What Happened Before the Big Bang?

Overview

We actually have a pretty good idea of what might have happened before the Big Bang. That is, as long as we define the Big Bang as the extremely hot, dense, rapidly expanding universe that is described by Einstein’s equations. That picture of the universe is very solid down to about a trillionth of a second after the supposed beginning of time. We can make good guesses down to about 10^-30th of a second. But before that?

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