Cosmological models of the Universe.

[°Leprechaun]

The history of theories as to whether the universe had a beginning goes back at least to Aristotle who held that the universe had no beginning. In the twentieth century the idea that the universe all started with a really big bang has changed all that. If the BBT is a true model, does that mean that the universe had a beginning? It seems problematic to some, who are puzzled by the idea that "something could from nothing".
It occurs to me that another related question is whether something can become nothing.
If a nonhuman animal doesn't have an immortal soul, it could be said that the life of such an animal is something that becomes nothing. If you accept that thesis, then why couldn't the reverse be true?
Why can't something come from nothing? Does that boggle your mind?

Contemplating the history of the universe leads one to wonder what is life, after all, and can it be simplified. Could it be as simple as a number, like, ... I don't know... forty two?
Math, science, history and so on...

Life in the universe is another interesting concept to ponder.
The chance that life could exist on exoplanets may be small, which could mean that planet Earth is unique in this very huge universe. Does space go on forever, will the universe exist forever and if so .. if it has no end, can we be sure that it had a beginning?

[muon2]

What I find impressive is how well our technology has advanced in the last 30 years to measure the parameters of the universe that can help refine our pondering. From precision measurements of the anisotropy of the universe to the numbers and types of exoplanets revealed, we have a far better sense of the universe.That in turn narrows our possible answers to questions about size, scope, and the presence of life within than we did when I completed grad school in the late 1980's.

[°Leprechaun]

What I find impressive is how well our technology has advanced in the last 30 years to measure the parameters of the universe that can help refine our pondering. From precision measurements of the anisotropy of the universe to the numbers and types of exoplanets revealed, we have a far better sense of the universe.That in turn narrows our possible answers to questions about size, scope, and the presence of life within than we did when I completed grad school in the late 1980's.

There is certainly a lot of interest among some people in all of this. I don't think we'll find intelligent life anytime soon and it may be that we never will. Science has certainly achieved a lot in the last 100 years and before as well, some people don't realize how important science is. You don't have to be a genius or even be all that intelligent to appreciate science and what it has achieved.

It doesn't seem to be the most popular topic on this site.

[°Leprechaun]

So how big is the universe? Estimated at around 14 billion years in age, it is larger than 14 billion light years in diameter, although the following article may be a little abstruse for you:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe

The farthest galaxy is 32 billion light years away:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GN-z11

The closest, Andromeda is 2.5 million light years away.

The diameter of the Milky Way is estimated to be 150-200 thousand light years in diameter.

So, put simply, the universe is pretty big.

[°Leprechaun]

A light year is about 5.88 billion miles, so the farthest galaxy is about a billion X a trillion x 188 miles away.

[Meclazine for Israel]

The Big Bang Theory does suggest that the Universe has a beginning at zero time.

So the next obvious question is what happened an hour earlier.

It has got to do with Einstein's Special and General Theory of Relativity where he defines space and time as intricately linked.

If you hve no space, then you have no time.

Then something clicked both into gear.

I am quite satisfied with that being a supernatural power to kick things off in our terms.

But there are some interesting things about the Universe that even a super being could not have created. We are in a sea of randomness.