Scientists have definitively taken us beyond the Big Bang | by Ethan Siegel | Starts With A Bang! | Mar, 2025

Since the dawn of history, humans have pondered our ultimate cosmic origins. Now in the 21st century, science has gone beyond the Big Bang.

Have you ever thought about the Universe, and asked perhaps the most profound question of all: where did all of this come from? For as long as humans have been around, we’ve not only asked these questions, but have provided stories — based on logic, reasoning, mythology, religion, and many other avenues — that allege to give an answer. Although these stories remain popular and part of human culture even today, they don’t provide any satisfactory solutions by the one criteria that matters most: can they explain what actually exists within the Universe in a scientific, reproducible way that yields accurate predictions about what we observe?

We didn’t have enough knowledge to apply that scientific approach to the entirety of the Universe until the early 20th century, and as a result, we had only assumptions to rely on about our cosmic origins. Many assumed, as Einstein did, that the Universe was static, unchanging, and eternal on the grandest of cosmic scales. But physics and astrophysics would soon point to a different conclusion: that the Universe had a birthday, and the moment of its birth…