The Expanding Universe, The Ongoing Experiment

The universe is old — about 13.8 billion years, give or take a few hundred million.

It began with something smaller than an atom, and louder than anything that has

ever existed. We call it the Big Bang, but nobody actually heard it.

Sound doesn’t travel in a vacuum. It was less of a bang, and more of a sudden

decision to exist. Since then, the universe has been expanding — not into space,

but creating space as it expands. Galaxies drift apart like islands on an ocean that’s

still being poured. Every second, everything gets slightly farther from everything

else, including us. Our solar system sits quietly in one spiral arm of