Dumb Amateur Astronomer: this is the most arrogant reply I have seen in a long time. Not only did you not get the reference to "42", but you think you answered the question. Correctly, even.

dcl: I'm sorry that you found my reply arrogant. I also regret that I did not and still do not recognize the reference to "42", whatever that means. In fact, I must admit that I didn't even notice it when I submitted my comment. I suspect it refers to something in "A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxyi", but, never having read that beyond something at the beginning about, as I recall, bulldozing of a house, I don't even know that much, so all I can do is congratulate you on your superior knowledge.

damian1727: if energy/matter can neither be created or destroyed in our universe, then how come it is here at all?

dcl: Science has no answer for that question. Science observed that the Universe is expanding, inferred that it was smaller in the past and, using what is known about the behavior of matter and energy, in effect ran the movie backward as far as knowledge would allow and sensibly stopped there to avoid uninformed speculation. That took it back to 10-43 sec, at which time the size of the eniverse appeared to be as close as can be imagined to that of a dimensionless point and at a temperature so high that no matter of any kind could exist, not even protons, neutrons, electrons, etc., so that what was to become matter had to all be in the form of energy at a temperature of at least trillions of kelvins, the only form of energy possible at such temperatures being electromagnetic with black-body spectrum, the temperature being too high for any of the other three basic forms of energy. No one knows enough about the nature of energy to be able to run the "movie" any further back into the past, in particular to say anything about where that energy came from in the first place.