The video below compares the concept of beginning and end of
universe in Hinduism with that of modern cosmology. The video is
presented by Carl Edward Sagan - an American astronomer and
astrobiologist and a highly successful popularizer of astronomy,
astrophysics, and other natural sciences. Below is the
transcript of the video. This is because the subject matter is
very complex and you might need repeated listening. Hindu
religion is the only one of the world’s great faiths dedicated
to the idea that the cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed
an infinite number of deaths and rebirths. It is the only
religion in which the time scales correspond, no doubt, by
accident, to those of modern scientific cosmology. Its cycles
run from our ordinary day and night to a day and night of Brahma
8.64 billion years long. Longer than the age of the earth or the
sun and about half of the time since the big bang. And there are
much longer time scales still. There is the deep and the
appealing notion that the universe is b