A singularity is where conventional physics breaks down, including if you’re talking about the very beginning of the Universe. However, there are consequences to achieving arbitrarily hot, dense states in the Universe, and many of them fail to hold up to observations. (© 2007–2016, MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR GRAVITATIONAL PHYSICS, POTSDAM)

Don’t Believe These 5 Myths About The Big Bang

For over 50 years, it’s been the scientifically accepted theory describing the origin of the Universe. It’s time we all learned its truths.

The Universe we know today, filled with stars and galaxies across the great cosmic abyss, hasn’t been around forever. Despite the fact that there are approximately 2 trillion galaxies visible to us spanning distances of tens of billions of light-years, there’s a limit to how far away we can look. That isn’t because the Universe is finite — in fact, it may well be infinite after all — but because it had a beginning that occurred a finite amount of time ago: the Big Bang.

The fact that we can look at our Universe today, see it expanding and cooling, and infer our cosmic origins is one of the most profound scientific achievements of the 20th century. The Universe began from a hot, dense, matter-and-radiation filled state some 13.8 billion years ago, and has been expanding, cooling, and gravitating ever since. But the Big Bang itself doesn’t work the way most people think. Here are the top 5 myths that people believe about the Big Bang.