Both these stories imply that animals are vehicles through which supreme powers express themselves, and this veneration of animals manifested itself elsewhere in art, religion, and even in early medicine. Anthropologists debate the extent to which the peoples of the past thought that their myths literally described the process of creation. According to the so-called Big Bang theory, the universe began when an entity of incomprehensible density exploded, generating the matter which comprises the galaxies and propelling it outward at unimaginable speeds. Over time, primordial matter cooled and condensed resulting in galaxies, stars, and planets. Most cosmologists believe that the universe will continue to expand, doubling its known size over the next ten billion years.
Modern cosmologists continue to debate the ultimate fate of our universe.
Despite some dissenters, the Big Bang theory is the prevailing explanation of the origin of the cosmos. Scientists respond to these inquiries in various ways. To the physicist Steven Hawking, such questions are very understandable but scientifically naive. Asking what came before the Big Bang, he has said, is like asking what's north of the North Pole. Ayurveda teaches that consciousness is, in effect, the unifying principle that physicists are seeking.