Before the Big Bang

What came before the Big Bang, and what exists outside of the universe it created? Until recently, scientists could only guess at what lay past the edge of pace-time. However, as pioneering theoretical physicist Laura Mersini-Houghton explains, new scientific tools are now giving us the ability to peer beyond the limits of our universe. And Mersini-Houghton herself is no stranger to seeing beyond boundaries and pushing through them. As a child growing up in Communist Albania, she transcended her walled-off world through the study of math, science, and music. As a female cosmologist in a male-dominated field, she transcended the limits that society and our universe by revealing that, far from living in a cosmic Albania, with a world that ends at its borders, we are part of a larger family of universes--a multiverse--that holds wonders we are only beginning to unlock.