Expert: Ed - 8/20/2011

Question
hello sir,i was watching this documentary on BIG BANG on discovery channel and there i heard a couple of things and was curious about them.first of the all the physicist in that said that the first force to take shape was gravity,if the gravity was to small there wouldn't be any galaxies formed and if the force was to big everything would have formed blackholes; so our universe formed because of the right amount of gravity.what my first question is, that, was it just by chance that our universe formed and the right amount of gravity was generated for everything to form or was it always meant to go that way and for instance,no matter how many times big bang occured it would have resulted in the same thing occuring again and again.my second question is that they also said that BIG BANG expanded at the speed faster than light,so is it possible for something to move faster than light.thirdly, they said that when BIG BANG occured,MATTER and ANTI-MATTER existed and which are like opposite charges and if they collide they convert back into energy,so after the big bang they collided and most of them changed back into energy except for some of the MATTER that remained and this remainder resulted in the formation of this universe,so my question is that was it again by chance that there was more MATTER than ANTI-MATTER and this universe was made or there was some physics law that was controlling them since all the physics law came into existence just after the BIG BANG.there is one another thing i would like to know and that is, have scientists found the diameter or distance of our universe(i know that the universe  is continuously expanding but have they found the number of galaxies there are).lastly they also said that the palces where nothing exists,there DARK ENERGY exist so what is this DARK ENERGY exactly.i know i have lots of questions but i would be very thankful if you could help my questions.GOOD DAY.

Answer
Wakas, I am sorry that I was slow, getting back to you.  It has been confusing lately, where I live.  We had an earthquake, and now we will get a huge hurricane.  I have been too busy for astronomy!!!  Sorry.

Before I say anything, this man answers all your questions very well.  I hope you look at this page.
http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/cosmology_faq.html

There is also something called the anthropic principle, which I do not agree with.  However, at least it asks the type of questions that you are interested in.  It asks how the physical forces in the universe can be so perfectly suited for intelligent life, purely by chance.  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle

I would encourage you to think carefully about these criticisms.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle#Criticism

As for the Big Bang moving faster than the speed of light, my understanding is that nothing within the universe was moving more swiftly than the speed of light.  Rather, the universe itself was expanding faster than light, so Einstein's constraints did not apply in this sense.  Read all you can about Alan Guth's theory about cosmic inflation.

People are still trying to understand what dark energy is.

I hope this gets you started.  I need to go buy supplies now, in case we lose electricity in the hurricane.

Keep looking up,
-Ed