Name: The big bang

Age: 13.8bn years, or no age at all, because it didn’t happen.

Appearance: Big and bangy, or it doesn’t have an appearance, because it didn’t happen.

Why are you being so down on the big bang? Are you one of those creationists? Quite the opposite. I’m just here to tell you that Cern will soon use the Large Hadron Collider to detect miniature black holes.

And what does that have to do with the big bang? Well, if it’s successful, the existence of miniature black holes could prove the existence of parallel universes, which could prove the Gravity’s Rainbow theory, which could then prove that the universe has existed for ever with no fixed point of origin.

Take me through that again, as if to an idiot. Right, OK. The scientists at Cern believe that there are miniature black holes hidden away in dimensions beyond the ones that we can comprehend, and that these lead to parallel universes.

Wait right there. Extra dimensions? I haven’t even got to Gravity’s Rainbow yet. That theory seeks to reconcile the theory of relativity with quantum mechanics, by arguing that gravitational fields around supermassive objects bend light in different ways depending on its colour.

This is hurting my brain. Listen, did the big bang happen or not? Possibly not. The point of all of this is that Gravity’s Rainbow could prove that the singularity – the infinitely tiny point that exploded billions of years ago, giving birth to the universe – is a scientific impossibility.

So the universe has always existed? Or it never existed? I’m so confused. Me too. It takes serious scientific journals hundreds of thousands of words to properly describe this stuff. What hope do we have?

It’s all too trippy. I only got a C in GCSE science. Me too.

Really? What a coincidence. Want to know something really trippy?

Sure. One person is writing both sides of this conversation. Therefore I am you, but simultaneously, you don’t really exist.

Mind. BLOWN. Right?

Do say: “I suddenly feel very small.”

Don’t say: “Coming up next on E4, The Miniature Black Hole/Gravity’s Rainbow/Extra Dimension/Infinite Universe With No Fixed Point of Origin Theory.”