We have been able to directly observe the origins of this universe back to the Cosmic Microwave background, which came 380,000 years after it all began. We have been able to explore back to ALMOST the very beginning by physic models and math.

It all goes back to a singularity, of zero dimensions but incredible energy and heat. That energy and heat later converted to matter. The expansion was faster than the speed of light (which does not violate the laws of physics). Which explains why the universe is 13.8 billion years old, but spans 93 billion light years.

@Fievel: RE: "The Creation Of The Universe"

1. You do not get to assert the universe was created without evidence. We have no evidence at all that the universe was "CREATED."

2. re: "The universe began with nearly nothing," You have absolutely no evidence for this claim either. A singularity is not "absolutely nothing. It is not "nearly nothing." Another claim you would have to demonstrate.

SINGULARITY: In scientific terms, a gravitational singularity (or space-time singularity) is a location where the quantities that are used to measure the gravitational field become infinite in a way that does not depend on the coordinate system. In other words, it is a point in which all physical laws are indistinguishable from one another, where space and time are no longer interrelated realities, but merge indistinguishably and cease to have any independent meaning. https://www.universetoday.com/84147/singularity/

3. RE: Any idea - NO. The Big Bang is the current accepted model and various ideas are being explored for the expansion. https://www.space.com/31192-what-triggered-the-big-bang.html

See my post #108 in thread "An atheist's perspective on how the Universe came from nothing", where I suggest a simple argument that gives us infinite duration into the past, infinite duration into the future, and still shows how the Big Bang occured without resorting to God and without modifying any physical laws.

Another point made by Carl Sagan: If God created the Universe, then where did God come from? If this is an unanswerable question, then why not skip a step and assume that the origin of the Universe is an unanswerable question. If we say that God has always existed, then let's skip a step and say that the Universe has always existed.

There is no need to resort to God, unless it makes us feel better . . . in which case, we should acknowledge this so that we don't deceive ourselves (this is per me).

I've already covered this topic elsewhere, courtesy of this post, where I covered in detail a mechanism for the instantiation of the current observable universe, as proposed by two leading cosmological physicists, Paul Steinhardt & Neil Turok.

They propose to bring into play a process known as "braneworld collisions". A little explanation is necessary.

You're probably familiar with the words "string theory". The underlying postulate underpinning this, is that particles such as electron, quarks, etc., instead of being point like entities, possess an extension into space. This extension takes the form of a curved line segment (hence "string").

Now the entities in string theory are one-dimensional. What about extending this concept to two-dimensional entities, and proposing the existence of sheets of metric space, associated with particle like properties? Or three-dimensional volumes thereof? Or, for that matter, entities composed of as many dimensions are are needed to support various interactions?

Welcome to branes. Which are, in effect, units of space-time with various particle type properties associated therewith, such as mass, electrical charge, spin, etc.They also have an energy value associated with them. Needless to say, these values of mass, charge, energy etc., are expected to be quantised (i.e., only take specific discrete values, instead of lying on a continuum).

One of the developments that took place within braneworld theory, was the realisation that it was possible for some of these objects to possess negative mass. Sounds strange, I know, but allowing these objects to possess negative mass is not only consistent mathematically, but also does NOT introduce any physical unreality into the system, otherwise, the notion would have been jettisoned some time ago.

Steinhardt & Turok realised that this could provide a nice means of solving some pressing cosmological problems, but came to this realisation via a somewhat tortuous route. That tortuous route came about, by trying to solve an entirely different problem, namely, that string theory enjoyed an embarrassment of riches, in the form of having produced no less than five mathematically consistent solutions to various particle physics and cosmology problems, but with no way of distinguishing between them from an experimental standpoint, in order to determine which was the solution applicable to the real world.

That particular problem was solved, by adding an extra dimension to the space-time metric. The string theory solutions I've just cited above, operate in 10 dimensions. However, Steinhardt & Turok were among the physicists who demonstrated, that by adding an extra dimension to the space-time metric (as is done in supergravity theory, which works in 11 dimensions), those five 10-dimensional string theory solutions are seen as 10-dimensional projections of a single, consistent, 11-dimensional whole.

Having solved that problem, Steinhardt & Turok looked at what might happen if one had two 11-dimensional branes, and allowed them to collide. That's when life started to become really interesting.

Before proceeding, If you're wondering why we don't experience those extra space dimensions that are a part of all this, there's a reason. Those other space dimensions are compactified, into a structure known as a Calabi-Yau manifold. The use of this compactification is important, because manifolds are well-defined mathematical entities, allowing mathematicians to link geometry to topology and calculus. Manifolds also allow for selected space dimensions to be "curled up", as it were, into microscopic closed regions, while the remaining space dimensions are open, and visible on the macroscopic scale. In a sense, this view of space-time posits that you and I are, in effect, swimming in a sea of ultramicroscopic Calabi-Yau manifold "bubbles" that make up the space-time we observe, with just three of the spacetime dimensions thereof open and macroscopically visible.

If you've managed to wrap your head around that, it's time for the fireworks.

Steinhardt & Turok devised a scheme where closed 10-dimensional Calabi-Yau manifolds are moving among each other in an open 11-dimensional space. They then asked what would happen if two of these collided.

The answer was startling.

A collision between two of these 10-dimensional manifolds would produce exactly the effects required to generate the observable universe as we see it, via a "Big Bang" type scenario. That collision would result in three of the 11 space dimensions opening up at the point of collision, into which energy would be transferred, allowing the observable 3-dimensional universe to be instantiated. Even more remarkably, the mechanism arising from that collision would eliminate a big problem from standard big Bang cosmology altogether - the so-called "singularity problem". The two physicists alighted upon a mechanism for the instantiation of the observable universe, that does NOT involve a singularity. Therefore, there are no intractables to deal with, of the sort that plagued any attempt to wind the clock back before the Big Bang previously.

But it gets even better still. The mechanism they proposed, also left behind it a physical "signature" of its occurrence in the observable universe just instantiated, a signature that physicists could look for. Thus, Steinhardt & Turok's idea was experimentally testable, to see if it worked.

That experimental test centres upon gravitational waves, which are generated whenever any high-energy events take place in a space-time metric. These gravitational waves can have variable wavelengths, depending upon the nature of the event that produced them. By measuring gravitational waves, including precise measurements of their wavelengths, one can produce what is called a "power spectrum" of those waves - in effect, a simple graph of frequency of occurrence against wavelength.

Steinhardt & Turok's braneworld collision generates these primordial gravitational waves, and in quantity. But, the fun part is, the power spectrum takes a specific, exact form. The graph is skewed toward short wavelengths - short wavelength primordial gravitational waves are produced in greater quantity than long wavelength gravitational waves, and by a specific amount.

This is why scientists have been gearing up to build working gravitational wave detectors - precisely to look for that signature, the moment they know how to separate primordial gravitational waves from gravitational waves of more recent origin. Once they have that capability, they are going to look for that specific power spectrum, and if they find it, Steinhardt & Turok pick up a Nobel.

Now of course, there are other cosmological proposals in the literature, but this one has the beauty of being subject to a relatively simple experimental test that we can perform here on Earth, and determine whether or not the braneworld collision scenario is correct. Because at the moment, none of the other contending cosmologies generates a signature of this sort, and therefore, this test will discriminate between the braneworld collision scenario, and the rest. Find that power spectrum, and the braneworld collision mechanism becomes the one all the physicists will be interested in, because that piece of data will pretty much eliminate all of the competing hypotheses at a stroke. None of the competitors would be able to explain that piece of data.

In short, we live in interesting times. We are on the verge of acquiring, quite literally, the keys to the cosmos. And we didn't need mythology at any point in the exercise, just a willingness to investigate exotic examples of testable natural processes.

And if your head is spinning after reading this, Feivel, don't worry, it pretty much made a lot of tenured cosmological physicists' heads spin when it was first published. Just take your time, and re-read this, until everything sinks in.