The negative gravitational energy cancels the energy in matter, so the total energy of the system remains whatever it was when inflation started – presumably something very small. The universe could, in fact, even have zero total energy, with the negative energy of gravity precisely cancelling the positive energy of matter. This capability for producing matter in the universe is one crucial difference between the inflationary model and the previous model. Alan Guth, A Universe in Your Backyard pp278-279
According to the Big Bang theory all the universe suddenly sprang from a point of nothing. Could black holes be the key to explain how this happened? ... Instead of sucking everything in, a reverse black hole explodes out in a shower of Space, Matter and Time. Exactly as the Big Bang theory predicts. Professor Stephen Hawking
To work out where the universe came from all we need to do is to stop Time and make it run in reverse. Rewind far enough and everything gets closer together. A lot closer together. All the galaxies, in fact every single thing, converges to a single point – the start of everything 13.7 billion years ago ... A very long time ago, the universe simply burst into existence – an event called the Big Bang. Stephen Hawking’s Universe: Into the Universe: The Story of Everything, PBS 1997
The universe simply inflated into existence, unfolding, unfurling, getting bigger and cooler with every passing moment. ibid.
Many scientists didn’t like the idea that the universe had a beginning, a moment of creation. Among them was a British mathematician from Cambridge University. Fred Hoyle wasn’t content to voice to rebuttal to his students alone: he took to the airwaves delivering his message straight to the public. Stephen Hawking’s Universe: In the Beginning
Both the Big Bang and black holes will contain singularities, places where Space and Time come to an end and the laws of physics break down. Black holes it seems are cauldrons of staggering energy. In black holes they can consume everything in their path. Stephen Hawking’s Universe: Black Holes & Beyond
In the moment after the Big Bang something strange happened to Gravity. It inexplicably got weaker, a change that would be crucial to our very existence. Stephen Hawking’s Universe
Space and Energy were spontaneously created in an event we now call The Big Bang. Stephen Hawking, Did God Create the Universe? 2011
So where is all this negative energy today? ... It’s in space. ibid.
There was no before the Big Bang. ibid.
But in 1929, Edwin Hubble made the landmark observation that wherever you look, distant galaxies are moving rapidly away from us. In other words, the universe is expanding. This means that at earlier times objects would have been closer together. In fact, it seemed that there was a time, about ten or twenty thousand million years ago, when they were all at exactly the same place and when, therefore, the density of the universe was infinite. This discovery finally brought the question of the beginning of the universe into the realm of science.
Hubble's observation suggested that there was a time, called the big bang, when the universe was infinitesimally small and infinitely dense. Under such conditions all the laws of science, and therefore all ability to predict the future, would break down. If there were events earlier than this time, then they could not affect what happens at the present time. Their existence can be ignored because it would have no observational consequences. One may say that time had a beginning at the big bang, in the sense that earlier times simply would not be defined. It should be emphasized that this beginning in time was very different from those that had been considered previously. In an unchanging universe a beginning in time is something that has to be imposed by some being outside the universe; there is no physical necessity for a beginning. One can imagine that God created the universe at literally any time in the past. On the other hand, if the universe is expanding, there may be physical reasons why there had to be a beginning. One could imagine that God created the universe at the instant of the big bang, or even afterwards in just such a way as to make it look as though there had been a big bang, but it would be meaningless to suppose that it was created before the big bang. An expanding universe does not preclude a creator, but it does place limits on when he might have carried out his job! Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time p9
Another possibility is that our Big Bang is just one of many Big Bangs. But it may be just one of an infinite number of universes. Professor Lawrence Krauss, theoretical physicist
The Laws of Physics allow that to happen. And it means that our whole universe, everything we see, everything that matters to us today, could have arisen out of precisely nothing. Lawrence Krauss
It is now becoming clear that everything can, and probably did, come from nothing. Professor Robert A J Matthews, Ashton University
What is the Universe made of? ... In the beginning there was nothing. No matter. No energy. Not even empty space. Because space itself didn’t exist. No Time passed because there was no such thing as Time. From nowhere appeared a fireball smaller than an atom ten trillion trillion times hotter than the core of the sun ... Time began. In one second the blueprint for the entire cosmos was written. How it happened is the biggest mystery of all. Big Bang (documentary)
Looking back to the instant of creation is a relatively new idea. The Big Bang theory is widely accepted. But the concept is less than a century old. But all this changed in 1929. At California’s Mount Wilson Observatory Edwin Hubble studied the light from galaxies. He observed that the farther away the galaxy, the longer the wave-lengths of light it emits ... If a galaxy is moving away from us, its light-waves stretch, becoming longer and redder. It’s called red-shifting ... Nearly all galaxies are receding from us at a million miles an hour ... The universe is expanding outward from a single point ... Out of the fireball, the four fundamental forces of nature formed. These forces underpin everything around us. Gravity is the reason stars and planets formed ... Electromagnetism lights our cities, runs our phones and connects our computers. And the two nuclear forces, strong and weak, bind the particles that make up our bodies and power the furnace of our sun ... Without them the universe would be a featureless fog of radiation ... How was mass developed in the first second of the Big Bang? ibid.
The Big Bang: That fraction of a second when the universe and everything in it exploded into existence from a point smaller than an atom. Death of the Universe, 2008
The Big Bang theory is not really a theory of how the universe began, it’s really a theory of how the universe evolved. Professor David Spergel
Billions and billions of galaxies. The universe is so vast we can’t even imagine what those numbers mean. But fourteen billion years ago none of it existed. Until the Big Bang. How The Universe Works s1e1: The Big Bang, Discovery, BBC 2010
What came before the Big Bang? ibid.
Scientists think it took less than a millionth of a millionth of a millionth of a millionth of a second for the universe to expand from the size of an atom to a tennis ball ... That means it was expanding faster than the speed of light. It’s called Plank Time. ibid.
Black holes might even be gateways to other universes. On the other side of a black hole there could even be a big bang. How the Universe Works s1e2: Black Holes
The most important second in history: the very first. Space and Time burst into existence creating the universe. This violent first second will define everything including us. How the Universe Works s3e4: First Second of the Big Bang
The Big Bang unfolded almost instantaneously. ibid.
Inflation explains why galaxies are spread so smoothly across the cosmos. ibid.
A journey to infinity and beyond to a place where the rules of physics collapse … Inflation: The first second of the universe has barely begun … An event that sets out the blueprint for the galaxies that fill the cosmos today … How could we ever test it? How the Universe Works s5e1: Most Amazing Discoveries
The Big Story. The story of everything: time, the universe, us. That’s the traditional view. But is it right? More and more scientists aren’t sure. Astronomers are ripping up the old rules, but that creates new problems. How the Universe Works s7e6: Did the Big Bang Really Happen?
‘How can we possibly say that the universe expanded faster than the speed of light?’ ibid. Michelle Thaller
How is a smooth homogeneous universe does it appear to be the result of what we know is an explosion? ibid.
The largest and most complex scientific experiment ever attempted. The Large Hadron Collider or LHC has just one simple but audacious aim: to recreate the conditions of the Big Bang. Brian Cox, The Big Bang Machine, 2008
It tells us how the fundamental constituents of the cosmos took on their form. ibid.
In the beginning there was nothing. ibid.
What is mass and why does it exist? ibid.
The Higgs mechanism works by filling the universe with a field – a Higgs Field ... Particles acquire mass by interacting with the Higgs Field. ibid.
It’s a law of quantum physics that all fields must have an associated particle. ibid.
Leidermann called it the God Particle. ibid.
Building an instrument capable of recreating the early universe and finding the massive Higgs Boson has taken decades. ibid.
Here is evidence of a neutrino caught on film. ibid.
For some theorists finding nothing at the LHC is actually the most exciting prospect. ibid.
The Big Bang – it happened everywhere at the same time. Brian Cox, Wonders of the Universe: Messengers, BBC 2011