• Question: how long did the big bang last for

    Asked by rockyali22 to Roisin, Gavin, Karen, Mark, Michel on 10 Nov 2016. This question was also asked by Aj.
    • Photo: Roisin Jones

      Roisin Jones answered on 10 Nov 2016:

      This would definitely be more Mark’s area of expertise than mine I’m afraid, but my understanding is that it last for an incredibly tiny amount of time, somewhere in the region of 0.0000000000000000000000000000001 seconds!

    • Photo: Mark Kennedy

      Mark Kennedy answered on 11 Nov 2016:

      This is a difficult one to answer.

      We think the Universe started with a big bang. If it did, then the Big Bang itself happened instantaneously, and before it time didn’t really exist, so it’s hard to exactly put a number on it. We’re not really sure what happened at the precise moment time “started” and the big bang “happened”.

      However, we’ve got a very good idea of what happened after the Big Bang (which you can find here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_the_universe). The smallest timescale that change can happen in the Universe is called the Planck time, which is 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 s. So I guess that would be your answer?

      After the big bang happened, we had a period of inflation, where the Universe rapidly grew in size (we think ). This lasted for 0.00000000000000000000000000000001 s. But all of this is still just theory at the moment!

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