Cosmogenesis

Abstract

This chapter offers a review of the basic elements of cosmology, or what we know about the origin and evolution of the universe and howwe knowit. An early Static Theory about the universe, first propounded by Sir James Jeans and latter championed by Fred Hoyle, which described the universe as eternal and unchanging on the macro level, is contrasted to the Big Bang Theory, which described space and time as having a beginning approximately 13.7 billion years ago. The emergence of the Big Bang Theory as the consensus view of physicists and cosmologists is reviewed, and some more recent questions and theories in the field of cosmology are raised.Among these is the concept of an eternally cycling universe, in which each phase or cycle begins with a Big Bang and ends in a Big Crunch that is driven by the gravitational slowing of the expansion of space and its eventual collapse into a singularity that gives rise to another cycle in a Big Bang and collapse ad infinitum. Alternatively, the concept that our vast universe may be only one of infinitely many that collectively comprise the postulated eternal multiverse is presented. If the eternal multiverse is proven to exist, its eternal nature poses certain ontological questions such as whether it can be the sufficient cause of itself orwhether a higher-dimensional transcendental cause is the source of all being.