According to some.
Confronted with the news that supersymmetry (glorified string theory) must be true, and evidence is superfluous the face of these sorts of truths, we realized that we stood in the presence of the religion of modern cosmology, with which one doesn’t argue.
Another biggie that has received a boost from the recent gravity waves finding (provided the waves are not just dust) is speculation around the universe before the Big Bang.
Some of us think that asking about the universe before the Big Bang is a bit like asking where we all were in 1800 A.D. Physics nerd Ethan Siegel, however, offers,
You see, back before the Big Bang—before the Universe could have ever been described by a hot, dense, matter-and-radiation-filled state—the Universe was simply expanding exponentially quickly; a period of cosmic inflation. During this time, the Universe was dominated by the energy intrinsic to empty space itself, an amount of energy far greater than anything in the Universe today.
During this time, quantum fluctuations—fluctuations that happen inherently to space—get stretched across the Universe, and provide for the initial density fluctuations that give rise to our Universe today.
But it’s only in regions where inflation ends, and where that energy inherent to space itself, gets converted into matter-and-radiation that the Big Bang actually happens.
In these regions—regions where inflation ends—we get a Universe, and one that’s much bigger than just the part observable to us. That’s the idea of a Multiverse, and why we think we almost certainly live in one.
Actually, other sources have developed the multiverse into a way bigger pantheon than just a universe that is “much bigger than just the part observable to us.”
The graphics are great though.
To get a sense of how the multiverse came to be easier for many people to believe as a possibility than dust floating in space, see The Science Fictions series at your fingertips (cosmology).
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