What Happened Before the Big Bang?

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SYNOPSIS

Episode image for What Happened Before the Big Bang?

Series exploring topical scientific issues.

They are the biggest questions that science can possibly ask: where did everything in our universe come from? How did it all begin? For nearly a hundred years, we thought we had the answer: a big bang some 14 billion years ago.

But now some scientists believe that was not really the beginning. Our universe may have had a life before this violent moment of creation.

Horizon takes the ultimate trip into the unknown, to explore a dizzying world of cosmic bounces, rips and multiple universes, and finds out what happened before the big bang.

NEIL TUROK, DIRECTOR OF THE PERIMETER INSTITUTE FOR FUNDAMENTAL PHYSICS RESEARCH

Neil Turok who runs the Perimeter Institute for Fundamental Physics research in Canada, is so disillusioned with cosmology’s Big Bang, that he’s developed m-theory which holds that there was no bang at all - ‘simply’ the collision of three dimensional universes like ours arranged on parallel membranes. The collision takes place in a fourth dimension that we’re not aware of, but spells the end of the current universes and the beginning of a new one. But no bang.

PROFESSOR SIR ROGER PENROSE, OXFORD UNIVERSITY

Sir Roger Penrose has changed his mind about the Big Bang. He now imagines an eternal cycle of expanding universes where matter becomes energy and back again in the birth of new universes and so on and so on.

MUSIC PLAYED

  1. The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir — Edward Scissorhands: main theme

  2. Harry Gregson-Williams — Lucky Star

  3. The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra/Thomas Newman — Six Feet Under

  4. James Michael Dooley — Ancient Crystal

  5. Richard Beddow — Prism of Light

  6. Robert Bennett — Violetta

  7. William Kingswood — Blue Whale

  8. Scott Glasgow — Whispering Forest

  9. Anthony Phillips — Hesitant Steps

  10. London Music Works/Cliff Martinez — Solaris: Don't Blow It

  11. Derek Austin — Blue Whale

  12. Scott Glasgow — The Waltz of the Three Witches

  13. Taylor/Emanuel — Genesis

  14. Barry Michaels — Glasshouses

  15. Andrew Skeet/Luke Gordon — Firefly Flickers

  16. Daniel Pemberton — Masquerade

  17. Andrew Skeet/Luke Gordon — Timeless Worlds 2

  18. William Kingswood — Story Ends

  19. Andrew Skeet/Luke Gordon — Chasing Shadows

  20. Atli Örvarsson — Miss Understood

  21. Andrew Blaney — Twists and Turns

  22. Philip Sheppard — Far But Close

  23. Steve Rucker — What's Behind the Curtains

  24. L. Minelli — Demented Spirits

  25. Rob Elliott — Cream Machine

  26. James S. Levine — Nevergreen

  27. Murray Monroe — Strange Meeting

CREDITS

Director
Peter Leonard
Producer
Peter Leonard

BROADCASTS

  1. Mon 11 Oct 2010
    21:00
    BBC Two (except Northern Ireland (Analogue), Wales (Analogue))
  2. Mon 11 Oct 2010
    21:00
    BBC HD