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  • So Stephen, everyone wants to know. What was around before the Big Bang?

  • Nothing was surround before the big Big Bang.

  • According to Einstein's general theory of relativity, space and time together form a space-time continuum,

  • or manifold which has not flat but curved by the matter and energy in it.

  • I adopt a Euclidian approach to quantum gravity

  • to describe the beginning of the universe.

  • In this, ordinary real time is replaced by imaginary time,

  • which behaves like a fourth direction of space.

  • In the Euclidean approach, the history of the universe in imaginary time

  • is a four-dimensional, curved surface

  • like the surface of the Earth, but with two more dimensions.

  • Jim Hartle and I proposed a "no-boundary" condition.

  • The boundary condition of the universe is that it has no boundary.

  • In order terms, the Euclidean space time is a closed surface without end,

  • like the surface of the Earth.

  • One can regard imaginary in real time as beginning at the South Pole,

  • which is thesmooth point of space-time where the normal laws of physics hold.

  • There is nothing south of the South Pole, so there was nothing around before the Big Bang

So Stephen, everyone wants to know. What was around before the Big Bang?

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