What created the Universe?

Question

I sometimes wonder what created the Universe...and what existed before it? Has the universe ALWAYS existed? How is that possible? This is mind boggling.

Answer 1

you want to know what is even more mind-boggling? the universe is expanding. On to what, we do not know, but it is getting bigger, which makes you wonder if there are other universes out there....

Answer 2

As someone once said, "There will be no note in a bottle telling us what existed before this universe." Indeed, perhaps nothing existed before this universe! Perhaps it sprang from a state of "pure potentiality" and not as the effect following a cause.

As for those who claim that "God created the Universe" is a solution, it isn't, for as Bertrand Russell said, this simply moves the problem back a step to "What created God?" If the answer to that question is that "God just is," then in the interest of simplicity (aka, the principle of Occam's Razor) one should just say "Well, if something can just be, it might as well be the universe."

For me the interesting thing is that unless there is more matter than we have discovered so far, it seems there isn't enough matter around to result in a Big Crunch where it all collapses back. Thus, the Universe may have a beginning but no end.

If the person who said that the Universe is only 12,000 years old is right, then God is playing tricks on us, what with dinosaurs and other things that carbon date much older than that.

Answer 3

It is mind boggling indeed. The problem is that you are trying to think of the Universe in terms of things that you can, and have already related to, here on Earth. It is impossible to think about Space and the Universe in those terms. Outer space is far more vast and complex than anything here on Earth. Time and distance take on whole new meanings when you begin talking about outer space, and the Universe.

For the most part it is useless to ponder about things that created the Universe. It all happened so long ago that there are no simple answers for what may or may not have happened, or where it all came from. In my mind, nobody we know is going to walk up one day and say with any kind of proof that it all came from XYZ on this Date, whatever XYZ is. Anyone that does tell you where it all came from is giving you their theory, telling you a joke, or repeating some myth they heard elsewhere. You will have a much more positive experience studying the things which are in space than pondering the origin of everything. And, if you were to worry about running out of things to study, don't bother. There are some 200 Billion stars in our Milky Way Galaxy alone, with 10,000 more galaxies beyond that and each of those has millions of stars within it. My guess is that this should keep you fairly busy with real things for the duration of your expected lifetime. Just don't get tangled up in the fish stories of others regarding creation and before that what??? Etc. Next they will hit you up with, "Well, what happens after the end of everything?" Shoot, who the heck knows?

Answer 4

The universe was not created. There are various theories as to how it came to be, and whether it has always been there. These theories have been made by those who have studied enough to be able to make a reasonable calculation, and to make theories that others can make an effort to prove or disprove.

Being able to disprove a theory is a very important thing. Ask anyone who has studied a long time about anything worth knowing.

Knowing stuff about the universe means putting yourself into a stream of study that takes a lifetime. It pays to read the work of people who do that, and not to those who come up with a quick and glib answer. These works need to be either supported or debated by equally clever people. It is called peer assessment... that is, a judgement passed by someone equally educated as the writer.

The people who wrote the bible had no such system - they had no means to study the universe at all. And they had no one to debate what they wrote, or to try and prove it, or disprove it. So it is a questionable piece of writing upon which to base such an important question.

The bible is a piece of writing that requires you to believe rather than know something. Believing and knowing are two different things, and whoever mixes them up runs the risk of confusing everything they ever hear, read or try to understand.

If you want to believe, you can place belief in anything from the tooth fairy, through Santa, down to many works that you can find today in book form. Belief is easy.

If you want to know something for sure, you need to address the question seriously and ask those who have studied and measured everything they could, and placed their work out in the open so that equally studious persons could try and tear it to shreds. Knowledge is difficult.

Whether a theory stands up to all this scrutiny and debate is a test of its strength, and it would be a great idea for us to really think before we accept any answer upon this question at all, even mine.

Good luck.

Answer 5

Science says the Big Bang, where an infinitely small and infinitely dense particle of matter imploded and spewed matter outwards into the universe. Religions say that the universe was created by gods. Its an argument that's been going on pretty much since the dawn of man. I guess you must decide what you believe.

Answer 6

Last I heard, the universe was a quantum fluctuation in hyperspace. Something like 99% of it cancelled out immediately. What energy and matter we see today is the leftover scraps, the debris that didn't quite cancel out. Whether this universe is just one small part of a hyperdimensional quantum foam, or something less common like a variety of energy states mingling like a rainbow is something we have not yet determined.

Answer 7

The origin of our Universe is, perhaps, a different problem from the origins of existence itself. No one knows why there is something rather than nothing. To say the answer is "God" is simply a semantic naming of the problem, and is not any kind of real answer. There is no satisfactory evidence that the first cause, if there is one, is also an intelligent being who is concerned with our daily lives.

There may be many big bangs. The past may be infinite, as we expect the future to be. No one knows.

Answer 8

This particular universe began with the big bang about 13.7 billion years ago. As to what was there before? What will come after? What else is out there? We can theorize, but we have no way of testing anything outside our universe. So just theories.

Answer 9

well there are theories but even the scientists are confused. there are three major theories, but the best one for me is the big bang theory. it said that the universe began with a loud explosion 13 billion years ago and the particles of the explosion created stars, planets and etc.

Answer 10

Not god. Cosmologists are actively searching for these answers. They are working on theories of an ever expanding universe, parallel universes, and 10 spatial dimensions. This is a great field to be working in today. Too bad my math skills are not up to par.