If Universe is the answer, what is the question ? - Deepak Salwan

 So, If Universe is the answer, what is the question ? How on this earth (pun intended) would I know?!

Let's digress a bit. Year 1924 - George Mallory and Andrew Irving were trying to summit Mt. Everest and reporters were bugging George with questions like "Why Mount Everest?" George, who was, as irritated as he was obsessed with Everest, gave an answer which became a legend of sort. He said, "Because it's there" Now That's a very apt answer and Everest doesn't care if it exists as an answer to somebody's questions. It simply exists because two tectonic plates collided. Yet, some are drawn to it because somebody is trying to find themselves while climbing it, somebody wants to leave a legacy , somebody has spiritual pull towards it and somebody is just an adrenal junkie. 

Let's go a little higher from Everest... ok, a lot higher.. in the universe now. Universe is the answer to only one question - What happened after big bang ? Massive energy released after the bang had just high energy plasma , which lead to protons and neutrons and eventually Hydrogen formed and then billions of years later came cosmic objects as we know them now... the Stars, moons, planets, galaxies, nebulae ...yada yada...Every cosmic object found balance eventually and can be explained by Science. However, only 5% of the universe is observable by mankind and that is... let this sink in... 46 BILLION light years in any direction from earth. That means... the light will take 46! Billion! years! to reach to that observable point from earth. 95% of the universe is out of the reach of human knowledge. Causal Determinance - humans are hardwired to find answers for the events that happen. But with universe, science could go only so far and still looking further ( making progress though). Carl Sagan mentioned - Once to become an astronomer, you become a philosopher. And this point, Universe starts becoming an answer to the Questions we choose and the questions we can't seem to find answers for. So, we look upwards. 

We start to choose our questions ( or questions choose us sometimes) and look for answers in the expansiveness of cosmos, in the unfathomable scale of the size, in the inexplicable and intricate balance that holds these heavenly bodies, the unimaginable sources of energy. Makes a good case for theologies, religious and spiritual beliefs. Because the scale, the power of cosmos is so out of a human understanding, it becomes God for some as those are looking for just acceptance of a supreme power holding it all in balance. For some, universe hold the gone dear ones as stars, for some the planetary motions are governing the lives and for someone like me, I find no answers because it baffles me every time i look up; I am literally in it's awe! 

May not be the best end of this write up but in Sanatan Dharma ( Many know it wrongfully as Hinduism), Universe is explained both in physical and metaphysical terms. As quoted in Bhagavatam - "The conception of the universal form is imaginary. It is to enable the less intelligent to adjust to the idea of the Lord’s having a form. But factually the Lord has no material form" and in Carl Sagan's own words - "The Hindu religion is the only one of the world’s great faiths dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite, number of deaths and rebirths. It is the only religion in which the time scales correspond to those of modern scientific cosmology. Its cycles run from our ordinary day and night to a day and night of Brahma, 8.64 billion years long. Longer than the age of the Earth or the Sun and about half the time since the Big Bang.”

So, what was your Question for which universe is the answer ?