(Image: Rex Features)
In the beginning was nothing. Then the Universe was born in a searing hot fireball called the big bang. But what was the big bang? Where did it happen? And how have astronomers come to believe such a ridiculous thing?
Fifteen thousand million years ago, the Universe that we inhabit erupted, literally, out of nothing. It exploded in a titanic fireball called the big bang. Everything – all matter, energy, even space and time – came into being at that precise instant.
In the earliest moments of the big bang, the stuff of the Universe occupied an extraordinary small…
