The Moment Before the Universe Began: Unraveling the Miracle and Fluctuations of Existence from 13.8 Billion Years of History

Introduction: The “True Nature” of the Universe in Which We Exist

When we gaze up at the night sky, we see a silent, universal canvas woven from countless stars and galaxies. It feels as if an absolute, unchanging space, unchanged since ancient times, stretches out before us. However, the “true nature” of the universe revealed by modern physics is so dynamic and filled with incredible miracles that it fundamentally overturns our everyday senses and intuition.

In the video ‘[Yasunori Nomura] The Second Before the Universe Was Born: How 13.8 Billion Years of History Began’, released on the YouTube channel “SHIFT LIFE ch”, theoretical physicist Yasunori Nomura narrates the grand story from the universe’s birth approximately 13.8 billion years ago to the present, based on the highly precise insights of modern physics.

This video transcends a mere “scientific explanation of cosmic history.” It is filled with philosophical revelations that compel deep reflection on the fundamental absurdity of our very existence, the miraculous probabilities involved, and the creative dynamism born from the imperfection of “fluctuations.”In this article, using the gem-like words spoken in this video as our guideposts, we will thoroughly examine and gain insight into the worldview presented by the forefront of cosmology from a uniquely profound perspective. Let us embark on a journey toward the “truth” of our own life and spirit, visible from the edge of science.

1. The Universe Did Not Exist from the Beginning: The Philosophical Implications of Common Sense Being Overturned

Breaking Free from Absolute Immutability and Einstein’s Agony

Early in the video, Mr. Nomura discusses one of the greatest paradigm shifts in astrophysics: the fact that “the universe had a beginning.”

“It was incredibly obvious that the universe must have always existed. So the universe itself had to change. […] Einstein himself couldn’t believe it at first.”

Even Albert Einstein, one of the pinnacles of human intellect until just about 100 years ago, firmly believed that “the universe has existed since an eternal past and is a static entity that will remain unchanged for all eternity.”When he applied the equations of his own General Theory of Relativity to the entire universe, they yielded a dynamic solution: “The universe must either expand or contract.” Yet he couldn’t face this mathematical truth. He even added a constant called the “cosmological constant” to his own equations, desperately trying to preserve a static, unchanging universe.

This historical fact holds significance beyond a mere page in the history of science. It starkly reveals the psychological fragility of human existence—our clinging to the illusions of “immutability” and “eternity,” seeking comfort in them. The fact that the universe itself embodied this truth, akin to the Buddhist teaching of impermanence (“all things change”), delivers a powerful blow to our worldview.

The Expanding Universe and the Arrow of Time

Subsequent observations by Edwin Hubble and others proved the universe is indeed expanding. This expansion inevitably leads to the conclusion that, if time were rewound to the past, the universe once existed as an extremely dense, super-hot “fireball” (the Big Bang).

The insight we must glean from this is that “there exists no absolute, unchanging foundation anywhere in this world.” The very Earth we tread upon, the solar system, the galaxy that envelops it, and even the vastness of space itself are nothing but transient states, constantly changing, moving, and evolving.The phrase “impermanence” is not merely a literary metaphor expressing human sentimentality; it is the very physical law of the universe.

This “liberation from attachment to the unchanging” suggests an attitude crucial for living our lives. While we tend to seek stability and eternity, since the essence of existence lies in “dynamic change,” fearing change goes against the laws of the universe. Rather, riding the ceaselessly changing waves and continually renewing ourselves is the natural way of being.

2. Why the Night Sky is “Sparkling” The Relativity of “Now” and the Limits of Perception

The Speed of Light and Time Travel to the Past

Among Mr. Nomura’s explanations, the fact that “the night sky is actually sparkling brightly” is particularly shocking and pleasantly subverts our intuition.

“When we look at distant stars, some of them are so far away that their light took about 100 light-years to reach us. (mid-sentence ellipsis) This means that when we see a star 100 light-years away, we are seeing light emitted 100 years ago. So the star we see now is its appearance from 100 years ago. It might not even exist anymore.”

Because the speed of light is finite (about 300,000 kilometers per second), the act of us observing the universe is inevitably synonymous with “seeing the past.” This is an extremely poetic yet coldly logical fact of physics.When we gaze at the starry sky and feel “how beautiful it is now,” that scene is actually a collection of various past moments, each cut out from different points in space. Even sunlight is from about 8 minutes ago. In other words, we are constantly living within “afterimages of the past,” and sharing an absolute space of “here and now” with perfect simultaneity is physically impossible.

Invisible Light and the Human “Perceptual Box”

Even more mind-boggling is the astonishing fact that light from the beginning of the universe, the remnant of the Big Bang, is still pouring down onto Earth at this very moment.

“We should be able to see the era when the universe was still sparkling and bright. When you look that far into the night sky, the cosmic background should be sparkling. Sparkling. (omission) Actually, the night sky is sparkling.”

Because the universe is expanding, the wavelengths of light traveling through that space are stretched. As a result, what was once super-hot, dazzling light has now become “radio waves (microwaves)” with extremely long wavelengths.Human eyes can only perceive a very limited range of wavelengths called visible light, so the night sky appears dark. However, if we had eyes that could perceive microwaves, the night sky would appear as a seamless, sparkling dome, shining brightly without a single gap.

The profound insight from this fact is the humble realization that “our perception captures only a small part of the world.”We tend to absolutize our five senses, mistakenly believing only what we perceive is “reality.” However, human sensory organs are merely filters tuned to obtain the bare minimum information necessary for survival. The vast, overwhelming “true reality” that cannot pass through this filter and slips away from our consciousness is omnipresent in the adjacent dimension (wavelength).

The existence of this “unseen information and unseen energy” is profoundly suggestive not only in science but also in spirituality and philosophy. The answers to the problems we face, or the truths we seek, may already exist there as “wavelengths currently beyond our observation.” Physics powerfully urges us to expand the framework (filter) of our own cognition and to hold a sense of awe when imagining the unseen.

3. The “One-Hundred-Thousandth Fluctuation” Gave Birth to Us: Imperfection is the Source of Creation

A “Scar” Born in the Perfect Soup

Approximately 380,000 years after the birth of the universe. During the era known as the “cosmic reionization,” when temperatures dropped to 3000 degrees, atoms first formed, and light could travel straight. The universe at that time was a literal “soup” filled with uniform gas, devoid of stars or galaxies.

“It’s a fluctuation of about one in 100,000. And one in 100,000 is huge. For example, achieving a soup with uniform concentration to one in 100,000 precision is impossible. (…) It’s uniformly the same everywhere with one in 100,000 precision.”

Within this near-perfect uniformity, there existed regions just one part in 100,000 that were slightly denser or less dense than their surroundings. These minuscule “fluctuations” were the decisive cause that gave rise to the vast diversity of our present universe.

Where matter was slightly denser, gravity grew stronger, pulling in surrounding matter. Gradually, these regions became denser still, gravity intensified, and as matter gathered, stars were born and grew into galaxies. If that primordial soup had been “perfectly uniform,” gravitational aggregation of matter would never have occurred. The universe would have remained a dim, eternal gas, and neither stars, nor Earth, nor you or I would ever have come into being.

The absolute beauty of imperfect fluctuations

Here lies a startling truth: “Perfect uniformity is death and nothingness. Imperfection (fluctuation) is the very source of existence and creation.”

We who live in modern society unconsciously seek “perfection.” Flawless plans, error-free work, waste-free efficiency, unblemished relationships. We strive daily for homogenization and optimization. Yet, the measure the history of the universe thrusts upon us is entirely different. From a world of absolute homogeneity, devoid of error, no diversity, no complexity, no breath of life can emerge.

That “one in a hundred thousand fluctuation” within you—your unique obsessions, little quirks, failures, or impulses. At first glance, these might seem like social noise or imperfections you’d want to eliminate. Yet, just as gravity gathers matter to create shining stars, our individuality and singularities become the core that, over time—this gravitational force of time—eventually forms your own unique universe (life).

We must learn to cherish our own, and others’, “imperfections” and “fluctuations” more deeply. Unexpected events, deviations from plans, emotional fluctuations. It is precisely this noise that injects new information into the system, becoming the driving force of evolution. Just as the universe created us from the errors of its endless history, the most sublime beauty resides within the imperfections that contain wounds and fluctuations.

4. The Universe One Second Before Birth: “Inflation” and Quantum Mechanics – Fractal Cosmic Structure

Micro Quantum Fluctuations Shape the Macrocosm

Mr. Nomura’s discussion traces back to the era before the Big Bang—the “inflation” period (often described as the ultimate beginning, occurring around $10^{-36}$ seconds after the universe’s birth)—when space itself underwent exponential rapid expansion. During this era, amidst the violent expansion triggered by the energy of space itself, the laws of “quantum mechanics,” which govern the minute microcosm, played a remarkable role.

“It’s triggered by vacuum energy or spatial energy—well, something like that. Quantum mechanics tells us that the existence of this spatial energy absolutely requires fluctuations. (…) These fluctuations are on the scale of one-hundred-thousandth.”

In the world of quantum mechanics, the Uncertainty Principle prohibits the existence of a state of complete rest with zero energy. Even in a vacuum, “quantum fluctuations” exist, where energy ceaselessly surges and vanishes.The violent expansion of inflation instantly stretched and fixed these “quantum ripples”—microscopic fluctuations unimaginable to the human mind—to the macroscopic scale of the universe.

The evidence for this is the “temperature fluctuations of one ten-thousandth of a degree” visible in the map of the cosmic background radiation.

This fact brilliantly demonstrates the “fractal (self-similar) nature” of the universe we inhabit. The indeterminate fluctuations governing the most minute world (the quantum realm) determined the structure (large-scale structure) of the arrangement of galaxies in the most vast world (the entire universe). The micro and macro are not separate; they are directly linked at a deep level and driven by the exact same mechanism.

The Potential for “My” Fluctuations to Rewrite the World

Let’s bring this understanding down to our level. From the vastness of the universe, we are minuscule micro-entities, no larger than quantum particles. It seems hard to imagine that a single action of ours, or a tiny fluctuation of thought in our minds, could possibly influence the macro-world.

Yet, if we analogize the mechanism of cosmic creation, the “whole” is formed starting from “fluctuations at the most minute level.”The pure will of a single person, a sudden intuition, or a small act of kindness toward someone (these can be seen as quantum fluctuations of consciousness). Such minute ripples of energy can be amplified through some resonance or propagation mechanism (what we call “karma” or the “butterfly effect”), much like inflation, and eventually become the starting point for transforming the macro structures of society and the world.

As Mr. Nomura states, “We must cherish each fleeting moment of life,” we stand at the very forefront of this 13.8-billion-year chain of precise causality, while simultaneously existing as the “source of fluctuations” shaping the next form of the universe.

5. The Miracle and Responsibility of “I” from a Cosmic Scale

The Weight of 13.8 Billion Years and the Fleeting Nature of “Consciousness”

What Mr. Nomura’s lecture confronts us with is the stark contrast between the overwhelming “length of time” this universe encompasses and the “brevity of consciousness” granted to us within it. The words Mr. Nomura spoke toward the end of the video contain a profound existential question that transcends the perspective of a mere physicist.

“We are living in a single moment of a universe that is constantly changing and evolving. So, when I think about that, I find myself thinking we really must cherish this fleeting moment of life.”

13.8 billion years—this immense span of time is not merely a string of numbers.It is a history of relentless continuity and accumulation: from the early universe containing only hydrogen and helium, stars were born; through nuclear fusion, heavy elements like carbon and oxygen were created; scattered across space by supernova explosions; gathering again to form the planet Earth; and finally, after an unfathomably long evolutionary journey, giving rise to conscious life forms like “us.”

The eyes reading this article now, the brain thinking, the lungs breathing—every atom composing them is a fragment of stars that once shone in the night sky. We are literally “children of the stars,” and one could say the universe itself is a “sensory organ” it created over 13.8 billion years to recognize itself.

Standing upon this realization, we come to understand that our lives are not insignificant trifles, but rather the “front lines” and the “miraculous culmination” within the grand evolutionary process of the universe.Simultaneously, we bear the weighty “responsibility” of passing this baton (which includes not only physical DNA but also memes like ideas and culture) to the next era, while also possessing the “right” to live freely, unbound by anything.

The Ultimate Meaning, Back-Calculated from the Future Cosmos

Even more unimaginable is the form of the universe predicted by physics in the distant future.

“It seems that in the future, for example, all galaxies will merge into one, and everything else will disappear, eventually becoming a single black hole—a state where the universe contains only one black hole, or perhaps it will transform into something entirely different.”

This is a stark prediction: even this seemingly eternal, rich starry sky will eventually meet its end. If everything is ultimately swallowed by a black hole, or if it all concludes in cold nothingness (heat death), what meaning is there in our desperate struggle to live, find meaning, love, and suffer here and now?If everything ultimately returns to nothingness, there is even the danger of falling into nihilism—the belief that existence itself is meaningless.

Yet, this is precisely where a philosophical leap is required. Precisely because everything ultimately returns to nothing, precisely because it is not eternal, absolute value arises in the “process itself.” Even if a completed painting will one day burn to ashes, the beauty and intensity of the “very moment” it is being painted can never be diminished.

Rather, it is precisely because we hold the ultimate vision of the “end”—where the universe eventually transforms and all is integrated—that the preciousness of our current “separate, individual existence (fluctuation)” stands out. We are beings created from what was originally “nothingness as a whole,” given form for just a fleeting moment to encounter others different from ourselves, to communicate, and to exchange emotions.

That is precisely why, before our “individual lifespan” ends, we should love as many “differences” as possible, experience numerous “fluctuations,” create our own unique ripples in the world within our limited time, and depart leaving beautiful memories behind. This may well be the one-of-a-kind mission entrusted to each of us—who live but a few decades—by the 13.8-billion-year-old universe.

Conclusion & Next Action: Finding Life’s Compass in Cosmic Truth

The truth about the universe, deduced by modern physics from intricate equations and overwhelming observational data, is this: the universe is not an unchanging silence, but a dynamically evolving “unfinished process.” And the driving force behind this evolution is not perfection, but the “imperfect fluctuations” at the microscopic level.

Having learned this fact of overwhelming scale, we must significantly update our understanding of our own lives.

Next Action/Proposal

• Stop striving for “perfection and uniformity” Embrace your flaws, insecurities, and unique traits that set you apart. See them not as “errors to be corrected,” but as the “initial fluctuations (individuality)” forming your own galaxy. If homogenized organizations or societies feel suffocating, it’s because they contradict the truth of the universe. Taking pride in your “one in a hundred thousand difference” is the cosmic answer.
• Open Your Heart to the Invisible Realm (Wavelengths) Just as the night sky is actually sparkling, this world overflows with vast information and truths beyond our grasp. It is essential to maintain a neutral and humble “sense of awe” toward the unknown and immeasurable, rather than judging everything solely through your biases or current limited frame of reference.
• Cast the ripple of small choices in the “here and now” Just as microscopic quantum fluctuations determined the entire structure of the universe, your small decisions and actions today are never powerless. Even the most seemingly trivial shift in thought creates a ripple effect on the world.To embrace change without fear and proactively initiate new actions (fluctuations) – this is the ultimate way of life, attuning to the very dynamism of the universe that, over 13.8 billion years, gave rise to your existence.

The cosmic tale told by Yasunori Nomura seemed like a story from an unimaginably distant world, yet it was actually an extremely personal and essential question about “how we live today.” This life, miraculously manifested in a single fleeting moment of the ever-changing universe. Precisely because everything is transient, let us cherish our own “fluctuations” today and create a new world.