How it all began fully explained for people who don't take reality seriously
PART 1: GETTING STARTED
In the beginning was the word, which was "bang", as in the Big Bang. Now of course that's two words, but only one noun which is what counts in my view. Whether this was a bang and not a boom, a kapow or the sound of a humongous gong being struck with a brick nobody knows, there wasn't anyone around then.
Before the beginning was nothing. Not the kind that exists in a vacuum, or in a half empty glass (or half full, depending on your mood). More of a less than nothing smaller even than a mole on the nose of one of a thousand angels dancing on the head of a pin. How and why angels waltz, mambo or frug on the head of a pin is a mystery. You can ask a medieval theologian, if you can find one because he'd be pretty old by now. The point is these angels are tiny, really eeny-weeny, teeny-tiny and a mole on one of their wee noses even smaller. Imagine the entire universe springing from the mole on the nose of an angel gyrating on the head of a pin, only there were no pins, angels, moles or anything else.
This is the creation of everything out of nothing, meaning the entire universe is an effect without a cause. Clearly this is an absurdity, but absurdities don't bother modern astrophysicists so they won't deter us either.
I imagine it went something like this:
Nonexistent Nondimensional Point: "I'm bored. Nothing ever happens around here. Is there anything out there? Is there anyplace out there? Is this all there is?"
Nonexistent Nondimensional Second Point:
Nonexistent Nondimensional Point: "Man, this is literally pointless. I'm so frustrated and bored I could just explode."
And so it did.
After this initial big bang, boom, kapow, or dinner call, things really began hotting up. In a semi-hemi-demi-nanosecond the universe was the size of a football field though there were none around for comparison since everything was super hot and plasmatic, if that's a word. This phantasmagoria of billions of trillions of super-heated bits all atwitter kept growing in hyper fashion. Once a thing like this gets a notion to expand infinitely at near warp speed it's pretty hard to apply the brakes.
At some point, space and time got together forming a continuum which established a speed limit for light and rules for the conservation of energy. It's hard to see why it needed conserving considering the universe contained more energy than you could shake a stick at. (I don't imagine shaking a stick at a universe full of energy would accomplish much though.) But the Space-Time Continuum was thinking big and long term, they intended to last forever and ever. (How much longer "forever and ever" is than just plain "forever" is hard to make out. Some folks are never satisfied with enough, even though enough is enough.) But nothing lasts forever, they didn't take into account the power of the Almighty Dollar, and today it's the AOL-Space-Time-Warner Continuum.
The Space-Time Continuum also passed the laws of gravity and motion. To apply the laws they assembled a bunch of Newtonian Principals. (These are like school principals, they don't do anything except enforce rules. An old joke goes, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. Those who can't teach become principals so nobody does or learns anything.") They also outlawed perpetual motion machines. Some people still try to smuggle in all types of these outlawed devices, but the arms of this law are particularly long and the machines only work outside the known universe which is very hard to get to. The Newtonian Principals turn the misbegotten machines over to their patent attorneys who prosecute them to the full extent of the laws of thermodynamics.
The continuum also hired some Quantum Mechanics to engineer the working parts of this business. Early on there was dissension in the ranks, the Quantum Mechanics didn't like the high-faluting Newtonian Principals telling them how to make things work and made up their own rules. To keep the Newtonian Principals and Quantum Mechanics from tearing each others guts out, putting the kibosh on any plans of universal hegemony, Space-Time employed some Uncertainty Principals to divvy up the responsibilities. The Newtonian Principals would manage the big stuff like planetary motion and the Quantum Mechanics would devote themselves to micro-manage teeny stuff like atoms, even though all the big stuff was made of the teeny stuff. Whether or not this is intelligent design I leave others to debate.
Fast-forward a million years, give or take a millennium, things were still on the hyper-kinetic chaotic side. The Newtonian Principals began gathering together and organizing particles by enforcing the law of Gravity. A very serious law, and hence the name. Their motto, "In unity there is strength. In strength there is opportunity. Opportunity only knocks once. Keep an ear peeled." (Not their best work, but it was a start.)
Why the Newtonian Principals chose gravity as the means to organize the universe is something of a quandry. Especially since gravity is the weakest force available for such an enormous place like the universe. In fact, there was a 95% shortage of gravity to make it work, so they invented dark matter to make up the deficit. This is a sort-of Keynesian astrophysics where you inflate the gravity supply creating a multiplier effect of 20. Since the universe lasts forever, this loan of extra mass need never be repaid. The deficit is simply rolled over in perpituity. Meaning you may as well not even look for dark matter because you'll never see any in your lifetime.
Returning to our story, while organizing the cosmos exotic shapes like cones or pyramids may have been tried, but if you've ever tried to herd cats or shove hyper charged particles about you can understand why the "keep it simple, stupid" school prevailed. In the end (the beginning really) the consensus was that a ball was just the ticket. Cubes were right out because, as Einstein said, "God doesn't play dice with the universe." Even though he said it a long time after the fact.
So balls it would be. Balls are fun, they roll and bounce and can be used for all sorts of fun and games. Plus no particles get stuck in a corner feeling left out and so join in the fun. If a ball gets big enough you can make a planet. A planet can have plants and animals and people who can start civilizations, building things like houses and cities and starting governments and generally mucking things up if they're not careful. People can also make lots of other, though admittedly much smaller balls; baseballs, soccer balls, basketballs, and footballs, which aren't shaped like balls at all. Perhaps this amuses the Newtonian Principals, it's hard to say.
In some cases there seemed to be a want of real leadership and instead of anything cohesive the particles congregated into great amorphous masses which succeeded only in turning chaos into anarchy. These space blobs are called nebula, plural for nebulous, meaning "not shaped like anything in particular." (Probably something from Greek or Latin, as is often the case.) So a nebula is shaped like a group of shapeless shapes, or something. I don't get it and neither do the particles that make one up, which may explain it.
Part 2: Getting Up to Speed
Part 3: Getting Back to Basics