Think of nothing.
What
do you see?
You
might imagine a vacuum, a region of the universe drained
of all matter and radiation, but go further and try to
think of a true nothing, an absolute nothing.
This
nothing is not just empty but devoid of space and time
themselves.
Given our everyday experiences this is hard to imagine.
But we have often struggled with the concept of nothing.
The biblical story of creation tells us that in the
beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
But
what existed before god's creation, in a moment before
time, in a place before space?
The
Bible simply does not say...
And indeed our scientific theories and observations also
tell us that our universe has not existed for eternity.
They
tell us that 14 billion years ago it had a beginning, a
fiery birth in a maelstrom of particles and energy and
it has been expanding and cooling ever since.
So what came before?
Cosmologists offer tantalizing possibilities.
Maybe our
universe was begotten from a previous existence, part of
an endless cycle, or formed in the violent collision
between two other universes.
But
perhaps the most unsettling answer of all is that our
universe was born from nothing.
And if that is the case,
how does one get something from nothing?
We are going to go on a journey across time and space,
from the universe's first moments to its far-flung
future.
We
are going to unpack the meaning of quantum mechanics,
explore its impact on the cosmos around us, leading us
to the biggest question of all:
Just where did the universe come from...?
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