Smash hit

What was around before the Big Bang?

Whenever I mention to someone that I have written a book about the origins of the universe, they nearly always ask the same question: “Ah, but what happened before the Big Bang?” I know they’re trying to catch me out, but I have two answers for them. The first is that you could ask the same question about virtually any theory on where the Universe came from. If you believe in creationism, you could ask: “Who created God?”. It’s commonly known as the turtle problem.

Science does, however, have an answer. One of Albert Einstein’s greatest contributions to our understanding of the universe is that we should think about the concepts of space and time in isolation but rather the very strange combination of spacetime.

That may sound like something out of science fiction but most scientists agree that both space and time were created together at the moment of the Big Bang. Concepts like ‘before’ have no meaning when time doesn’t exist. The problem is that we have all got used to the idea of living in the three dimensions of space – left-right, up-down, forward-back – when in fact we should also include time in that list.

How will it all end?

If we haven’t managed to kill ourselves through global warming or blowing each other up, there are several possible outcomes for the universe. Most scientists believe that we’ll just keep on expanding forever, with the expansion gradually getting slower and slower.

Others think that we’ll experience a Big Crunch, a sort of Big Bang in reverse, where gravity will eventually stop the expansion and we will be drawn back to another singularity billions of years in the future.

Others favour the Big Chill – where all of the energy in the universe eventually gets used and all of the stuff in the universe gets eaten by black holes. Nice.

What was the most interesting thing you discovered when writing the book?

As part of the research for the book, my co-author Stephen Pincock and I looked at various non-scientific ideas about the origins of the universe, ranging from the Islamic take on creation to Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. (Just as an aside the publisher’s lawyers made sure we put in a disclaimer saying that just because the two were in the same chapter we didn’t necessarily consider the Koran to be a work of fiction.)

I was particularly taken by this passage from a Buddhist scripture called the Agganna Sutta.

“Sooner or later, after a very long period of time, savoury earth spread itself over the waters where those beings were. It looked just like the skin that forms itself over hot milk as it cools. It was endowed with colour, smell, and taste. It was the colour of fine ghee or butter and it was very sweet, like pure wild honey. Then some being of a greedy nature said: ‘I say, what can this be?’ and tasted the savoury earth on its finger. In so doing, it became taken with the flavour, and craving arose in it. Then other beings, taking their cue from that one, also tasted the stuff with their fingers. They too were taken with the flavour, and craving arose in them. So they set to with their hands, breaking off pieces of the stuff in order to eat it. And the result was that their self luminance disappeared. And as a result of the disappearance of their self luminance the moon and the sun appeared, night and day were distinguished, months and fortnights appeared, and the year and its seasons. To that extent the world re-evolved.”

What appealed to me about it was that it could almost be a description of the oscillating universe theory - a Big Crunch followed by a Big Bang ad infinitum. Perhaps science and religion are not so far apart after all.

What are you writing next?

I have a book on science fiction gadgets, co-written with Carl Sagan’s son Nick, coming out in the spring. It looks at some of the cool gadgets and technologies first dreamed up by science fiction writers and film-makers and reveals just how far scientists have come in making them reality. Incredibly, even some of the craziest ideas have actually been the subject of proper research, including invisibility cloaks and teleportation.

The Origins of the Universe for Dummies, published by Wiley, is out now.

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