Stephen Hawking explains what was there before the Big Bang

It’s one of the big philosophical questions: if the Big Bang was the beginning of the universe, what was there before?

Naturally, Professor Stephen Hawking has an answer.

Hawking has lectured many times on the subject, and has previously been urged not to discuss the end of the universe, in case it affected the stock market.

Speaking on physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Star Talk show, Professor Hawking says that the beginning of the universe is curved, like our planet.

Just like there is nothing beyond the South Pole, there is also nothing beyond the Big Bang, Hawking explained.

Professor Hawking said, ‘Nothing was around before the Big Bang,

‘One can regard imaginary and real time as beginning at the South Pole, which is a smooth point of space-time where the normal laws of physics hold.

‘There is nothing south of the South Pole, so there was nothing around before the Big Bang.’

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Still confused? Hawking expands on the idea in a previous lecture, The Beginning of Time.

Hawking said, ‘The density would have been infinite. It would have been what is called, a singularity.

‘At a singularity, all the laws of physics would have broken down. This means that the state of the universe, after the Big Bang, will not depend on anything that may have happened before, because the deterministic laws that govern the universe will break down in the Big Bang.

‘The universe will evolve from the Big Bang, completely independently of what it was like before. Even the amount of matter in the universe, can be different to what it was before the Big Bang, as the Law of Conservation of Matter, will break down at the Big Bang.’