I didn’t do it! It was like this when I got here.
Likely story. That’s what you WOULD say, isn’t it.
Very interesting points from everyone although I don’t have much to say yet. This topic has wandered through my brain for years and I scratch my head. We could very well be the atoms or molecules of another being, a virus, a ? I have since found religion, I find comfort in it, although I know that seems like an easy “cop-out.” Hopefully everyone keeps going with this. I like to think about it, I just have trouble describing what goes on in my head.
[del]About 12-15 billion years ago, time and space began. [/del]
Sorry, that’s a bit misleading, as it implies that between oh I dunno 290 octagintillion years ago and 15 billion years ago there was an empty void AND THEN the universe began. It’s an artifact of how we use language, and it’s not easy to get around, but let me try again.
Time as we know it, as well as space and everything in it, dates back just 12-15 billion years; nothing came before that and therefore it has no prior cause. It cannot be said to have come into existence “for a reason”. If other timeframes exist outside of this one, all we can say about them is that their existence is an unresolvable hypothetical situation; they cannot contain the reason for this one’s existence and cannot affect or be affected by the one that we are contained within.
Anyway, the temporal origin point of approx 15 billion years ago corresponds spatially with the universe as singularity; as one slides along the scale of time from that point towards the future, the spatial cordinates expand, very rapidly at first, then more slowly. As it did so, energy coalesced into the manifestation called matter, mostly in the form of hydrogen which took the form of stars, which in turn gave rise to the structures known as galaxies and galactic groups.
The period of very rapid expansion and the equations that indicate a spatial singularity at the point of temporal origin gave rise to the phrase “Big Bang” but that may be something of a misconstrual (and if not it at least tends to generate mental images which are misconstruals). The so-called Big Bang is not a separate event that caused the universe; aside from the artificial imposition of some dividing line, the universe as it is now is not a separate thing or a separate event, and our understandings of things that explode with a bang are probably not applicable to understanding the shape of spacetime as tapering to a point when looking backwards to ~ 15 billion years ago.
All was dark, and then there were trilobites.
What? Really?? You mean, when the universe was just a few percent younger than it is now? Since the appearance of life on Earth?
uuuuuuuummmmmmm, There was a big bang. The planets and stuff came out. Now the universe is always expanding, for a reason I don’t understand. Eventually it will just expand to the point it pulls itself apart.
Wow, my knowledge is pretty pathetic.
Fool of a Took!
Stew came before trilobites. Everybody knows that. Trilobite stew, odd though it may see, came before the trilobites of which it is made.
I prefer to believe that the universe will expand until it can’t expand anymore, then it will contract on itself and there will be a big crunch.
I wasn’t there but I heard it was hot.
I tried, but my brain is too squishy to hold the keys down properly (and it made an awful mess of the keyboard).
At some point, there was a singularity. At that point, time, space, gravity, Mom, and apple pie really had no meaning. They didn’t exactly exist, at least not as we understand them. The singularity ended, in so much as something that has no time can end (honestly, at this point in the proceedings, language is a real bitch). The singularity ended 15-ish years ago. On preview, I should have said that before.
Everything was very hot, and things happened very, very quickly–less than a second, really; much less. A metric fuck-ton of energy was released. The laws of physics became established. Over time, what were tiny-ass bits of matter became subatomic particles became atoms. I’m not sure what the scale is on this–it’s either shorter than I thought, or much longer.
Things cooled down over time. Shit started clumping together because of different subatomic forces (is that what it’s called? Isn’t it the weak force that holds crap together? I’m not sure). You end up with things like molecules and dust and stars and stuff. Progressprogressprogress. . .and you have today. Everything’s going outward, still, because of the said fuck-ton of energy.
I’m not sure where I am in the sci-fi schedule threat thing this week, so I can’t tell you whether it giant ants or miniature orcas that will be attacking you.
The universe started with a Big Bang about 17 million years ago, meaning it probably started as a point. Nobody seems to know why and it’s not even clear if it makes sense to ask if the big bang had a cause, since for all we know time itself started at the big bang. Anyway, for the first couple of minutes (or so) the universe expanded from a single point to something very large. Then it cooled down slowly and after a dozen thousand years or so it got cool enough for stable particles to form, and then atoms; mostly hydrogen and some helium. A looong time later, some of the hydrogen and helium collapsed under gravity to form the first stars, which converted hydrogen and helium into other heavier elements like oxygen and iron and then they ran out of “fuel”. And sometimes explode, creating even heavier elements and blasting them all over space. Now that there is a lots of heavy stuff floating around, planets can form too. A couple of “generations” of stars later, there we are.
During all this time, space is still expanding, and it will keep expanding faster and faster forever. Probably. And there’s all kinds of other interesting stuff in it that we know of, and also interesting stuff that we can detect but we don’t know what it is.
I probably messed up all the time scales that I mentioned.
But only by a handful of orders of magnitude 
Ok, here’s mine without having read any of the previous posts:
Just recently the LHC collided some protons together at 7 TeV. This brought us to energies within a billionth of a second after the Big Bang. After they collected the data at CERN, they were shocked to discover not only the trails of mere quarks and anti-matter, but of the quasi-existence of small, tiny creatures called the Flen. The Flen are the mediators between what does exist and what shouldn’t exist. If you give the Flen enough energy, by some arbitrary rule they force upon themselves, they’ll create whatever you ask of them. Needless to say, it was the Flen who brought about the universe to begin with. As to why, they still haven’t said, but we’re guessing one of the Flen had a seizure. Anyway, the team at CERN has now turned their focus to ramping up enough energy so the Flen will create us a magic rainbow unicorn, which in turn will bring about world peace. And cookies. Unicorns make awesome cookies.
There are two schools of thought about the number of theories about the ultimate fate of the universe. Some think that the number of theories will increase forever, and others think that the number of theories will increase for a while, but then turn around and start to decrease, until there is finally only one theory.
Is.
So God was all by himself and feeling kind of lonely. He gave himself 6 days to create everything. Pretty good. I would have procrastinated. Finished or not he rested on the 7th day. Anything undone is left up to us to screw up…er… finish.
The end. Amen.
It happened a long time ago; at the beginning of time, all matter was compressed rather tightly into a small area, and then it began expanding outwards. Eventually, planets formed and all the rest of it. That’s all I’ve got…