Well, I know very little about it. Basically 2 facts, 1 known to most of the people and other very few (non-science) students know:
1st Fact:
About 4 billion years ago, there was a huge explosion (read: Big Bang), when they say our universe was formed. There are tons of article available on the internet about Big Bang. In fact, Dan Brown's Angels & Demons has a very good narrative about the beginning of life on earth.
2nd Fact:
Even today (with all our sophisticated machines, telescopes, spacecrafts, multi-billion dollar projects, mission to mars, moon) we don't know HOW MUCH WE KNOW about the universe? Last year I attended a seminar at the Nehru Planetorium (in Mumbai), where the presenter was saying "as per the latest study, what we know about universe is only 10% of what is out there. The remaining 90% is so far that even with our most advanced telescopes we could not see them. They call this unknown part of the Universe as "THE DARK MATTER". Now what's really interesting is, some scientists belive (though they cannot prove it) that in that 90%, it is possible that there are hundreds, even thousands, of planets.. and maybe, just MAYBE, there is life in one of those planets. Some other scientists debate over the percentage of Dark Matter.. They say how can we say for sure that we know 10%... it is possible that we know only 1%, or hell, just 0.000001% of what we really know about Universe...
