The Beginning of the Universe (as Douglas Adams might tell it)

As a huge fan of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, I’ve often toyed with the thought of how Douglas Adams would explain the Inflationary Big Bang model.  So here’s my best guess… Happy Towel Day!!!

 

In the beginning…

Well, the beginning of what we call time, which is this funny little dimension that seems to prefer running in one direction when all the other dimensions don’t rightly seem to care.  In this beginning there was nothing.  Not nothing in the sense of the absence of anything but in the absence of everything that we have grown to love.  Also politicians.  This nothing was fidgety and would muck about mindlessly and was happy to do so.   One day, or more accurately, one trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second, a theoretical concept which has been wrongly described as a ball rolled down another theoretical concept which has been even more wrongly described as a hill until it stopped for reasons that could properly be described as mysterious.

This rolling inflated the nothingness from not quite much smaller than a soccer ball to not quite significantly larger than a very large size, forcing the nothingness to become somethingness, and really ruining its fraction of a second.

This newly founded somethingness begat more somethingness — stars, galaxies, humans, taxes, deep-fried corn dogs, and the mosquito.  And as Arthur Dent realized this, he decided it would have been better if he had not gotten out of bed today.