10 Things Absolutely Nobody Knows The Answer To

1. What Came Before The Big Bang

As we all know, our whole universe was in a hot dense state, then nearly fourteen billion years ago expansion started. The Earth began to cool, the autotrophs began to drool, Neanderthals developed tools, the pyramids happened, yadda yadda yadda. Like gravity. the big bang theory is taught to us from a young age (sometimes by the Barenaked Ladies) as the unimpeachable truth of how the universe began. Before we go any further, we should remind ourselves that it's simply a theory, and one that fails to explain a whole lot of stuff.

Principally, what existed before the big bang created...existence? No, we're not stoned, that's a genuine question. There couldn't have been nothing, because matter doesn't just appear out of nowhere, and there had to be somewhere for the nothingness to exist. Explain that, Stephen Hawking! Actually the author of A Brief History of Time/Simpsons guest star extraordinaire doesn't think it matters what happened before the big bang. Of more pressing concern is what happens after. So everything expanded, exploded, and the universe was created.

What about when the opposite happens? That is entropy, my friends, and it is very real. At some point the cosmos will collapse - dark matter be damned - and what comes after that? The same thing that was around before the big bang? Something different? This is the ultimate answerable question, because - duh - nobody was around before existence...existed, and nobody will be around after it's gone, either.

We will never, ever know. Good lord is that annoying.