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What if we find the point where the Big Bang happened?



What if we find the point where the Big Bang happened?

You're already there. Since all of space expanded from one point, by definition the Big Bang actually happened right here (and also over there) [1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brouwer_fixed-point_theorem


There is no such point (or it is everywhere if you like, as someone else had said).

The best analogy I've seen is that of ants on a balloon. They live in what appears to them to be a two dimensional universe. As you inflate the balloon, they observe their own universe getting bigger. But the "point where the Big Bang happened" to them is not a point that even exists in their universe any more. They cannot get back there, since the higher third dimension does not exist in their universe.


That's a nice analogy. Now I understand!


That's exactly where you are right now (and everywhere else).


This illustrates the confusion that occurs when people are exposed to horrible "artistic renderings" of the Big Bang as a huge explosion that throws matter all over the place.

It's better to think of the Big Bang as an unimaginably intense period of expansion and cooling of whatever substance the earliest universe was made out of (see Inflation theory). It was not an explosion that happened in a pre-existing spacetime.




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