eli5: Why is there something instead of nothing?

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Now, obviously, i know the big bang happened. But WHY did it happen? Why was there a big bang instead of nothing? Why was there ENERGY before the big bang which caused the big bang?

In: Physics

3 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

TMK, this is genuinely something we don’t know how to explain. There’s actually quite a few questions still open in physics, and that’s one of them last I checked. Similarly, why antimatter seems to be much less present than matter.

Though small correction: “before” the big bag doesn’t actually work to my knowledge. The big bang, conceptually, is the start of time, which doesn’t agree with how people tend to think of time (similar to space-time being difficult to conceptualize for people).

Anonymous 0 Comments

I would also like to know but my brain instantly gets fried when thinking about this subject

Anonymous 0 Comments

A second question that physicist are super baffled about, and will win a Nobel prize if answered: According to everything we understand, there was the same amount of stuff and anti-stuff (antimatter!) in the beginning. in an ELI5 way to explain, there was zero in the beginning, and thus physics tells us that what happened is that from zero we got 1 (matter) and -1 (antimatter), so they add to zero.

But its not there? The universe is made of matter. We can make antimatter in labs and its used in medicine (PET scanners) etc, but in theory there should be the same amount. So why the heck is it nowhere, and there is matter everywhere? How come we actually got 2 and -1, instead of 1 and -1 out of 0?

You are very likely to win a Nobel prize if you answer this.