If matter is indivisible, did the universe start with the same amount we have today?
472392
"Matter can be neither created or destroyed" is an old saw from pre-Einstein physics.  Matter is continually being transformed into energy in every star in the sky in accordance with E = mc^2, so in that sense, there is certainly less matter in the universe now than when I started typing.  However, (I think) the equation is reversible, so the energy can be transformed back into matter, so maybe the answer is there has always been a constant amount of matter/energy in the universe.
356868
how else would the universe have come into creation?  Before time existed, there must have been nothing, and at the first possible moment of time, there must have been some minute form of matter.  Whether or not the universe was created in a big bang, I cannot know, since if the big bang theory is true (as well as the Big Crunch theory), then it is possible that the universe has already cycled many times.\n\nBeyond that though, the Big Bang theory does NOT say that the size of the initial chunk of matter was infinitessimally small, it just says that it was supercompact.  It was probably insanely large, but relatively small for all the matter it withheld.
1044184
Your question assumes the first part is correct.  It is just an assumption. We can define the universe as everything that exists - therefore precluding anything bigger. In other words, the universe is it - all there is. It includes all matter, energy, forms, spirits if you will, everything we can conceive of and everything we cannot conceive of.  Okay?
450787
When talking about the universe, asking "why" something is the way it is usually has no absolute, 100% answer.\nThe best answer to your question is that the universe somehow began over 13.7-billion years ago and immediately began expanding. The expansion has gone on, steadily increasing the size of the cosmos until we observe its vastness today.\n\nGod should be spelled B-I-G B-A-N-G\nPBrax@netscape.com
1091118
no, the human race will never know how the universe was made until we all start working as on race and not a 1,000. than we can put our petty differances a side and work together for a soultion.
105102
There is no way of knowing that. Maybe one day we'll have enough information to figure it out. Maybe God created it, if he/she/it exists. Maybe it has simply always been there. Logically, there must be something which has simply always existed.\n\nIn response to the person who answered after me - Something must have simply always been. No matter what it is, you can ask where it came from. And when you have an answer for that, you must question where THAT (the source of the first thing) came from. I'd say it's pretty illogical for that to continue infinitely, so there must be something that came from nothing. I never said that something had to be the matter. Just that there must be something which has simply always been. Maybe the source of all the matter is something that has always been. Those who believe in God would say that he is the source of that matter, and that he has simply always existed. Maybe it is the source of the source of the source of the source of the source (you get the idea) of the matter that has always existed. Logic suggests that eventually you would have to reach the beginning of all existence, and whatever it is that started everything.
1138756
It resulted from the big bang. Time and space and matter and energy all started then. What existed before and why it occurred is for the philosophers to ponder. I'm content with the fact that we don't know everything right now. We might someday though.
571217
You misunderstand the Big Bang theory. The universe did not start from a big ball of matter. For the first 10-34 seconds we simply don't have the physcis figured out as to what happened. There are many conjectures, though.\n\nThe first difficulty is that General Relativity predicts something called a singularity at the Big Bang. A singularity is something like what you see at the north pole. There is no 'north of the north pole' simply because the coordinate system can't be extended that way. Under General Relativity, there is no 'before the Big Bang' because thw time coordinate cannot be extended past that point. Remember that time itself is part of the structure of the universe, so time began when the universe did (in this view).\n\nAnother view is obtained through quantum mechanics. We know that modern vacuums are never completely empty. They are a blur of particles apperaring and disappearing all the time. The state of having absolutely nothing is actually a very high energy state. When that state decayed into a lower energy state, that provided the energy that subsequently became the matter we see around us. In this scenario, the singularity predicted by relativity is blurred out by the quantum effects, but the net result is that all the matter literally came out of a vacuum. This is possible without violating conservation of energy because the vacuum state 'befroe the Big Bang' had a higher energy than all the matter we see around us.\n\nAnother possibility is a 'bouncing universe' where the universe goes through cycles of collapse and expansion. The collapse before the current cycle provided the energy for the current one. There are modifications to this where 'universes' bud off of the vacuums of other ones.\n\nAll of this is highly speculative. However, we do know that a Big Bang is how things got started about 13.7 billion years ago. We see the afterglow of the hot, dense time at the beginning all around us in the cosmic microwave background radiation (CBE).
317862
Size & volume of the current universe have little bearing on how "big" or "small" the singularity was at the moment this universe came into being, since the structures of the various sub-atomic particles that make up atoms and unltimately the "stuff" you have difficulty in "compacting" were not yet defined sufficiently for your question to have meaning.  Not that it's a bad question.  It's just in the same family as "well i know the Universe is infinite, but what's outside it?"\n\nStephen W.Hawking might be a good place to start.
1096987
The scientific theory is that the Universe started as a fluctuation of the vacuum. Such vacuum fluctuations make appear a small amount of energy, for a small time. This phenomenon is responsible for the existence of forces, that hold the Universe and matter together.\n\nNormally the bigger the energy fluctuation, the smaller the time it is in existence.\n\nNot so the Big Bang. That was a HUGE fluctuation. So big that a lot of energy came to appearance in the form of mass, elementary particles. These particles started expanding, before the vacuum could reclaim the energy.\n\nAnd it is still expanding today. 14 billion years later.
423943
The universe is basically everything.  The visible universe is the part of the universe that is known to us, it is the farthest we can see and, hence, the farthest we can study.  There may be more beyond this but it is kind of silly for us to worry much about it at this point because it is beyond our reach.\n\nVacuum (I'm assuming that's what you were typing), is supposed to be the complete lack of matter.  If you say that there is a vacuum inside a box then there should be no atoms inside the box.  We say that space is a vacuum but this is really a generalization.  Space is not completely empty but things thin-out the further you get away from the Earth, our sun, our galaxy...\n\nI'm not sure how one creates a real vacuum.  No one really knows how our universe came into existence but we have a very good guess that it started with the Big Bang.  There is some evidence to support this.\n\nHere are two websites that describe it better than I could if you are interested.\n\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang\n\nhttp://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/academy/universe/b_bang.html
49948
the same thing thats on this side. new matter is not being formed it is just expanding from the force of the big bang all those millions of years ago. Some scientists say the expansion will eventually stop and the universe will collapse onto itself, and then maybe explode again. All theories so in effect we dont know.
687797
Yes, everything around us is made of protons, neutrons, electrons or photons (light) for the most part. We can't extract the energy (usually) because it is already in the lowest state possible or there is no way to get to a lower state. It is only when we give it a chance to go to a lower energy state (by chemical reactions, etc) that we get energy out.\n\nAs to whether the universe can never end....it certainly can't as long as we stay away from singularities where the law of energy conservation is violated. Unfortunately, General Relativity predicts such singularities.
385434
One of the most fundemental Laws of Physics is that matter and energy can be neither created nor destroyed. The question I pose to science as to the existence of GOD is that if this Law is true, then where did all the matter and energy ORIGINALLY come from?
944397
No.\nNot even space itself, in which "entities" exist, is stationary -- it's continually expanding, carrying along those things that are in it.\nMotion is the rule in the universe, nothing stands still.
514343
LOL I like Mainworry's answer...not!\nCreate anything living without using matter that already exists.\nHe's right, I can't we all can't.... yet!\nBut maybe we will Create matter, out of energy one day.\nThen what will he say.\nBut I know something I can create right now...GOD.\nYes I can create GOD In my own image.
74079
Either answer would be wrong.  The universe came first.