What Do We Know of our UNIVERSE?

A complete, one sentence description of the universe we live in; would that not be nice? No matter how much we seem to uncover, while we rapidly grasp evidence and add onto our list of infinite questions, we are left with no confirmation of anything really. Theories are the remains of our tiering human input. This is exactly why this one description of the universe we live in will never exist. We cannot describe the universe all in one go, which is why we instead break it up into millions of random, individual theories, all which are never fully confirmed. Our species has most definitely progressed immensely in a scientific and philosophical sense, though this has never led us to any concrete conclusions and rather more questions. Every one of these questions links back to the query of knowledge of the universe, and whether it even exists.

Firstly, when taking a look at knowledge, what really is knowledge and do we have it? Knowledge is not the same as truth, because if it were to be, we would not have any knowledge. Having only certain access to an overall fact, is knowledge. All we have are certain accesses to facts, so we do have knowledge, yet we do not fully know of anything; we have no truth. Knowledge is merely your belief, yet it has to be justified enough for it to be considered knowledge. When learning theories in Biology, for example, we are told what is what, not being provided with the fact that this is only justified belief, and only one of the many theories we are not actually too sure of. So really, due to this, certainty does not exist by any means. We are not certain of anything, and therefore not certain of our knowledge of the universe.

Now, when taking a look at our universe, it is intriguing, yet chilling that our universe is only one of the many. It is peculiar that we seem to live on an unsignificant, floating rock, surrounded by other universes that no one really understands. If we link the idea of knowledge to our universe, we can confirm that there are so many possibilities, yet only so much evidence we are able to gather. To provide an idea of this, we claim to know five percent of our universe, meaning the other 95 percent

still remains a complete mystery, though even the five percent is not entirely certain. There is no simplistic, final conclusion of anything yet, if there could even be such a thing. If you happen to gain ‘proof’ of anything and confirm it several times, like as a weary chemistry student such as I doing a seemingly pointless experiment, you still are not aware of the next time the results won’t line up with the theory, though we are not told this.

So really, certainty does not exist by any means. Should it haunt your mind of the possibility that nothing is as it seems, or should it merely free your mind to acknowledge that everyone is just as clueless? Fully knowing the truths of our universe would most likely not alter the way our society functions, yet yearning to uncover the unknown seems to be humanity’s immense goal. No matter how unsignificant or significant you feel in this universe, the fact that our species is so dedicated to solving these mysteries is purely a miracle, and if anything, we should be glad to question our universe. In short, it is perhaps best to alter your perception and question everything, because you will find that having more knowledge on any matter will not only allow you to reach the nearer truths of our universe, but also to create more justified theories. We were perhaps made to chase knowledge and shape our world to a mold that suits our understanding, but on the contrary, as the saying goes, ignorance too, is often bliss