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I read a novel that mentioned about a past civilization before the Big Bang. They predicted such phenomenon would happen some day, and to preserve their species and recreate their population after the Big Bang, they created a container that stored genes, survived the Big Bang, became part of Planet Earth and released genes to evolve into humans.

  • Is it possible for such material to exist? As far as I know, before the Big Bang, it is hypothesized that there was almost no matter, and the Big Bang was a process of converting energy into its form of mass. So, is it possible to have materials in the universe that remained before?
  • If it is possible, what conditions guarantee that this is possible? Is it just the hardness of the material, or other factors as well?
  • And is it possible that a container of such material be opened using materials that are currently naturally materials, or compounds of them?
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  • $\begingroup$ Just curious, are you talking about the Molly Fyde series and the Bern race? I just finished these books not a month ago, and if it's the same story, there was sadly a lack of detail in how they did it. However, the Big Bang in the series wasn't precisely the way we see it because it was both the end and beginning of time and space. It was destructive still, but not quite in our contemporary sense of the Big Bang, if I recall correctly. $\endgroup$
    – Jesse Williams
    Sep 13, 2016 at 15:00
  • $\begingroup$ @JesseWilliams nope, it is a book written in Chinese and most likely never got translated anywhere. $\endgroup$
    – SOFe
    Sep 13, 2016 at 15:02
  • $\begingroup$ Ah interesting. Well, then as a pseudo-answer, this chapter of the book I read is available here: ivampiresbook.com/Popular-Series-Books/… It might be worth reading for a correlated but not identical idea. $\endgroup$
    – Jesse Williams
    Sep 13, 2016 at 15:03
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    $\begingroup$ The only known material that can survive the Big Bang is crystalized handwavium. $\endgroup$
    – sphennings
    Sep 13, 2016 at 17:42
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    $\begingroup$ "After the initial expansion, the universe cooled sufficiently to allow the formation of subatomic particles, and later simple atoms." This is from the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article about the big bang. I thus conclude you did insufficient research. $\endgroup$
    – Nobody
    Sep 13, 2016 at 17:56

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Our laws of physics do not apply within a singularity. What can you say about a region with infinite gravity and density? There are no science-based answers, at least not with our science. Any mass, information, or thermodynamic order that could survive compression into a singularity would operate by principles which to us are magic.

Therefore, any explanation at all that you care to give about genes surviving the Big Bang would be equally as valid as any other explanation.

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  • $\begingroup$ We know that over certain energy density, atoms are decomposed into the barions that form them. Over another energy density, barions get decomposed into quarks. Or, put the other way around, we know that after the Big Bang there was a time while all of the matter was formed by quarks which later combined to form barions and which later combined to form hidrogen and helium. So no, nothing could survive that. $\endgroup$
    – SJuan76
    Sep 16, 2016 at 7:41
  • $\begingroup$ @SJuan76 Saying "no, nothing could survive that" when we know almost nothing about the subject is a little strong. From time to time, fundamental shifts in our understanding of the universe come along, such as relativity, or quantum mechanics. Another paradigm shift will eventually come, and then our assumptions about the ability of quarks to store information may look as foolish as phlogiston or luminiferous aether. $\endgroup$
    – kingledion
    Sep 16, 2016 at 11:59
  • $\begingroup$ We may not know what happened at the singularity, but we know pretty much what happened a few time after, and our knowledge of matter is enough to say that no material could have survived those moments later (even if it survived the Big Bang itself). Basing your answer in an unspecified, yet to come "change of paradigm" is as valid as saying "Because of magic!" $\endgroup$
    – SJuan76
    Sep 16, 2016 at 12:27
  • $\begingroup$ @SJuan76 That is exactly what I said in my answer. I'm glad you agree. $\endgroup$
    – kingledion
    Sep 16, 2016 at 13:16
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Basically, no.

The heat and forces involved in the Big Bang were of unimaginable scale. No known material could survive those conditions.

You could gin up some very speculative science fiction, but it would have no basis in any science we know and would basically be magic.

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  • $\begingroup$ May I rephrase my question, I was not looking for an existing/known material that could survive such conditions, but whether there is, if there is a hypothetical material, any scientific contradiction related to the nature of the Big Bang. For example, if no matter existed at that time at all. $\endgroup$
    – SOFe
    Sep 13, 2016 at 16:08
  • $\begingroup$ @PEMapModder Nobody really knows, but I'm pretty sure consensus is there was next to no matter, certainly not enough for what you describe. $\endgroup$
    – Nobody
    Sep 13, 2016 at 17:53
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    $\begingroup$ While there is much we don't know about the first phases of the big bang, the temperature and density were so high that basic particles such as protons and neutrons could not exist. $\endgroup$
    – Kys
    Sep 13, 2016 at 17:57
  • $\begingroup$ Yep and even if something could exist outside of that, the shockwave would cause any item to move ahead of any planets created. $\endgroup$
    – Necessity
    Sep 13, 2016 at 20:10
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Trying to construct a material that could survive the Big Bang has many problems. For one, tracing the history of our universe to very early times leads extreme densities, temperature, and energetic particles. The forces themselves are predicted to unify at early times, changing properties as symmetries are restored. At some point the equations themselves break down as the Standard Model and General Relativity are unable to be used in the regime of the extremely early universe.

Rotating Black Hole

Any such solution would be extremely speculative, but the closest I can think of would be for your civilization to attempt to avoid the Big Bang by using a Kerr (rotating) black hole as a 'wormhole'. The theoretical underpinning for this solution is obtained using a coordinate representation of the rotating black hole, that extends into the interior of the event horizon (the Kerr solution breaks down at the event horizon). This new coordinate system shows another interesting surface known as a Cauchy surface. A person diving into the black hole's event horizon (assuming they survive the other negative effects of the strong gravitational field) would continue to fall inwards until they passed the Cauchy horizon. Shockingly, they would then be able to move freely, and, due to a reflection symmetry in this interior region, could exit back through the Cauchy horizon, out through the event horizon and out of the black hole. This new exterior region is sometimes described as an alternate universe. In the case of your story, the civilization would make their rotating black hole, send their container through, and pray that it would survive the journey and exit into an alternate universe that would be safe.

This process is entirely theoretical. Perfect Kerr black holes would be extremely unlikely to form, and the interior solution is itself unstable (meaning your presence falling in might cause the Cauchy horizon to disappear, or change properties). However, if you are determined to have a civilization survive, you are free to hand-wave the details.

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  • $\begingroup$ Congratulations, @Snyder005, you came up with the same idea I had. Although there is a slight difference I intended to concentrate more on bypassing the Big Bang to get from the previous universe to this one. Good description of a Kerr black hole and you didn't its limitations too. naturally I gave it +1. $\endgroup$
    – a4android
    Sep 19, 2016 at 5:21
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I would think less container and more "blue print" the object they create is of a massive scale and composed of specialized and very dense matter. Imagine a large intricate 3D metal cube. Once everything contracts back to the origin to prepare for the next Big Bang; this specialized cube is compressed just like everything else.

However its design anticipates this and once the Big Bang actually... Bangs; the area where the cube is compressed expands in a predetermined way effectively "building" the early conditions necessary to recreate the race that placed it there.

This cube produces a sort of "shaped charge" that guarantees the exact starting conditions that will lead to the formation of your race, to be produced by the Big Bang.

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Dark Energy or Dark Matter

Dark energy or dark matter could store a binary representation of the information that is meant to be preserved. This could have been compressed prior to the Big Bang, or could have existed throughout the cosmos independently of the Big Bang. As far as we know, dark matter and dark energy cannot be detected, only inferred. That is why we cannot "see" dark matter or dark energy with any existing technology.

You could even incorporate the acceleration of the spread of galaxies as a deliberate process. It is theorized that dark energy is speeding up the movement of galaxies away from each other, and that dark matter keeps galaxies from spinning away. Perhaps the pre-Big Bang civilization encoded dark energy to be an information conduit between clusters of dark matter, which contain binary data.

As others have stated, this is entirely speculatory because we don't know what happened before the big bang, or what dark energy or dark matter really are. But it was fun.

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