i have been told that the big bang happened from nothing. how can you describe ‘nothing’? there has not been a

Question: i have been told that the big bang happened from nothing. how can you describe 'nothing'? there has not been a discovery in the knowledge of scientists, everything that we know of contains something!
- Keywords:
  Big Bang,
  nothing,
  philosophy
Asked by to Aled, Kev, Willem on 21 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
- Aled Roberts answered on 21 Mar 2014:
  
  Wow athul!
  
  Great question… and one that is slightly hard to answer! There was simply nothing before the big bang, no time, no “stuff”… no nothing! This kind of goes hand in hand with inflation theory! Where nothing expanded into what we have today!
  
  The last bit is also misleading! Space contains nothing so to speak! It is a vacuum and by definition contains nothing (okay it contains planets you got me… but they are their own things!)
  
  Hope that helps! Don’t forget to vote 🙂
- Willem Heijltjes answered on 21 Mar 2014:
  
  Hi Athul!
  
  They key thing (which is hard to get your head around!) is that there was no *time* before the big bang!
  
  So, “empty space” is not the same as “nothing”: in empty space, you still have time! Before the big bang, there was really, really nothing! 😉

athul commented on 21 Mar 2014:

if the universe was created from nothing, does that mean we can make something out of nothing?

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athul commented on 21 Mar 2014:

if space contains nothing, does it not contain energy?

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Question: i have been told that the big bang happened from nothing. how can you describe 'nothing'? there has not been a discovery in the knowledge of scientists, everything that we know of contains something!