I'm a little skeptical because I don't see how there being no matter or energy would mean no space. I imagine it like mass is like a ball on a cloth but I can't imagine without the ball the space doesn't exist. I believe in the big bang but to me it sounds like they just stuck that in there. I don't know.
Kenneth
Favorite Answer
The Big Bang theory doesn't state that just because there was no matter or no energy, then there'd be no space. Einstein's field equations (that's what describes the curvature of space and the mass-energy of it) have a 'vacuum solution' , a universe where there is no matter, no energy and no curvature. But this universe does have time. So it can exist, just like you said. (A note, though. The ball on a cloth model is an analogy. It's not the actual state of the universe, but it works well enough.)
However, the Big Bang theory kinda came about in reverse: some guy named Hubble discovered that galaxies were speeding away from us, and all according to a set of rules, and then some other guy, Lemaitre, discovered that if you took the galaxies expanding, and rewinded it all the way back, like (as an analogy) a VCR or a videoclip, you would eventually get to a point where everything was squeezed in this tiny, immeasurably small point of energy. Further evidence of this, like the CMBR and redshift, is the basis of today's Big Bang theory.
Essentially, your question asks: what happens if we rewind back to that small point, and keep on rewinding?
Maybe there is some 'tape' left to rewind to. However, modern physics believes there is probably no tape left to rewind to*, and so that 'footage' before the big bang simply doesn't exist. With no footage to talk about, times before the big bang are essentially meaningless. You can't talk about the -0:27 seconds of the videotape, because it isn't there. So in that sense there was no space and no time before the big bang, just as there's no videotape beyond a certain limit.
*Whether or not there is a cause for the big bang, and what that cause is, is one of the biggest unsolved problems in cosmology.
Bob B
It is a bit hard to get your head around, I will admit. However, it makes a lot more sense than the alternative.
If time and space did exist before the big bang, how did matter and energy just come out of nowhere at some arbitrary point in the past? That would also violate conservation of energy and mass, because you'd suddenly have more energy in the universe for no reason (this doesn't apply to the creation of space-time itself, only what happens inside the universe once it forms).
Remember the "ball on a cloth" model is just an analogy used to explain things, not the real story- there isn't actually a cosmic cloth or ball anywhere out there.
Michel Verheughe
You can't imagine it, my friend, nor can anyone else and that is why we call the Big Bang for a singularity. Just like a black hole, the big bang was a place where the laws of physic, as we know them, don't apply.
We cannot understand it and you prove it when you write "... no time ... before.." Of course if there is no time, there is no before! ;-)
Before the discovery of the red-shift of distant galaxies, thus the universe's expansion and the logic start of the big bang (a name coined by a journalist, actually!) nearly everyone agreed that the universe was either created by a divine creature, or that it was static, never ending or beginning. The philosopher Nietzsche wrote about the Eternal Return, an idea already existing from the Perse and Egyptians, that the universe is cyclic and what can happen will, again and again.
Schrodingers_Cat
First your need to ask yourself, what is time? and what is space?
Matter occupies space, so if there was matter then there was space, matter could not have just been created with the big bang. We all know the Law of conservation of matter.
Time is a measure of duration. Some say time is linear and flows on forever, this meaning that time existed before the big bang. Perhaps time is circular and perhaps in a billion years we might be in for another BIG BANG, and then everything starts from the beginning again.
Century25
There was nothing. So - no 'space' - you can only have space if there is something to measure, and 'time' is what we humans invented to use for our needs.
Think of total nothingness, no light, no stars - nothing. It is like before you were born - nothing. We really can't imagine it. Think of what we call 'our universe' as an event. It DID have a beginning and will have and end. It is all inclusive within this event, it is just energy and will eventually end.