Here is a piece of humor that may be educational.  You might remember the rhyme to help you to retain the information below it. 

The Universe: By Carl Dobbs

Decarte:: "I think therefore it is” he knows

Newton: It’s  exactly what my data shows

Einstein:  “It’s how my equation goes

String theorist: It’s sort of like a rubber hose.

Big bang theorist: It starts out tiny,  then it grows.

Theologian: It’s a stool for godly toes.

The student; Which ever way the wind now blows

The truth: It’s all of these and none of those

The  poem explained:

1: Rene Decarte was an ancient philosopher.  He, and a lot of other people at that time, were asking each other,  “How do I know something exists?  How do I know that you exist or that I exist?”  Don’t laugh.  These questions have serious merit.  How can you prove that the person you see in your field of vision.  Even if you touch them, it can be an illusion.  So was the thought of the ancients, but their thinking has been adopted by today’s scientists.  As we understand more and more about matter and energy we find that they are made out of nothing.  You can’t define what energy is and matter is a different form of energy.  Everything we experience is just an illusion that our senses produce for our brains to evaluate and present to us as conscious beings.  However, we, as beings are also something that is just as impossible to define as “energy.”  So he said, "Ergo Cognum Sum" which means, "I think, therefore I am." The only way you now you exist, or that any part of the Universe exists,  is because you can think to ask the question.

 2: Isaac Newton was not a theoretical scientist.  He made no theory about gravity.  He didn’t make any attempt to say that it was a force that pulled us down.  His writings only describe his measurements of what this thing “gravity” did.  In fact, the use of the word “gravity” originally mean “serious” as in a “grave situation” is serious.  He used it to mean the interaction between two pieces of matter attracting each other.  So even the word “gravity” was only a mathematical term to describe.  Hence, the Universe was, to him, only what his measurements showed. 

3: Einstein.  He was a theoretical physicist.  He conceived that energy and matter were the same thing, just different expressions of the same thing.  His famous equation, E = MC 2 means that one gram of matter equals 90 trillion ergs of energy.  It took .015 grams of matter to destroy a Japanese city in WWII.  Much of the Universe is can be understood by this theory and his theories of General and Special  Relativity.

4: String Theorists:  They believe that we live in 11 dimensions (according to the one theory that solves the equations of many string theorists’ equations).  They believe that some of these are “rolled up” so that they are very, very small.  They say, think of a single dimension, like length.  If you examine it closely enough, that one dimension will actually involve another dimension that is so tiny that it isn’t noticed.  They say it is like a tiny, tiny rubber hose.  It actually has more than one dimension just like a hose has 3 dimensions.  But it looks like one dimension only if you look at it normally.  Sounds strange?  This is advanced science and string theory, at least mathematically, describes the entire Universe – but only if we have 11 dimensions. 

5: The Big Bang Theorist:  These scientists believe that the Universe began in a sort of explosion.  It was once infinitely small.  Even empty space didn’t exist.  It was all the size of a trillionth of the size of an electron.  It didn’t have size at all.  Then it expanded into the Universe we see today.

      There’s a catch, though.  The Universe has no center to it didn’t really start in one tiny place.  It sort of happened all at once that every point of the “Universe” is a center.  So that is why they say, it was tiny then it grew.  That’s about all they can say.

6: The Bible describes the Earth as God’s footstool: hence the reference to being a stool for godly toes.

7: The student will believe whatever his teacher tells him so he can get a good grade.  But the theories keep shifting so no  one really knows what to believe.  The latest theory is all that matters to them.

8: It’s all of these and none of those.  Self explanatory.  Each theory probably has as much weight as the next but none targets the real truth.   That fact is that no matter how much people know, it is all essentially meaningless for the answers lead to the Universe being nothing and everything at the same time.

       The most well-acepted theory is that the Universe is ruled by Quantum physics, as opposed to classical physics.  In classical physics a bit of matter can't be in 2 places at the same time, time is measured always the same for all people everywhere and that space can be measured by everyone, everywhere, accuratly and all measurement will be reliably the same.  Quantum physics throws all the assumptions of classical physics out the window.  The real world doesn't  behave that way at all.  Einstein said he spent 100 times more thought on quantum physics than on his theory that mass equals MC2 (E-MC2)  and gravitation which revolutionized science for us all.  It is an inigma that can only be described but not explained.

     Quantum physics describes how a single piece of matter can, indeed, be in multiplaces at the same time. It shows that the Universe can be created in an instant out of nothing at all.  I tells us that time can, and does, run backward and forward.  It tells us that we can't count on anything being the way we think it is because nature is filled with chaos.  But that chaos is required to enable us to have free will.

       The discovery of scientists in the field of astronomy tells us that space expands and it sends stars travelling away from us at speeds far greater than the speed of light and with unlimited speed.  it tells us that it is impossible to measure anything using regular ideas about time and space being standardly measurable.  Einstein, also, in his Special Theory of Relativity, shows space and time as something that warps with gravitaion and with accelleration.  He also demonstrates that your Euclidian Geomoetry class was all wrong in the real world.  There is no such thing as a straight line, absolute space (where you can define your exact position in the Universe) and other amazing concepts.

    If you want to know more, look up "Quantum physics", "Einstein's Theories" and go to the local library for books on the subject.  You'll have your eyes opened for sure!