: : Really simple question (sorry if it sticks in your brain), but if the universe was created by a mega-astronomical explosion from a single point smaller than the head of a needle, then what was there before the point exploded? thanks.

: As time + space (4 dimentional space-time) came into existince with the Big Bang, then there was no 'before' because there was no 'time'. It is like asking 'what is further north than the North Pole?', the answer is 'nothing'.

I was going to answer the same, but I didn't ever think of that nice analogy of the North Pole. Now I'd like to add a small contribution to it: if you are going north, you finally reach the North Pole. If go further in the same direction, you're going south. It's interesting to think about time the same way: we can trace back in time until the Big Bang using physical laws, but if we want to know what was before, we will find ourselves watching the moments AFTER the Big Bang again! That's precisely the idea of the self-contained Universe, both in space and time.