The Wide Wide Universe

Have you ever wondered about how the universe started and where it is going? These are big questions that have puzzled people for thousands of years. These questions are hard to even think about because they involve very large distances and times. Many astronomers are busy studying this question in a special kind of astronomy called COSMOLOGY. And a funny thing is happening: the more the scientists know, the closer science and religion are coming together! This doesn’t surprise Baha’i children since we know you understand what our Faith says about how science and religion agree and are different ways of telling the truth.

Scientists have several different ideas about how the universe began. For a long time, the most popular theory was called “The Big Bang Theory”. The scientists who believe that this idea might be true say that billions of years ago, all the matter in the universe was in one small, closely-packed area. It was heavier than anyone could imagine. All this matter was so tightly packed together that the atoms bumped into each other so much and so fast that the matter was heated to a temperature of trillions of degrees. The mass of matter was so very hot that even the strongest force we know — the force that holds the nucleus of the atom together — was overcome. The nuclei of the atoms were ripped apart by this tremendous heat and motion, and finally this fireball of all the matter in the universe exploded in an event that scientists call “the big bang”. The exploded fireball cast its matter outward. The Big Bang Theory says that galaxies may have formed as the matter cooled, and that the galaxies will continue to fly apart until finally all of the hydrogen—the stuff stars are made of—will be used up and the universe will expand into cold, dark nothingness.