Stack Exchange network consists of 178 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow, the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers.
Physics Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for active researchers, academics and students of physics. It only takes a minute to sign up.
TV documentaries invariably show the Big Bang as an exploding ball of fire expanding outwards. Did the Big Bang really explode outwards from a point like this? If not, what did happen?
The simple answer is that no, the Big Bang did not happen at a point. Instead, it happened everywhere in the universe at the same time. Consequences of this include:
The universe doesn't have a centre: the Big Bang didn't happen at a point so there is no central point in the universe that it is expanding from.