  The big bang and the Schwarzschild singularities are space-like. They are
generally regarded as the "final frontiers" at which space-time ends and
general relativity breaks down. We review the status of such space-like
singularities from three increasingly more general perspectives. They are
provided by (i) A reformulation of classical general relativity motivated by
the Belinskii, Khalatnikov, Lifshitz conjecture on the behavior of the
gravitational field near space-like singularities; (ii) The use of test quantum
fields to probe the nature of these singularities; and, (iii) An analysis of
the fate of these singularities in loop quantum gravity due to quantum geometry
effects. At all three levels singularities turn out to be less menacing than
one might a priori expect from classical general relativity. Our goal is to
present an overview of the emerging conceptual picture and suggest lines for
further work. In line with the \emph{Introduction to Current Research} theme,
we have made an attempt to make it easily accessible to all researchers in
gravitational physics.
