The Cosmos: Its Origin, History, and Future, Self Explained

Our Universe: Beginnings and Early History
The story of the cosmos, like every other story, has a beginning, a middle, and an end. We may quibble over a detail here or there. But since none of us were here at the beginning, and none of us are likely to be here at the end, we must take our best guesses.

Our Universe Today and Tomorrow

While none of us expects to see more than a small part of the cosmos with our own eyes, we like to view panoramic visions which help us to place our lives and our knowledge in context.

Cosmic DestiniesAll things come to an end eventually -- if only to be transformed into something else.

It is easy to see our own stories, from our individual births through our lives, finally ending in our deaths, in this cosmic panorama. The analogy is not perfect, and many of us tend to resist the sense of a final end -- and perhaps of a distinct beginning. That is natural.

It is also natural for cosmologists to borrow from their own sense of biological life cycles when they create their theories of cosmic life cycles. What you see above is a graphical theory, the best that cosmologists can do as a group, at this time. Tune back in in 100 billion years for an update.