Why this exists.
I'm a curious person. I don't have a minute spent in a university but I still want to understand the big questions. I've listened to podcasts, watched documentaries, followed people online. But I found it hard to get a grasp of how everything connects, or what the different theories actually claim. I needed a structure and couldn't find one. This is my attempt at building one, for people like me.
I want to thank the physicists, cosmologists, podcasters, and writers educating people like me. Thank you.
I've probably made mistakes and misunderstood things along the way. If you spot something wrong, please tell me through the contact form below. And if the site has been useful, you're welcome to support the project so I can keep improving it.
What this is and isn't
- Educational synthesis, not peer-reviewed research.
- Independent, not affiliated with any university or institution.
- Verified against primary sources where possible, flagged where uncertain.
- 3D scenes are explanatory metaphors, not simulations of the underlying physics.
How we verify content
Each variant carries its sources, and each source is tagged with a confidence label: Established means peer-reviewed and verifiable, Needs verification means believed correct but not yet cross-checked, Debated means a genuine ongoing dispute. If a source can't be verified, it gets the yellow tag, not a confident green one.
Each theory family carries a status that reflects its standing in the field. Status labels reflect scientific community reception, not personal endorsement.
- Consensus: accepted as the working framework across the field. Dominant in textbooks, taught as the default, used as the baseline in grant applications and predictions.
- Strongly supported: backed by significant evidence and considered viable by most researchers, but not the default working framework.
- Frontier: active research area with experimental or theoretical traction. Results pending. The community is paying attention.
- Speculative: internally consistent and published in peer-reviewed venues, but lacking direct evidence. Considered possible by some researchers.
- Fringe: pursued by few researchers, often outside mainstream peer review. Sometimes ahead of its time, sometimes not.
Content is human-reviewed. Monthly arXiv scans and quarterly INSPIRE-HEP citation scans surface new papers per family, but nothing publishes automatically.
Cosmos Explorer is built on free public infrastructure. arXiv provides preprint access and INSPIRE-HEP provides citation metadata. Both are operated as a public good and the site would not be possible without them.
Get in touch
Found an error, have a source to suggest, or want to chat about something on the site? Use the contact form.
Support the project
Cosmos Explorer is a solo hobby project built in spare hours. There are no ads, no paywalls, and no tracking. If you find it valuable, buying me a coffee helps keep it going.
Newsletter
We'll send something when a new chapter or 3D scene goes live. The list isn't open yet, leave your address and we'll save it for when it is.