YOU ARE A FREAKING MIRACLE!
Everyone and everything in the universe originates from a single point.
Have you asked yourself these age-old questions: “Where do I come from?” and “Why am I here?”
Being human is so odd.
We are walking miracles.
We know that we have billions of teeny, tiny cells all working together in constant motion. They makeup organs that breathe air, digest food, smell flowers, see rainbows, pump blood, grow other human beings, fight infections, heal wounds, and cover us with a layer of skin that heals itself.
We walk, talk, sing, dance, eat, poop, hug, laugh, read, write, and create.
We cry, laugh, yell, fight, figure things out, build, play, twirl, hug, and make love.
We think, collaborate, invent, tinker, build, type, dig, swim, and Google things we can’t figure out immediately.
Yet, we marvel at robots that can work in an assembly line or a phone that plays music and takes pictures.
We take our amazing, magical selves for granted.
When is the last time you woke up in the morning and thought “Holy Shmoly — I’m a freaking miracle?”
I know, you probably can’t remember ever thinking that.
Well… now is the time.
YOU ARE A FREAKING MIRACLE!
There are many theories as to where we come from; however, it’s universally accepted that a zillion years ago there was nothing. (If you Google it, you’ll find it’s 13.8 billion years… to me that might as well be a zillion).
And around that time, the “Big Bang” happened.
The Big Bang wasn’t an explosion in space as the term implies or what I thought I learned in school.
No, the Big Bang was an appearance of space in the universe.
Let that sink in for a moment, it wasn’t an explosion — it was the appearance of space.
What the #&*?
You see, the universe at that time was a single point in space.
A very hot, dense, single point.
The Big Bang was the point when space was added around the universe, which at that time was a small spec.
Once space was available, our tiny, hot universe went into immediate action — I mean lickity split, badda bing, badda boom — no fooling around.
“Nature abhors a vacuum.”, Aristotle
Aristotle, the ancient philosopher based this conclusion on the observation that nature requires every space to be filled with something, even if that something is colorless, odorless air.
Our universe expanded and created matter; the beginning of the hard stuff that would eventually evolve into what we experience now in this life (like the chair you’re sitting on).
“When the universe was very young, something like a hundredth of a billionth of a trillionth of a second (whew!) — it underwent an incredible growth spurt. During this burst of expansion, which is known as inflation, the universe grew exponentially and doubled in size, at least 90 times.
After inflation, the universe continued to grow, but at a slower rate. As space expanded, the universe cooled and matter formed.”
Denise Chow, “The Universe: Big Bag to Now in 10 Easy Steps ,” Space.com, October 18, 2011.
Light elements were created immediately after the Big Bang, but it was too hot for light to shine, even though the scientific stuff of light was there.
Let me explain…
For a few years (380,000 years to be “exact”) protons and neutrons collided around to make “deuterium, which is an isotope of hydrogen. Much of this deuterium combined to make helium.
The atoms crashed around smashing stuff and having a good old time, much like my two sons when they were young. (Maybe this is why we like to break things when we’re mad — you know, things gotta change, but we don’t know-how, so we punch a wall or smash something.)
And then… there was light!
Now, the first “light” isn’t the light I imagined when my second-grade teacher (a Catholic nun), explained it to me.
No… I imagined a blue sky with a big yellow sun appearing over green grass, pink and red flowers, and a big green tree… and a big giant man, God, was looking down at His creation…
No, the first light was radiation that was “unleashed from the cosmic microwaves.”
The universe became transparent. But it was still dark during the “era of recombination” and stars and other bright objects were formed.
It took another 400 million years for light to appear as we know it!
In approximately 9 billion years our solar system was formed.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I’ve always thought of our solar system like the universe. My tiny mind can’t comprehend how far Sri Lanka is from my suburb of Columbus, Ohio much less the edge of our solar system or the UNIVERSE.
We’ve sent spaceships into the heavens to take pictures, taken mathematical measurements and our scientists speculate over it.
I find researching the creation of the universe fascinating and the Hubble images breathtaking, but my mind quickly twists into a headache as I try to comprehend the facts, figures, and pictures.
I would rather apply this knowledge to my own life as best as I can.
Since I’m not of a scientific mindset, the facts and figures begin to mean nothing to me other than…
“Creation is freaking amazing and I AM a part of it!”
Why would I spend time trying to explain the beginning of the universe in lay terms (very, very lay terms)?
