What existed before the Big Bang?

 Scientists and illustrators have joined forces to explain the secrets of the galaxy – and many other scientific mysteries.

Illustrated by Josh Cochran 

 "To call the beginning of the universe the "Big Bang" (science shorthand for that most distant moment to which one can still trace the operation of our laws of physics) is to use something of a misnomer. Current evidence suggests that, far from being "big", the whole, vast expanse of space and all the visible galaxies and stars originated in a dense sphere of glowing gas much smaller than a pea. Some cosmologists, affecting a familiarity with events so far removed from our everyday experience, refer to the beginning now as just the "Bang", while general relativists – the scientists who study the physical consequences of Einstein's 1915 theory of relativity – draw a line at the base of their blackboards and say: this is the singularity where it all started."
  via The Observer / By Brian Yanny /continue reading