyk If you would take the time to actually read my answer, you would see that this is essentially what I said. $\endgroup$– FJCFeb 15, 2016 at 10:14
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1$\begingroup$ "This means one point at which all matter was in the same place." Incorrect. The Big Bang singularity is different than say, a gravitational singularity. The Big Bang is an expansion of spacetime itself- all matter was not at one point in the universe, but all spacetime (that's to say, the universe itself) was infinitesimally "close" with respect to the space-time interval. $\endgroup$– AndrewMar 14, 2016 at 15:15
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We don't really know what happened before the big bang, but it is logical to think that just like the the mass was released when the big bang happened, it also got crushed to that single point, and since energy can't be created or destroyed, there was also mass before the big bang. And this is also a lot similar to a black hole, leading us to think that the big bang might have been a black hole
