Science Questions

The big bang theory... what went bang?

The big bang theory... what went bang? Andy on the A120

That's a good question. Well the answer strangely enough is nothing. And that's the key. This point I mentioned briefly before about zero. If you think of nothing, nothing is actually a big balance between a big positive and a big negative. And if occasionally that little balance goes wrong, you go from nothing to something, very quickly indeed, and you get an awful lot of something in a very small place. And so in a very real sense of the word, the big bang sprang out of nothing.

December 2006