Timeline of the universe from before the Big Bang

Some theorists now believe they have found ways of pushing back even further, to the ultimate question: what came before the big bang? To do it, they have had to take on one of the greatest challenges in physics: the marriage of Einstein's theory of space, time and gravity, general relativity, with quantum theory, which describes the subatomic world. Only then can they hope to describe conditions at the big bang, when all space and time was compressed into a volume far smaller than a proton.

Link:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/.../universe.physics