Our Universe: Expanding, Evolving, and Massive in Scale


model-of-the-universeSo….what is the Universe?  The Universe is, well, everything!  It is everything that we know exists and everything else – things we don’t even know, let alone understand.  The Universe contains all the physical things that we can see and touch like matter as well as all the space in between.  It contains all the laws that govern how the things we know behave –  like gravity and time. It encompasses dimensions like height, width and length. It is everything!

The Universe is old and BIG.  Scientists speculate that the age of our Universe is between 13 and 20 billion years and that it is about 93 billion light years in diameter (we’ll talk about light years some other time).  By comparison, our galaxy – The Milky Way Galaxy is only about 30,000 light years in diameter.  There are billions of galaxies in The Universe. Our solar system is roughly about 1 light year in diameter if you include the Oort Cloud. It is commonly believed that there are billions of planetary systems like our solar system in each galaxy. So…if you do the math – billions of planetary systems in billions of galaxies in The Universe, you start to get a sense of the enormity of it all.

Here’s the thing – the current thinking (including the Big Bang Theory) is that The Universe started as an incredibly small (subatomic), infinitely dense ball or singularity that exploded into the space we live in today. I would venture to guess that there are other universes as well. We just haven’t figured out how to detect them – they may be beyond the walls of our universe or they may exist in parallel to ours. What caused all of this to start? What happens when our universe stops?

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11 Responses to “Our Universe: Expanding, Evolving, and Massive in Scale”

  • Bill B says:

    It is mind boggling to try to calculate and understand the immensity of the universe, or our galaxy for that matter, into numbers or dimensions that we learned in school or use in every day life. Our existence in this expanse is extremely minute and insignificant. But what is even more mind boggling, is that a majority of people think a white bearded man with a staff, sitting on a faraway cloud created all of it!

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  • Unknown says:

    Will you make the Meteoroids more clear and just about that! Not The difference… Thank you 🙂

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  • ERF says:

    Bill, I don’t think anyone thinks ‘a white bearded man with a staff on a cloud’ created the world, except maybe the animators working on ‘The Simpsons’, and even they are being ironic. If the universe is immense, how much more immense the creator God who shaped it?

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  • Bill B says:

    That phrase was only used as a metaphor and not meant to be taken literally……hello!! Although, the bible says god created us in his own image, so maybe I wasn’t too far off (if you really want to be literal). And all of this was created in seven days? Sorry, but I’ll stick to science and evolution.

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    Anonymous replied:

    Dear Bill,

    The world was created in SEVEN days, look it up in the Jewish Bible and you will see that it WAS created by God in the SEVEN days!

    The ‘scientific’-‘The big bang theory’- way how the world created is for those that don’t believe in God, even when it is clear that God created the world!

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  • Iris says:

    How do you get into different universes?

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  • john says:

    the galaxy is 100,000 light years in diameter and the big bang didn`t explode into the universe it exploded out into the (BULK) space and all.

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  • Aktmjcor says:

    Its simple. Dont put God in a box and on a shelf. We dont know for sure not one bit how this all began. Immense in the universe and beyond that who knows. So God is God of all or God of none. Creation expanding to the first and to the last Atom. Every molecule. Any vegetation of any form anywhere. Every being no matter what state they are in from the simplex microscopic living creatures to the far advanced civilizations to our own. God of all or God of none. I still believe that somehow someway an all amazing life force we call God has started life wherever it may be because I cant understand how life can be at all. God is the living force that brings this to be. Seven days?! Well no. It has never stopped. From moment one till now the creative force continues as the Universe continues to expand.

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  • theron says:

    How dose outer space go on forever but yet can never have a end

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  • Ashley says:

    Just like there is a never ending free fall. It doing the opposite never ending expansion!!! So there is no real purpose here on earth. Just existing.

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  • Terry says:

    Not all galaxies contain life. Only galaxies that contain enough gas and dust for solar systems to form and life to evolve on rocky planets that are not too hot or too cold for life to evolve. Only spiral and barred-spiral galaxies that have enough dust and gas for planets and life to evolve.

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