If the big bang started everything. What caused it?

I mean if space was a vast nothingness. What could cause the explosion?

Space wasn't a vast nothingness. Space was not. It didn't exist. Neither did time. No one knows what caused the Big Bang, exactly, but if you're interested in hearing an incredibly brilliant cosmologist discuss the concept of A Universe From Nothing, watch this video:

god.

"In the beginning there was only the word"

So I guess the word started it.

And since the bird is the word, we know there is some ancient Bird that predates the entirety of creation.

this is something even scientists aren't exactly certain about

lately the brane-world theory has been getting some air under its wings, so yeah

is the theory of the chaos that says:

"suppose you have an empy room. the air molecules in that room DO have a chance (almost infinitely small! but only almost) that as they move around the room, at one time all the air molecules will be in one half the room, and the other half of the room will be void. Now if you could wait it out enough time, it will certainly happen. Only that it could take billions of years to wait it out ..."

same is for the big bang. before the big bang, all the molecules of the universe were sitting pretty in a huge ball. and after a few billions of billions of years, they went beserk suddenly (like the molecules in the room).

edit: now it is possible, that before the big bang, there was another universe, just like ours. and it went all collapsing into the big bang ball, because of the entropy. and after the big bang, our universe was re-born again (and it turned out similar to the previous one). and who knows how many times ?

This post was edited by the_rest on Oct 27 2012 04:47pm

All ya gotta know is it happened.

That is an interesting concept

I understand the example with the room is just used to show how on a long enough timeline anything that could happen will happen (probably), but is that actually true with them being in one half of the room? Wouldn't they diffuse through the room?