“It surprises me how disinterested we are today about things like physics, space, the universe and philosophy of our existence, our purpose, our final destination. It’s a crazy world out there. Be curious.” -Stephen Hawking
The story of where everything came from in the Universe -- of how we came from empty, expanding space to our rich and complex Universe-of-today -- is without a doubt the most remarkable story ever told: the story the Universe has to tell us about itself!
Image credit: Kfir Simon / Demetrius Gore, via http://www.pbase.com/tango33/image/140317019/original..
Although there are many different ways to tell that story, and many different aspects to focus on, one fact is undeniable: after all this time and everything that's happened, you and I came to exist.
Image credit: Avi M. Mandell, NASA.
Here is the briefest version of that story ever told: the story of the Universe, from nothing to you, in ten (not even run-on) sentences!
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Of course, some problems this article assumes are:
1. That the universe was spatially homogeneous and isotropic throughout its past, which is how a patch of de Sitter space to undergo inflation exists to begin with. This assumption although common, is not completely justified given that the early universe may have had strong anisotropies, see A.K. Raychaudhuri and B. Modak. Cosmological inflation with arbitrary initial condi-
tions. Class. Quant. Grav., 5, 1988. and T. Rothman and G.F.R. Ellis. Can inflation occur in anisotropic cosmologies? Phys. Lett. B, 180, 1986.
2. The last point about life emerging is more elegantly described via top-down causation which for some reason is not mentioned by the author, see: http://rsfs.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/2/1/126.full
Is six footnotes one insectnote?