clipped from: www.telegraph.co.uk   

Scientists have obtained their first glimpse of what happened before the Big Bang of creation, revealing there was a "Big Bounce".

A state that initially has small fluctuations (left) bounces and develops larger fluctuations

The new work suggests that time existed before the Big Bang, when a more ancient universe collapsed to give birth to the one we live in today.

Ours is the latest universe in a series that expanded, then collapsed, before another - slightly different cosmos - was born anew, though many details are obscure and, the theory concludes, will always remain that way.

As described by Einstein's Theory of General Relativity, which dates back almost a century, the origin of the Big Bang is a mathematically nonsensical state - a "singularity" of zero volume that nevertheless contained infinite density and infinitely large energy.

"The usual understanding was that, according to general relativity, everything including time itself started with the Big Bang such that it simply does not make sense to ask what was there before," says Dr Bojowald.