A simple question on the Big Bang?

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Hello. If this question is common knowledge then I don't remember its answer. In the Big Bang, the original explosion that "started" the galaxies and universe we know, what technically exploded or imploded? I remember once seeing a show on the History Channel that described the state of the moment as the four qualities of energy, gravity, ?, ? ( I don't remember the other two) were all in one form and then they separated. But I don't clearly understand what that is supposed to mean. If you could elaborate that would greatly help. Thank you and Good bye.
 
Serious scientists on this topic don't think than anything "exploded". That would imply that it "exploded" INTO something, into empty space. That is not what happened. It was space itself that expanded. At first, everything was very close together, then there was more and more space between things.

When everything was close together, all their energy was compressed, so everything was very hot. The four fundamental forces — electromagnetism, weak nuclear force, strong nuclear force and gravitation — all had the same strength and (maybe) they were all really the same fundamental force.

Just like today, electric energy and magnetic energy are really different ways of looking at the same force: moving electricity always has magnetism, and moving magnetism always has electricity.

For your original question: it was everything, the whole universe, that expanded (I would not say exploded).
 
It wasn't an explosion, not like we think of explosions.
The theory is that an infinitely hot, dense point suddenly expanded (called inflation) - within a few seconds it was the size of an atom, within a few minutes it was the size of the Earth.

Check this out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_bang
http://www.pbs.org/deepspace/timeline/
 
It wasn't an explosion. It was an expansion. It started out as a singularity and expanded from there. The History Channel was probably talking about the 4 forces (gravity, electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear forces) being one in the first few instants and then separating into 4.
 
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