How Was The Universe Created & Why?
How Was the Universe Created and Why? A Complete Origin Guide
Looking up at the night sky, you might wonder how everything around you came to exist. The stars, planets, and even the space between them all had a beginning. The universe was created approximately 13.8 billion years ago through an event called the Big Bang, which started from an extremely hot and dense state that rapidly expanded and cooled to form everything we see today.
Scientists have spent decades studying this cosmic mystery. They discovered that the universe is still expanding today, which gives us clues about how it started. The Big Bang theory explains how tiny particles formed first, then atoms, and eventually stars and galaxies over millions of years.
Understanding how the universe began involves looking at forces you cannot see, like dark matter and dark energy. You will explore how the first elements formed, why galaxies exist, and what the future holds for our expanding cosmos. The story of creation is written in the stars themselves.
Key Takeaways
The universe began 13.8 billion years ago with the Big Bang from a hot, dense state that expanded rapidly.
Early cosmic conditions created the basic elements and forces that shaped all matter and energy in existence.
The universe continues expanding today while dark matter and dark energy influence its structure and future.
What Does It Mean to Create the Universe?
Scientists use the word "create" differently than you might think when talking about the universe. The cosmos formed through natural processes that astronomy can study, but many questions about how everything began remain unanswered.
Defining the Universe in Scientific Terms
When you hear scientists talk about the universe, they mean everything that exists. This includes all matter, energy, space, and time. The universe contains billions of galaxies, each with billions of stars.
Scientists also use the word "cosmos" to describe the same thing. Both terms refer to the entire physical reality you can observe and study.
The universe has these key features:
Space: The three dimensions where objects exist
Time: How events unfold in order
Matter: Everything made of atoms and particles
Energy: The force that makes things move and change
Your understanding of the universe depends on what you can see with telescopes. The observable universe is about 93 billion light-years across. But the actual universe might be much larger or even infinite.
Overview of Creation in Cosmology
Cosmology studies how the universe formed and changed over time. Most scientists think the universe started with the Big Bang about 13.8 billion years ago.
The Big Bang wasn't an explosion in space. Instead, space itself expanded very quickly from an extremely small point. This expansion is still happening today.
Before the Big Bang, you can't use normal physics to understand what happened. Scientists don't know what caused the Big Bang or what existed before it. The word "before" might not even make sense because time itself started with the Big Bang.
Your current understanding comes from studying how galaxies move away from each other. This shows the universe is expanding. When scientists work backward through time, they reach a point where all physics breaks down.
The Limits of Observation and Theory
You can only study the universe up to a certain point in its history. Scientists can observe back to about 380,000 years after the Big Bang. Before that, the universe was too hot and dense for light to travel freely.
Current theories of physics stop working in the extreme conditions of the early universe. Einstein's general relativity breaks down at the Big Bang singularity. This means you need new physics to understand the very beginning.
Scientists are working on new theories like:
String theory: Says tiny vibrating strings make up everything
Loop quantum gravity: Replaces the singularity with a finite chunk of space-time
These theories aren't proven yet. You may never know what actually caused the Big Bang. The concepts of "beginning" and "creation" might not apply to the universe the way they do to everyday objects.
The Big Bang Theory: Foundation of Modern Cosmology
The Big Bang Theory emerged from key scientific discoveries in the early 20th century, describes a timeline spanning 13.8 billion years from the universe's explosive beginning, and is supported by crucial evidence including cosmic microwave background radiation.
How the Big Bang Theory Was Proposed
You can trace the Big Bang Theory's origins to several groundbreaking discoveries in the 1920s and 1930s. Edwin Hubble's observations in 1929 showed that galaxies were moving away from us at speeds proportional to their distance.
This discovery revealed that the universe was expanding. If you imagine running this expansion backward in time, everything would converge to a single point.
Georges Lemaître, a Belgian physicist and priest, proposed the "primeval atom" theory in 1927. He suggested the universe began from an extremely hot and dense single point. This idea became the foundation of what you now know as the Big Bang Theory.
Albert Einstein initially resisted these ideas because he believed in a static universe. However, after seeing Hubble's evidence, Einstein accepted the expanding universe model. He later called his resistance to expansion his "greatest blunder."
The term "Big Bang" was actually coined by astronomer Fred Hoyle in 1949. Ironically, Hoyle was criticizing the theory when he gave it this memorable name.
Timeline of Major Events From the Big Bang
Your universe began approximately 13.8 billion years ago with the Big Bang. In the first fraction of a second, the universe underwent rapid inflation, expanding faster than the speed of light.
Key Timeline:
0 to 10â»Â³â¶ seconds: Inflation period - universe expands exponentially
10â»â¶ seconds: Quarks combine to form protons and neutrons
3 minutes: First light elements form (hydrogen, helium, lithium)
380,000 years: Universe cools enough for atoms to form
1 billion years: First stars and galaxies begin forming
9 billion years: Solar system forms
13.8 billion years: Present day
During the first three minutes, temperatures were so high that nuclear fusion occurred throughout space. This process created the light elements you observe today.
The cosmic microwave background radiation was released when the universe became transparent at 380,000 years old. This radiation still fills the universe today.
Supporting Evidence for the Big Bang
You can verify the Big Bang Theory through multiple lines of evidence. The cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation provides the strongest support for this theory.
Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson discovered the CMB in 1965. This faint radiation exists everywhere in space and matches predictions for leftover heat from the Big Bang. The radiation temperature is exactly 2.7 degrees above absolute zero.
The abundance of light elements in the universe matches Big Bang predictions perfectly. You observe about 75% hydrogen and 25% helium, with trace amounts of lithium throughout the cosmos.
Key Evidence:
Cosmic microwave background radiation
Hubble's Law showing universal expansion
Observed ratios of hydrogen, helium, and lithium
Large-scale structure of galaxies and galaxy clusters
Modern satellites like Planck have mapped the CMB with incredible precision. These measurements confirm the universe's age at 13.8 billion years and support the Big Bang model's predictions about cosmic evolution.
Pioneers Who Unveiled the Universe's Origins
Several key scientists changed how you understand the universe's beginning. Georges Lemaître first proposed the Big Bang theory, while Edwin Hubble proved the universe expands.
Georges Lemaître's Primeval Atom Hypothesis
Georges Lemaître, a Belgian priest and physicist, first proposed what you now know as the Big Bang theory in 1927. He called it the "primeval atom hypothesis."
Lemaître suggested the universe began from a single, extremely dense point. He believed this tiny beginning expanded rapidly to create everything you see today.
His work came before Edwin Hubble's famous discoveries. Lemaître used Einstein's equations to show that the universe must be either expanding or shrinking.
Key contributions:
First scientist to propose the Big Bang theory
Combined religious faith with scientific research
Used mathematical equations to support his ideas
Many scientists initially rejected his theory. They thought the universe was steady and unchanging. Lemaître's ideas seemed too strange at the time.
Edwin Hubble and the Expanding Universe
Edwin Hubble made discoveries that proved Lemaître's theory correct. In the 1920s, Hubble used powerful telescopes to study distant galaxies.
Hubble found that galaxies move away from Earth. The farther away they are, the faster they move. This discovery showed that the universe expands.
His work provided the first real evidence for the Big Bang theory. Without Hubble's observations, you might still think the universe stays the same size.
Hubble's major findings:
Galaxies exist beyond the Milky Way
The universe continuously expands
Distance and speed of galaxies are connected
The Hubble Space Telescope bears his name. Scientists chose this name because of his huge impact on astronomy.
Major Roles of Modern Astronomers
Today's astronomers build on the work of Lemaître and Hubble. They use advanced technology to study the universe's beginning in much greater detail.
Modern scientists measure the universe's age at 13.8 billion years. They study cosmic background radiation, which is leftover heat from the Big Bang.
Current research areas:
Dark matter and dark energy
Formation of first stars and galaxies
Cosmic microwave background radiation
These astronomers use space telescopes and supercomputers. Their work helps you understand not just how the universe began, but how it will end.
Stephen Hawking developed theories about quantum physics and the universe's birth. His work shows how the universe could create itself through natural processes.
The Initial Conditions: Forces, Particles, and Rapid Inflation
The universe's first moments involved four fundamental forces working together, an explosive period of rapid expansion called cosmic inflation, and the formation of the first subatomic particles from pure energy.
The Four Fundamental Forces
Four fundamental forces shaped the universe from its very beginning. These forces control everything you see around you today.
Gravity pulls objects toward each other. It keeps your feet on the ground and holds planets in orbit around stars.
Electromagnetism creates electric and magnetic fields. It powers your phone and creates the light you see.
The strong nuclear force holds the center of atoms together. Without it, atoms would fall apart instantly.
The weak nuclear force controls certain types of radioactive decay. It helps power the sun by changing one type of particle into another.
In the universe's first tiny fraction of a second, these forces worked differently than they do now. Scientists think they may have been combined into one single force when temperatures were extremely hot.
Cosmic Inflation
Cosmic inflation was a period of extremely rapid expansion that happened right after the Big Bang. The universe grew faster than the speed of light for a very short time.
This expansion lasted only about 10^-36 seconds. During this time, the universe increased in size by at least 10^26 times. That means it grew more in this tiny moment than it has in the billions of years since.
A special field called the inflaton field caused this rapid growth. This field had unique energy properties that made space itself expand at an increasing rate.
Inflation solved major problems with the Big Bang theory. It explains why the universe looks the same in all directions when you look at the cosmic microwave background radiation.
The rapid expansion also made the universe flat instead of curved. Scientists have confirmed this flatness through careful measurements of space.
The Formation of Subatomic Particles
After inflation ended, the universe was still incredibly hot and dense. Pure energy began converting into the first subatomic particles through a process you might know from Einstein's equation E=mc².
Quarks formed first. These are the building blocks that would later combine to make protons and neutrons.
Leptons also appeared early. This group includes electrons, which you need for atoms to exist.
Photons carried light and energy throughout the early universe. They could not travel far because the universe was too dense.
The universe was still too hot for these particles to stick together. They moved around freely in what scientists call a "particle soup."
As the universe continued expanding and cooling, these particles would eventually combine to form the first atoms. This process took hundreds of thousands of years to complete.
Matter, Antimatter, and the Early Universe Imbalance
The Big Bang should have created equal amounts of matter and antimatter, but today's universe contains almost entirely matter. This tiny imbalance of about one extra matter particle per billion pairs shaped everything you see around you.
What Are Matter and Antimatter?
Matter makes up everything you can touch and see. Your body, the Earth, and distant stars are all made of matter particles like protons, neutrons, and electrons.
Antimatter particles have the same mass as regular matter but carry opposite electric charges. The positron is antimatter's version of an electron. It has the same mass but a positive charge instead of negative.
When matter and antimatter meet, they destroy each other completely. This process releases pure energy. During the first moments after the Big Bang, the universe was extremely hot and dense.
Particle pairs kept appearing and disappearing constantly. Matter and antimatter particles formed together, then annihilated each other almost instantly. If this process had been perfectly balanced, the universe would contain only energy today.
Instead, about one matter particle survived for every billion matter-antimatter pairs that destroyed each other. This tiny leftover became all the matter you see in the universe today.
The Role of CP Violation
CP violation explains why matter won over antimatter in the early universe. CP stands for charge-parity, which describes how particles behave compared to their antimatter twins.
Scientists discovered that nature's laws don't treat matter and antimatter exactly the same way. Some particles can change into their antimatter versions and back again millions of times per second before they decay.
This process is like coins spinning on a table. Each coin should have a 50-50 chance of landing heads or tails. But if something interferes with the spinning coins, more might land on heads than tails.
In the early universe, some unknown process made these changing particles decay into matter slightly more often than antimatter. This small difference was enough to tip the balance.
Experiments at the Large Hadron Collider study these subtle differences between matter and antimatter behavior. These tests help scientists understand what caused the imbalance that led to your existence.
How Neutrinos May Hold Answers
Neutrinos are nearly massless particles that barely interact with other matter. Trillions pass through your body every second without you noticing them.
These ghost-like particles might hold the key to understanding the matter-antimatter puzzle. Scientists think neutrinos could be their own antiparticles, making them unique in the particle world.
If neutrinos can transform between matter and antimatter states, they might have played a special role in the early universe. This behavior could have helped create the small imbalance that saved matter from total annihilation.
Current experiments are trying to measure tiny differences in how neutrinos and antineutrinos behave. These measurements could reveal whether neutrinos were responsible for the universe's matter dominance.
The answers may explain not just why you exist, but why anything exists at all instead of an empty universe filled only with energy.
From Energy to Elements: Nucleosynthesis and Recombination
The universe transformed from pure energy into matter through two key processes that created the first atomic elements. During nucleosynthesis, protons and neutrons formed and combined to create hydrogen and helium nuclei, while recombination later allowed electrons to join these nuclei and make the universe transparent.
Formation of Protons and Neutrons
In the first few minutes after the Big Bang, the universe was incredibly hot and dense. Temperatures reached over 1 billion degrees Fahrenheit.
During this time, the universe contained a quark-gluon plasma. This was like a soup of tiny particles called quarks and gluons floating freely in space.
As the universe expanded and cooled, these quarks and gluons began to stick together. They formed the first protons and neutrons within minutes of the Big Bang.
Protons are particles with a positive charge. Neutrons have no electrical charge. Both particles became the building blocks for all future atomic nuclei.
The temperature had to drop below 1 billion degrees for these particles to survive. Before this point, the universe was too hot for protons and neutrons to stay together.
The Birth of Hydrogen and Helium
Once protons and neutrons formed, they began combining through nuclear reactions. This process is called Big Bang nucleosynthesis.
The reactions created the first atomic nuclei:
Hydrogen nuclei (single protons)
Helium nuclei (two protons plus two neutrons)
Small amounts of lithium and beryllium
Nuclear reactions continued for about 3 minutes after the Big Bang. After this time, the temperature dropped too low for nuclear fusion to occur.
The final result was impressive. About 75% of all matter became hydrogen. 24% became helium. Only 1% formed heavier elements.
Neutrons were quickly used up in these reactions. Most neutrons combined with protons to form helium nuclei before they could decay.
Recombination and Universe Transparency
For hundreds of thousands of years, the universe remained opaque to light. Free electrons scattered photons constantly, creating a foggy environment.
Recombination occurred about 380,000 years after the Big Bang. The universe had cooled enough for electrons to combine with hydrogen and helium nuclei.
This process created the first neutral atoms:
Hydrogen atoms (proton + electron)
Helium atoms (helium nucleus + electrons)
When electrons joined nuclei, they stopped scattering light. The universe became transparent for the first time.
This transparency allowed light to travel freely through space. The light from this era still reaches us today as the cosmic microwave background radiation.
You can think of recombination as the moment when the universe's fog finally cleared. Stars and galaxies could eventually form from the hydrogen and helium atoms created during this period.
Shaping Structure: Galaxies, Stars, and Planets Emerge
The first stars ignited about 200 million years after the Big Bang, creating the building blocks for galaxies and planets. These early structures grew through gravity and collisions over billions of years.
How the First Stars Formed
The first stars formed when gravity pulled together clouds of hydrogen and helium gas. These gas clouds grew denser and hotter until nuclear fusion began.
You can think of these early stars as cosmic giants. They were much larger than stars today, sometimes 100 times bigger than our Sun.
Key differences from modern stars:
Made only of hydrogen and helium
Burned very hot and bright
Had short lifespans of only a few million years
Created the first heavy elements when they died
When these massive first stars exploded as supernovas, they scattered heavy elements like carbon, oxygen, and iron into space. These elements became the raw materials for future generations of stars and planets.
The death of first stars also created shock waves that compressed nearby gas clouds. This process triggered the formation of new stars across the early universe.
The Birth of Galaxies
Galaxies began forming when dark matter created invisible scaffolds that pulled gas and stars together. The first galaxies appeared around the same time as the first stars.
Early galaxies were much smaller than galaxies you see today. They grew larger by merging with other galaxies and pulling in more gas from space.
Two main types of galaxies formed:
Elliptical galaxies: Formed quickly through major mergers
Spiral galaxies: Built up more slowly over time
The Milky Way represents a typical spiral galaxy. Its central bulge formed early, while the flat disk developed later as gas continued flowing inward.
Galaxy formation happened faster in crowded regions of space. Dense galaxy clusters formed through both large mergers and gradual growth processes.
Stellar Life Cycles and Planets
Stars like our Sun formed from gas clouds enriched with heavy elements from earlier stellar explosions. These second-generation stars burn longer and cooler than the first stars.
The heavy elements in these gas clouds allowed rocky planets to form. Dust grains stuck together to build asteroids, then planets through collisions and gravitational attraction.
Planet formation timeline:
Dust grains clump together
Small rocks form through collisions
Gravity pulls rocks into larger bodies
Planets clear their orbital paths
Different types of planets formed at different distances from their stars. Rocky planets like Earth formed closer to stars, while gas giants formed farther out where it was cooler.
The cycle continues today as old stars die and new ones form. Each generation of stars creates more heavy elements, making planet formation more common throughout the universe.
Dark Matter and Dark Energy: The Hidden Influences
Most of the universe consists of invisible forces that shape everything you see. Dark matter holds galaxies together through gravity, while dark energy pushes the universe apart at an accelerating rate.
What Is Dark Matter?
Dark matter makes up about 27% of the universe. You cannot see it because it does not emit, absorb, or reflect light.
Scientists know dark matter exists because of its gravitational effects. When you look at spinning galaxies, their outer stars move too fast to stay in orbit based on visible matter alone.
Fritz Zwicky first discovered this problem in the 1930s. He studied galaxy clusters and found they moved too quickly to hold together without extra mass.
Later, Vera Rubin confirmed this by measuring how fast stars orbit in galaxies. Her work showed that galaxies have flat rotation curves, meaning outer stars move as fast as inner ones.
This invisible mass forms halos around galaxies. Without dark matter, galaxies would fly apart and cosmic structures could not form.
Leading candidates for dark matter include:
WIMPs (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles)
Axions (ultra-light particles)
Primordial black holes from the early universe
Scientists have built underground detectors to find dark matter particles. So far, none have been directly detected.
How Dark Energy Drives Expansion
Dark energy makes up about 68% of the universe. It acts like a repulsive force that accelerates the expansion of the universe.
In the 1990s, two teams studying distant supernovae made a shocking discovery. They expected the universe's expansion to slow down due to gravity. Instead, they found it was speeding up.
This acceleration requires a mysterious force working against gravity. Scientists call this force dark energy.
Dark energy behaves differently than matter:
It does not clump together
It fills all of space evenly
Its density stays constant as space expands
The leading explanation is Einstein's cosmological constant. This treats dark energy as a property of space itself.
Another theory suggests quintessence - a dynamic field that changes over time. Some scientists think we need to modify our understanding of gravity instead.
Dark energy determines the universe's fate. If it stays constant, galaxies will drift apart forever until stars burn out and the universe goes cold.
Building Solar Systems and Celestial Bodies
Solar systems form from clouds of gas and dust through a process called accretion, where gravity pulls materials together to create stars and planets. The cosmos contains many different types of celestial bodies that formed through similar processes but under different conditions.
Formation of Solar Systems
Your solar system began as a giant cloud of gas and dust called a nebula about 5 billion years ago. These nebulae contain mostly hydrogen and helium gas, along with tiny mineral grains and ice crystals.
A solar system starts forming when a small patch within the nebula begins to collapse. This collapse might be triggered by energy from nearby stars. Once it starts, the process continues for two main reasons.
Static electricity first brings dust particles together into loose clumps, just like dust bunnies under your bed. As these clumps grow larger, gravity becomes more important and pulls more material together.
The collapsing material forms a rotating disk called a protoplanetary disk. The center becomes hot and dense enough to create a star. The remaining dust and gas in the disk eventually form planets through accretion.
Objects closer to the star become rocky planets because it's too hot for ice to form. Objects farther away become gas giants or ice giants because they can collect lighter materials in the cooler regions.
Other Celestial Bodies in the Cosmos
The universe contains many types of celestial bodies beyond planets and stars. Moons form from leftover material in planetary systems or from major collisions between planets.
Asteroids are rocky objects that never grew large enough to become planets. They mostly orbit between Mars and Jupiter. Comets are icy bodies that come from the outer edges of solar systems.
Nebulae continue to create new stars and planetary systems throughout the universe. You can observe young stars with protoplanetary disks that show gaps where new planets are forming.
Gas giants like Jupiter contain mostly hydrogen and helium. Ice giants like Neptune contain water, methane, and ammonia ice. These different types form because of their distance from their host stars and the materials available during formation.
The Expanding Universe: Past, Present, and Future
The universe has been expanding since the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago, and this expansion is actually getting faster. Scientists can observe this expansion happening right now and use it to predict what will happen to our universe in the future.
Current Expansion and Observations
You can think of the universe's expansion like a balloon being inflated. Space itself is stretching everywhere at once.
In the 1920s, Edwin Hubble discovered that galaxies are moving away from us. The farther away a galaxy is, the faster it's moving away. This proved the universe is expanding.
Modern telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope have revealed something surprising. The expansion is speeding up, not slowing down like scientists expected.
Key observations you should know:
Most galaxies are racing away from us
The universe expanded very fast right after the Big Bang
Dark energy makes up 80% of the universe and pushes expansion faster
Our Local Group of galaxies stays together because of gravity
Scientists use the cosmic microwave background to study early expansion. This leftover radiation from the Big Bang shows how the universe looked 380,000 years after it began.
The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe measured this radiation and confirmed the universe is about 13.7 billion years old.
Implications for the Fate of the Universe
The accelerating expansion means our universe faces a cold, lonely future. Dark energy will keep pushing galaxies apart faster and faster.
Right now, your local area stays normal. The Milky Way and nearby galaxies remain bound together by gravity. But most other galaxies will eventually disappear from view.
What happens next:
In 5 billion years, the Milky Way and Andromeda will collide
Distant galaxies will fade as they move away faster than light
Stars will burn out over trillions of years
The universe will become cold and empty
This expansion affects how you see the universe today. When you look at distant galaxies, you're seeing them as they were billions of years ago. The light took that long to reach you.
The universe won't collapse back on itself. Instead, it will keep expanding forever, getting colder and darker as time goes on.
Frequently Asked Questions
Scientists have developed several theories to explain how the universe began, with the Big Bang theory being the most widely accepted. Evidence from cosmic radiation, galaxy movement, and particle physics helps support these ideas about the universe's creation.
What are the prevailing theories explaining the creation of the universe?
The Big Bang theory stands as the most accepted explanation for how the universe began. This theory states that the universe started from a single, extremely dense point about 14 billion years ago.
According to this model, everything expanded rapidly from this tiny starting point. The universe was smaller than an atom at first, then grew to its current size through continuous expansion.
Some scientists also study cosmic inflation theory. This idea explains how the universe expanded extremely fast in its first moments, which helps explain why the universe looks so uniform today.
What evidence supports the Big Bang Theory?
You can observe several key pieces of evidence that support the Big Bang theory. Galaxies are moving away from us in all directions, which shows the universe is still expanding.
Scientists have detected cosmic microwave background radiation throughout space. This radiation acts like an echo from the Big Bang event, providing direct evidence of the universe's hot, dense beginning.
The amounts of hydrogen and helium in the universe match what the Big Bang theory predicts. About 75% of normal matter is hydrogen, and 25% is helium, which fits the theory's calculations.
Can scientists explain what existed before the Big Bang, if anything?
Current scientific theories cannot explain what existed before the Big Bang. Our understanding of physics breaks down when you try to look at the very first moment of the universe's existence.
The extreme conditions at the universe's beginning make it impossible to know what came before. The four fundamental forces of nature were combined into one force, but scientists don't understand how this worked.
Some scientists propose that time itself began with the Big Bang. If this is true, then asking what came "before" may not make sense, since time didn't exist yet.
What scientific methods are used to estimate the age of the universe?
Scientists use several methods to determine the universe's age. They measure how fast galaxies are moving away from us, which helps calculate when the expansion began.
The cosmic microwave background radiation provides another way to estimate age. By studying this radiation's properties, scientists can work backward to determine when it was created.
Astronomers also study the oldest stars and galaxies. The James Webb Space Telescope has helped scientists observe some of the first galaxies that formed, giving clues about the universe's timeline.
How do physicists reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity in the context of the universe's origin?
Scientists have not yet figured out how to combine quantum mechanics and general relativity when explaining the universe's beginning. This creates a major problem for understanding the first moments after the Big Bang.
Both theories work well separately, but they give different answers about what happened in the universe's first tiny fraction of a second. Scientists need a unified theory to explain how gravity works at the quantum scale.
Researchers are working on theories like string theory and loop quantum gravity. These ideas might help explain how the universe's fundamental forces worked together at the very beginning.
What are some philosophical implications of the universe's creation theories?
The Big Bang theory raises important questions about existence and purpose. If the universe had a definite beginning, this challenges ideas about whether something can come from nothing.
You might wonder whether the universe was created by chance or design. The fact that the universe's laws allow for stars, planets, and life to exist seems remarkable to many people.
Some philosophers debate whether multiple universes exist. If our universe is just one of many, this could change how you think about humanity's place in existence.
The discovery that most of the universe consists of dark matter and dark energy means visible matter makes up less than 5% of everything. This finding affects how you understand your relationship to the cosmos.
