Our Existence Is Advancedly Absurd...

Most Omniscients - those who study everything, including the origin, structure, space-time relations, and evolution of the astronomical Universe - theorize that the Universe had a finite beginning between 10 and 18 Ga (Ga = 1 billion years [b.y.]) ago; the current best estimate lies between 13 and 15 Ga.

The physical conditions that guaranteed the present Universe burst into existence almost instantaneously. During the first minute of the Universe's history, many of the fundamental principles of both Quantum Physics (or, as applied to this situation, Quantum Cosmology) and Relativity - the two greatest scientific discoveries of the 20th Century - played key roles in setting up the special conditions of this Universe that have been uncovered and defined in this century.

Quantum processes governed the buildup and modifications of the particles and subparticles that arose in the earliest stages whereas Relativity influenced the space-time growth of the Cosmos from the very start.

In the most widely accepted current model of the Universe, there is no starting place or time since space, as now defined and constrained by the outer limits of the observable Universe and by Einsteinian distances within these limits, and sequential events, represented in a temporal continuum, did not yet exist.

The initiating event began at a point-like singularity, a quantum state of still-being-defined nature that marks the inception of space/time (thus, without a preceding "where/when"; philosophically "uncaused"), from which all that was to become the Universe can be conceptualized to have been concentrated.

What may have "existed" prior to the Universe was a quantum state (analogous to the condition of "potency" in ancient Greek philosophy) which influenced a true vacuum (no matter whatsoever) that somehow possessed a high level of energy (of unknown nature but not, however, as photon radiation).

Countless quantum fluctuations in this vacuum energy density produced sets of virtual particles and anti-particles (e.g., positrons, the positive equivalent of an electron; neutrons and anti-neutrons, etc]) that came into existence for very brief moments and then annihilated. But, rarely, annihilation did not occur, so that a particle could grow and trigger a 'phase transition' that led to the singularity from whence all that entails the Universe - matter, energy, space, and time - came into being.

In this quantum model, it is conceivable that many such singularities could form from time to time, leading to mulitple universes that, as far as we know theoretically, cannot have any direct contact (prohibited by relativistic limits, in which information travelling at the speed of light cannot reach us from beyond the horizon - outer edge - of our own observable universe).

Although the singularity responsible for our Universe does not have a set of dimensions in the conventional sense (it is described as a point [dimensionless] condition in which a region of space has infinite curvature and incredible density where the normal laws of physics [including relativity] break down [do not apply]), whatever was "there" at the outset was pure energy of some kind.

The famed Einstein equation E = mc2 guaranteed the potential of this energy (as photons) to be converted to some degree into matter (some of the energy remains) which began to be accomplished in the first second of the Universe's coming into existence. This energy-matter equivalent was compressed into a state of extremely high density (density = mass or amount of matter per specific [unit] volume ) estimated to be about 1090 kg/cc (kilograms per cubic centimeter) and extraordinary temperatures, perhaps in excess of 1032 K (K = Kelvin = 273 + °C [C = degrees Centigrade]), both without any counterpart in the presently observed Universe.

Over the first half of the 20th Century, most models for the Universe's behavior considered expansion of some sort as an outcome. Einstein, in particular, showed that any three-dimensional expansion must also consider the effects of the fourth dimension - time - to account for the behaviour of light traveling great distances in a vast "volume" (without known boundaries) making up what we conceive of as "space". He also deduced that space must be curved (and light and other radiation will therefore follow curved paths as the shortest distance between widely separated points) and would, in his view, expand dynamically in a 4-dimensional spherical geometry (a space-time dimensionality). Einstein, at least in his early thinking, also considered the Universe to be finite and eternal...