There are few topics more awe-inspiring than cosmology. What is the universe? How does it work? Where did it come from? These fundamental questions intrigue adults and children alike. This accessible guide brings alive humanity s attempts to explain the existence of everything and explores the latest and best theories on how the universe came into being. With approachable text, assuming no previous knowledge, and uniquely in such an illustrated book, the reader is taken beyond the certainties to explore the strange concepts that fill modern cosmology. Is the universe a hologram? Is everything we know part of a membrane floating in multidimensional space? Could we be living in a computer simulation? It sounds like science fiction, but these are among the ideas cosmologists seriously propose for the nature of reality. This book is for students, amateur astronomers, and anyone who has looked up at the sky and wondered about our place in the universe.