3 ms·

I like this. My 'bad' mental model is: In the beginning there was an infinite amount of space and somewhere within that space the Big Bang happened. The univ

I like this. My 'bad' mental model is: In the beginning there was an infinite amount of space and somewhere within that space the Big Bang happened. The universe is all the matter and energy produced by the Big Bang and that universe is expanding at a maximum speed of C through the infinite amount of space. But you are saying, I think, that before the Big Bang there was no space. The Big Bang produced all the matter, energy, and space itself. And space is expanding, NOT just the matter and energy expanding through the infinite pre-existing space that I imagined. I still have a very hard time imagining 'no space' before the Big Bang and the concept of space being something besides 'nothing'. Because if space is expanding it must be something more than nothing.

sterlind 4y ago
it's not known whether the Big Bang was the beginning of space or time. there's one theory (eternal inflation) that our universe fell out of a continuous Big Bang when a false vacuum collapsed. all the pieces of that field then became particles, since they're high energy compared to the newly-dropped floor of our spacetime. the kind of expansion happening between galaxies is a different kind of inflation. it's even more mind-blowing though, because it would imply that the 10^-32 second inflation of our universe from a grain of sand to only 1000x smaller than it is now is just... the steady state, outside our microscopic bubble of observable reality.