22 October 1987
In the beginning was nothing. Then the Universe was born in a searing hot fireball called the big bang. But what was the big bang? Where did it happen? And how have astronomers come to believe such a ridiculous thing?
Fifteen thousand million years ago, the Universe that we inhabit erupted, literally, out of nothing. It exploded in a titanic fireball called the big bang. Everything – all matter, energy, even space and time – came into being at that precise instant.
In the earliest moments of the big bang, the stuff of the Universe occupied an extraordinary small volume and was unimaginably hot. It was a seething cauldron of electromagnetic radiation mixed with microscopic particles of matter unlike any found ...