How Did The Universe Begin?

Sure, let's start by converting the script into a markdown article.

How Did The Universe Begin?

13.8 billion years ago, the universe began. In one moment there was nothing, and the next, everything. Just how this is possible is perhaps the biggest question in all of science, crossing the boundaries between theory and experiment, physics and philosophy. Everything we know about our universe hinges on mechanism, process, and causality. We strive to understand the reasons things are the way they are. And yet, at the most fundamental level, we do not know how or why the entire universe came to be.

But this lack of explanation is not for want of searching. Perhaps, as famed cosmologist Stephen Hawking once supposed, there really was nothing before. Considering space and time as inherent, conjoined properties of the universe we inhabit, the beginning of that universe marked the beginning of time. Before time, there could be no space, and therefore no universe. Considering the geometry of space-time back through the ages, he saw it contract, curve around, and eventually round off. Searching for something beyond that would be as meaningless as searching for something that is north of the North Pole.

Or perhaps there was no actual beginning, but rather a limit to our powers of observation. Scientists believe that it was a split-second period of exponential expansion known as inflation that put the bang in the Big Bang and set the stage for everything that was to follow. Our inflation stopped after a tiny fraction of a second, but some physicists have argued that this is not the only period of inflation in the cosmos. Rather, inflation would continue elsewhere, eternally producing bubble universes distributed through a potent Everlasting Multiverse.

Or perhaps our current universe is merely the latest in a long and potentially infinite series of expanding and contracting cosmos—a theory known as the Big Bounce. Instead of starting from nothing and inflating exponentially to reduce the structure we see today, contemporary physicists like Paul Steinhardt suggest a cyclical growth and contraction of everything within the universe.

Or perhaps our understanding of scale is fundamentally incomplete. Physicist Roger Penrose considered the properties of shapes, regardless of their size, and believes we can do the same with the cosmos. In this idea, the universe loses a sense of time and scale at the infinitely small and the infinitely big and becomes, to all intents and purposes, equivalent; the game of chess is played the same whether on a board that fits in your pocket or spans an entire courtyard.

Or perhaps our cosmos came about as a transient collision of dimensions. String Theory attempts to explain the fundamentals of reality as tiny vibrating strings within an 11-dimensional reality of hyperspace. The three dimensions of space and one dimension of time that we experience within our cosmos are merely a single brain in the overall bulk, with the beginning and growth of our universe coming about as higher-order brains collide.

Or perhaps there is something else—some corner of mathematics or physics that we have yet to shine a light into, and which, for the time being, eludes our understanding.

For now, our universe's origin story remains a mystery—a multiple choice choose-your-own-adventure. Nevertheless, 13.8 billion years ago, the universe did begin, and this is the story of what happened next.

Keyword

• Universe
• Big Bang
• Inflation
• Multiverse
• Big Bounce
• String Theory
• 11 Dimensions
• Hyperspace
• Cosmology
• Stephen Hawking

FAQ

Q: What is the Big Bang theory? A: The Big Bang theory posits that the universe began from an extremely dense and hot state approximately 13.8 billion years ago and has since expanded.

Q: What is the inflation theory in cosmology? A: The inflation theory suggests a period of rapid exponential expansion that occurred a tiny fraction of a second after the Big Bang, setting the groundwork for the structure of the universe we see today.

Q: What is the Big Bounce theory? A: The Big Bounce theory suggests that the universe undergoes endless cycles of expansion and contraction rather than starting from an absolute beginning.

Q: What is String Theory? A: String Theory attempts to explain fundamental particles as tiny vibrating strings in an 11-dimensional space-time fabric.

Q: What did Stephen Hawking theorize about the beginning of the universe? A: Stephen Hawking theorized that there was nothing before the beginning of the universe, implying that the beginning of the universe marked the start of time and space itself.

This completes the requested conversion!