For A Time, We Were The Centre Of The Universe

We often hear that our universe began with the Big Bang, but what happened before that? Was there anything before the Big Bang? Will there be anything 100 million years from now? Is our universe cyclical? Science doesn’t know for sure, but most of human history has attempted to ask these questions. We are continuously curious about the vastness of space, and creation myths and cosmological models are as much a comfort as they are about furthering the study of science.

Rémy Penet on Unsplash

1. Geocentric Model

This popular model was developed by ancient Greek philosophers, but was really popularized by Ptolemy. Its main premise is that the Earth is at the center of the universe, with our stars, sun, and moon revolving around our green planet.

Igor Omilaev on Unsplash

2. Cosmic Egg

This astronomical concept is based on ancient Egyptian mythology and Hindu beliefs. The idea is that the universe emerges from a giant egg either by hatching or being broken open. The egg’s shell then becomes the heavens, while the yolk is Earth.

Jade Scarlato on Unsplash

3. The Multiverse

We’ve been struggling with the idea of multiple universes since the 6th century BCE, thanks to ancient philosophers Anaximander, Leucippus, and Democritus. These three men proposed the idea of an infinite void of atoms colliding to form an unimaginable number of parallel worlds.

MW on Unsplash

4. Panspermia

This ancient Greek hypothesis believes that life exists throughout the universe, traveling across time and space through space dust, meteoroids, asteroids, comets, and planetoids. Believers of this theory often think that life didn’t actually begin on Earth, but evolved somewhere else before finding a home on our planet.

Neil Yonamine on Pexels

5. Flat Earth

The Ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians believed that the Earth was a flat disk floating in an ocean. To account for the sun’s elliptical cycle. 5th-century BCE philosophers believed that the flat earth was depressed in the middle, like a teacup saucer.

Anônimos perfil on Wikimedia

6. Battle Of Good And Evil

In Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism, followers believed that the universe is the manifestation of a 12,000-year struggle between light and darkness, or good and evil. The universe will constantly remain in a state of conflict until these two forces are separated for good.

KoolShooters on Pexels

7. Space Fire

Philolaus believed that our galaxy actually revolved around a central, unseen fire. All of our planets, including the sun, orbited this fire in a uniform circular motion, and we could never see the fire due to how the Earth orbited. While a fire cannot naturally happen in space, this was the first non-geocentric model and was considered a radical idea at the time.

CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash

8. Circles And Spheres

Furthering the geocentric model, popular figures like Plato and Aristotle believed that the universe was made up of several perfect spheres that contained all the stars and planets. Many ancient philosophers believed circles and spheres were the most perfect geometric shapes, so it made sense to them that our universe reflected this theory.

Nong on Unsplash

9. Five Regions

This ancient Greek model separated our galaxy into five regions: earth, water, air, fire, and aether. With Earth at the center, our planet was surrounded by water, air, fire, and aether, in that order. 

Buddha Elemental 3D on Unsplash

10. Time Is Cyclical

Hinduism has a belief in something called the Yuga Cycle. This is the idea that everything we know goes through a continuous process of creation, maintenance, and destruction. This idea was reflected in Hindu cosmology, as it was believed that while our universe is infinite, it will go through this three-step process.

Alfredo Borba on Wikimedia

11. Universe Is An Entity

Many religious-based theories believe that our universe was actually a tangible entity or two. The Greek gods Gaia and Uranus, the Hindu’s “undivided one,” Chinese cosmology believing the universe was a complex organism, and so on and so forth.

Juliana Araujo the artist on Unsplash

12. Sun Orbits Earth

An element of geocentrism, but a fun one to highlight, knowing what we know now. The Aristotelian and Ptolemaic systems had full faith in our familiar star following us around, only ending when the hybrid Tychonic system came into play. This system still believed that the sun revolved around the earth, but other planets orbited the sun.

Melissa van Niekerk on Unsplash

13. Stars Are Fixed

Many followers of Pythagoras believed that our world was surrounded by a transparent sphere made up of fixed stars on its boundary. After theories evolved to believe that the earth rotated on an axis, this fixed star sphere still existed, but the movement of stars was thought to be caused by the earth’s rotation.

Greg Rakozy on Unsplash

14. Creator Deities

Without arguing what’s real or not, we can all agree that creator deities are among the most popular theories for the creation of our universe. God, Allah, Brahman, Amun, Ra, Izanagi, Vishvakarma, and so many more of these deities exist across human history.

Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

15. Stoic Universe

This theory believes that the universe is governed by a divine principle called Logos, and operates as one giant, interconnected living entity. This reason-based philosophy believes that a god is one with nature and combines logic, physics, and ethics to create this belief.

Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

16. Abrahamic Universe

This belief stems from larger multiverse theories, with the idea being that the Holy Bible’s words and Abrahamic myths are 100% true. The creator of this universe is YHWH-Elohim, which combines the god Yahweh with the Hebrew word Elohim. These two words together make “The Lord God.”

Ioann-Mark Kuznietsov on Unsplash

17. Cartesian Vortex Universe

Rene Descartes created a new universal system after previous cosmologies started to fundamentally not work together. His universe introduced the idea that the universe was full of matter, and that it was made up of three elements: luminous, transparent, and opaque. This idea furthered the understanding that our sun is a star, and other stars can also be suns.

Kenny Eliason on Unsplash

18. Anaxagoras Universe

Anaxagoras is the father of panspermia, and he believed that the world was a mixture of ingredients that could never change. All things have existed in some way from the very beginning, just in a confused state when not forced into through the nous (cosmic mind) to bring it to order.

Jaël Vallée on Unsplash

19. Animism

We can’t talk about creation theories without touching on years of Indigenous beliefs. Every culture has their own creation myths, but the through line is usually animism - stating that everything has a distinct spiritual essence. This idea is only furthered through various Indigenous creation myths, like Earth-diver stories, Turtle Island, the Sky Woman, or the Raven.

Ernest Smith on Wikimedia

20. Round Heaven, Square Earth

This ancient Chinese cosmological model believed that our sky was circular, while our Earth was flat and square. This idea represented yin and yang principles, with the masculine, circular sky generating force and life on the feminine, static Earth.

Buddha Elemental 3D on Unsplash