The Big Bang Theory
What It Is, Where It Came From, and Why It Works
Chapter One
The First Cosmologies
In the beginning, there was nothing. Well, not quite nothing-more
of a Nothing with Potential. A nothingness in which packets
of energy fleeted in and out of existence, popping into oblivion as
quickly as they appeared. One of these fluctuations had just
enough energy to take off. It inflated wildly out of control-one
moment infinitesimally small, moments later light-years across.
All of space and time was created in that instant, and as that energy
slowed, it cooled and froze into matter-protons and neutrons
and photons. This baby universe kept expanding, over billions of
years, and those particles coalesced into stars and planets and
eventually humans.
And that's how the universe came to be.
Or at least that's the modern version. Descriptions of
how the cosmos was born, from the dramatic to the lyrical,
have proliferated throughout human history. Take the
Enuma Elish, the creation myth recited in about 4000 B.C.E.
on the fourth day of each new year by the Babylonians as
they lay prostrate before a statue of their great g ... read full excerpt from The Big Bang Theory: What It Is, Where It Came From, and Why It Works ebook
