A name that misleads
What was the Big Bang?
The Big Bang, Nobel laureate John Mather says in a NASA Q&A, is a really misleading name for the expanding universe that we see. NASA The name, he says, conveys the idea of a firecracker exploding at a time and a place — with a center. NASA
The universe doesn't have a center. The Big Bang happened everywhere at once and was a process happening in time, not a point in time. NASA We know this, he says, because we see galaxies rushing away from each other, not from a central point, and because leftover heat uniformly fills the universe. NASA
The cosmological principle, Britannica says, implies that the universe has no edge, so that the big-bang origin occurred not at a particular point in space but rather throughout space at the same time. Britannica A NASA Hubble page says the big bang theory of the universe starts with a single point which rapidly expanded and slowly evolved into the cosmos we see today. NASA
The Big Bang itself is not something we can see. NASA
A point in space, or everywhere at once?
A NASA Hubble page says the big bang theory “starts with a single point,” and that 13.8 billion years ago the universe was an “extremely tiny point” that surged outward. John Mather, in a NASA Q&A, says the name Big Bang is really misleading, that it conveys a firecracker exploding at a time and a place with a center, that the universe doesn’t have a center, and that the Big Bang happened everywhere at once — a process in time, not a point in time. Britannica says the origin occurred not at a particular point in space but rather throughout space at the same time. We keep those wordings in view and do not treat “it began at a point in space” as settled.
The rest of this site follows that caution. We use the usual name because it is the one you will meet in class. We do not treat “it began at a point in space” as settled.