Every once in a while, I stay up a bit later than usual, and just wonder about what's beyond us, over the stars and far away. Although I have a pretty clear notion of the size of the Universe and its age, and I know that it looks somewhat like a bubble, I still find it hard to integrate its vastness into my head. And, to make things worse, no one seems to be able to tell us for sure how the whole thing was formed. Admittedly, some say that it was made by God, while others say that physics played a major part. Don't worry, I won't turn this editorial into a debate between creationism and evolution.

Definitely, the most mind-boggling thing about our Universe is that it could, potentially, fit into a single grain of sand. That is to say, for world is beyond it. This idea was exploited in the Men in Black movie, which featured the catchphrase “the galaxy is on Orion's belt,” where Orion was just a small kitten, which carried a little glass sphere on its collar. The sphere contained a full-grown galaxy, millions of light-years across.

But the relativity of scale is one of the fundamental truths of the whole design. In astronomical terms, objects that are near to each other may take thousands of years to travel between, even on ships going as fast as 10 kilometers per second. Our nearest neighboring solar system is 75,000 years of travel away, yet, on the grand scheme of things, it's very, very near.

And, come to think of it, that there are so many billions of stars everywhere. Just imagine that many of the lights we see in the sky at night aren't stars, but entire galaxies, shining bright because of their massive size. Moreover, each of them features millions and millions of stars, each with its own solar system. And they all revolve around the all-present black hole, either super-massive or small, which makes all galaxies spin.

However, even galaxy clusters and impressive black hole fade away at the sight of the majesty of the Universe. According to one theory, the whole thing started about 13.7 billion years ago, with the Big Bang, and it began to expand, thus giving birth to everything around us, and more. When I say more, I'm talking about dark matter and dark energy, the mystery concepts that denote forces that shouldn't theoretically be there, but are nonetheless.

The matrix

Some say that, trillions of years from now, when the ever-accelerating speed with which the universal bubble is expanding will decrease, the entire ensemble will fade away gradually. Stars will die, supernovas will stop their explosions, radiation will lose its strength, and even supermassive black holes will exert diminishing influence over the celestial bodies around them, until they eventually disappear as well.

This dark, smooth, empty and flat period of the Universe is in some theories referred to as the Big Crunch, the period before the Big Bang. Indeed, some astronomers believe that the birth and death of the whole firmament is a matter of routine. And cosmic routine at that, seeing how the time a cycle needs in order to be completed measures in trillions of years.

After the bubble falls in on itself, it will start expanding again, and will begin generating afterglows, then stars, planets, asteroids, black holes, and everything in between. The best part about this theory is that it doesn't advocate the existence of alien life forms on other planets, but, rather, on our own. Imagine, if you will, what would happen if the Big Bang happened again. Galaxy positions would be different, stars dispositions awkward, but, somewhere in the deepest recesses of space, a planet will just happen to enter a star's survivability ring and create water, which is the basic need for life as we know it.

I don't think it's so far-fetched to believe this, for the simplest of reasons – it happened once. Of course, it may take thousands of universal life cycles before it happens again, but by then not only will we be dead, but our very world, everything around us would have disappeared for trillions of years. This really makes me wonder. Imagine for a minute that everything you know and love will disappear gradually, until nothing is left. After that, everything contracts. All the galaxies that are now running away from the center of our Universe will collapse into each other, as will all black holes.

Everything will contract in a space the size of a tennis ball, or even smaller. Then, the whole cycle will start all over again. I don't know if you have ever wondered about this, but the forces that are currently driving our Universe, be they dark energy, gravity or something else, will be crushed by a much higher one. And astronomers still haven't figured out what the matrix looks like.

I don't have a scientific term for the matrix, but I see it as the scaffolding in which the universal bubble is formed. It has to contain something. I mean, we've been thought to doubt that there's ever any space truly empty. Even the deepest portions of space are filled with at least radiation or light. What is on the outside of our bubble?

Outside, over and around 

Outside the confines of our approximately 26 billion light years-wide bubble there could be others. If the elementary particles that clashed to give birth to our Universe managed to collide here (and I use “here” in its broadest sense), couldn't they have collided elsewhere too? It would then stand to reason that multiple bubbles can exist at the same time, drifting away in the vastness of the matrix. But that still doesn't answer the first question – what are the limitations of this matrix?

In an attempt to explain various scientific inconsistencies in modern theories, astrophysicists and conspiracy theorists have invented the notion of “alternative universes”, which exist in plains parallel to our own, and at times intersect. Basically, theses “parallels” to our reality could each employ a different course of history. Think of all the times you wondered “What if I did that instead of the other thing?” In theory, your answer lies in another Universe, where each individual takes another course of action.

In some of them, intelligent life doesn't exist on Earth. In others, we are a super-advanced race, while some feature a world devastated by an atomic war. All possibilities and consequences of actions we have not taken are featured, according to theories, in the other Universes. Some say that the feeling of deja-vu occurs when parallel plains intersect, and two different courses of history happen at once.

Could you please tell me the time?

I don't know if you noticed this, but time flies. I often ask myself “Where did the time go?” This type of feeling might be generated by the fact that our planet's rotation decreases in speed. But what about space? We now know that time and space get altered around black holes and stars. The massive gravitational pull they exert is strong enough to affect the fabric of time.

To picture this best, imagine yourself falling into a black hole. Once your feet reach the event horizon, they would be subjected to what astronomers have plastically termed “the spaghetti effect.” Your feet would most likely be drawn in and bent so much that they would circle the event horizon maybe thousands of times before your ankles get sucked in.

Assuming you would have air to breathe, your brain wouldn't know if it's dying in just a split second or in millions of years. This type of temporal relativity is very puzzling for the human mind. We are used to tracking time via the use of watches and even atomic clocks. However, we should always keep in mind that time, as we perceive it, is just a relative term. The Universe was not built to follow a strict time code. To outside observers, the age we give the Universe may be the time it takes for them to take a step.

In the end

I have no strict conclusion to this line of thought. It's simply what I think about when I look at the stars at night. I would have enjoyed becoming an astronomer. I find studying our Universe the highest effort anyone can do for this world, alongside the field of medicine. And some ethicists are correct when they question our ability to visit stars when we don't even know if our planet has one or two cores. The time is not yet here for space exploration.