When you gaze up at the night sky, what do you see there? Countless shining stars, vast galaxies, or endless darkness?
For a long time, humanity believed the universe was something that had “existed unchanged since time immemorial.” However, modern physics has completely overturned this static view of the universe. The universe we see today had a definite “beginning,” evolving dramatically from a state resembling a superheated soup to its present form.
This article explores the secrets of cosmic creation——specifically the ultimate question of “What happened before the Big Bang (inflation)?” and how this connects to the existence of us humans.
The astonishing fact is that an unimaginably brief fluctuation lasting just 0.00… (30 zeros)… 1 second created you 13.8 billion years later. The “history of the universe” reached by modern physics is a story more beautiful and precise than any myth.
- The Discovery of an “Expanding Universe” Not Eternal and Unchanging
- The first light emitted 380,000 years after the universe’s birth: “Cosmic Reionization”
- The world one second before the birth of the universe: “A scorching extreme state without even atoms”
- The explosive expansion of vacuum energy that triggered the Big Bang
- The Meaning of the Future and Our “Now”
The Discovery of an “Expanding Universe” Not Eternal and Unchanging
The common belief that “the universe remains unchanged forever” was shattered a mere 100 years ago.
When Albert Einstein formulated his theory of gravity, the General Theory of Relativity, and applied it to the entire universe, the equations revealed that “the universe must either contract or expand; it cannot remain static.”
Even Einstein himself initially found this hard to believe, going so far as to tweak the equations to preserve a static universe. However, subsequent observations by astronomers like Edwin Hubble proved that “almost all galaxies are moving away from us, and the farther away they are, the faster they move away (= the universe is expanding).“
If the universe is currently “expanding (growing),” then rewinding time to the past implies the universe was once much smaller, compressed into an ultra-dense state.
High density means extremely high temperature. In other words, the past universe was a very small, “super-hot, super-dense fireball” – this is the starting point of the “Big Bang Theory.“
In the video, Professor Nomura explains that we can still directly observe this “scorching past” today using cameras (radio telescopes).
Because the speed of light is finite, looking far away is synonymous with looking into the past. Gazing into the depths of the universe should reveal its “sparkling, radiant state shortly after its birth.”Indeed, as the universe expanded, the wavelength of that light stretched out, transforming from visible light into “radio waves (microwaves).” The trace of this transformation—the cosmic microwave background radiation—is observed with perfect consistency from every direction in the night sky.
Through current precise calculations and observational data, the age of the universe has been determined to be approximately 13.8 billion years. This is not mere imagination or “a scientist’s personal opinion,” but falls within the realm of “precise science” where equations and observations match perfectly.
The first light emitted 380,000 years after the universe’s birth: “Cosmic Reionization”
No matter where we look in the universe, the oldest past we can directly observe as radio waves (light) is only the state “380,000 years after the universe’s birth.” Before that, the universe was too dense and hot for even light to travel straight; it was trapped (in a plasma state where light constantly collided with electrons and protons).
A featureless “soup universe” and fluctuations one-hundred-thousandth of a degree
The universe at that time was not the “inhomogeneous” structure we see today, filled with regions densely packed with galaxies and vast empty spaces. Instead
, it was a featureless, “uniform soup,“ looking almost identical wherever you looked. It was uniformly balanced with astonishing precision—to within one part in 100,000—far more precise than the temperature or air pressure in a room being nearly constant everywhere.
Yet, galaxies cannot form in a perfectly uniform space. Precisely there existed “fluctuations of one part in 100,000 (tiny density variations).“ Slightly denser patches of matter attracted surrounding material through gravity, increasing their density further, and eventually grew into stars and galaxies. When this process is simulated on a computer, it beautifully reproduces the same expansion we observe in the universe today, 13.8 billion years later.
These tiny “asymmetries” are the very source of life.
If the primordial soup 380,000 years after the universe’s birth had been “perfectly uniform (100% identical density),” gravity would have had nowhere to act. The universe would have become a dead, featureless expanse of cold gas, endlessly spreading out. Conversely
, if the “fluctuations had been too large,” gravity would have swiftly created only massive black holes in vast numbers, leaving no room for the delicate planets we inhabit to form.
It was precisely because of this “imperfect, exquisite imperfection (fluctuation)”—a deviation of one part in 100,000—that stars were born, the building blocks for life were formed, and we exist. The universe is not something striving for perfection; it is the cradle of life, driven by this exquisite error (fluctuation).
The Creative Dynamism Born from Imperfection
In human society, we often seek “uniformity” and “perfection.” Yet the truth of the universe tells us: “Perfect uniformity is death (stagnation), while minute fluctuations (individual differences, deviations, imperfections) give birth to complex creations (life and civilization) in the next dimension.“The “small discomforts” and “slight
deviations” in your life and society are not errors to be eliminated. They are the very seeds of gravity (potential) necessary to form a vast galaxy (achievement) in the future. They are indispensable elements under the laws of the universe.
The world one second before the birth of the universe: “A scorching extreme state without even atoms”
What existed before 380,000 years ago? Though light cannot directly observe it, modern particle physics theory and calculations vividly reconstruct that era.
The Birth of a 10-Billion-Degree Universe and Its “Particles”
The further back in time we go, the more compressed the universe becomes, and the higher its temperature soars. Between 0.1 seconds and several
minutes after the Big Bang, the universe’s temperature reached a staggering 10 billion degrees.
In this super-high-temperature state, even the “nuclei” that should exist within atoms couldn’t form due to the overwhelming heat (particle collision energy), scattering wildly apart. In
other words, in the world before about 0.1 seconds after the universe’s birth, not even the “building blocks of matter” like hydrogen or helium existed. It was a world where countless protons, neutrons, and electrons flew about individually in a frenzied state.
However, as the universe expanded and its temperature gradually decreased, protons and neutrons began to bind together.Light atomic nuclei like deuterium, helium, and lithium were sequentially synthesized within an incredibly short timeframe—”within about 10 minutes” after the universe’s birth. The proportions of atoms produced during these “first 10 minutes,” derived from theoretical calculations
, perfectly match the proportions of atoms existing in the current universe 13.8 billion years later. Even at this point, modern physics provides a perfect answer.
Time is a “created thing”
This dramatic evolution within “just a few minutes” of the early universe powerfully suggests the relativity of the “time” we perceive. Within the vast history of “13.8 billion years,” the fundamental rules governing matter and the distribution of elements were determined within the first “few minutes to tens of minutes.”
The “one second” we experience daily and the “one second” within the extreme conditions of cosmic creation share the same rhythmic tick of the clock, yet the density of information folded within them is incomparable.Going
further back in time, as the universe contracted toward a singularity, time itself compressed alongside space, eventually becoming inseparable from energy. In other words, the concept of time itself is not absolute; it is merely a parameter that acquired meaning later, during the process of the universe expanding and cooling.
The infinite history compressed into the instant called “now”
The oxygen we unconsciously inhale now, the carbon that makes up our bodies—trace their origins, and they all stem from “parts forged in the first minutes of the universe” or “parts created inside stars,” which gathered together after an unimaginable 13.8 billion-year journey. Before
being merely a collection of physical matter, you are the direct remnant of a “10-billion-degree cosmic fireball.“The self is not a detached, solitary entity, but the very forefront (a fractal part) of a grand history directly connected by a single thread from the beginning of the universe to this very moment.
The explosive expansion of vacuum energy that triggered the Big Bang
But what happens before that, when temperatures become infinitely high? While
physics has not yet fully elucidated this, it is believed that before the “Big Bang era (super-high temperature state),” there existed a completely different phase. This is the “Inflation Theory.“
0.00…(30 zeros)…1 second of “insane expansion”
Inflation is, literally, the phenomenon of space “rapidly swelling.” It occurred in the fleeting instant “
0.00… (30 zeros)…1 second” after the universe’s birth.During this extreme instant, the universe—which was smaller than we can see (about the size of an atom today)—is thought to have rapidly expanded at an incredible speed to the size of the entire observable universe today (spanning hundreds of billions of light-years). This was an “insane level of exponential expansion,” exceeding the dimensions of speed we can comprehend.
During this expansion, it wasn’t objects moving violently; rather, “space itself” was being stretched. Consequently, particles didn’t collide to generate heat. In other words, the temperature during this inflation was effectively near “zero” – an extremely cold universe.
However, the energy inherent in space itself, which was driving this expansion, suddenly snapped and transformed into immense thermal energy in an instant. This is the true nature of the fiery moment we call the Big Bang (the beginning of the fireball universe). The flame of the Big Bang was first ignited the instant inflation ended.
The Paradox of the Universe Born from Nothing
So why was the energy capable of triggering this “super-rapid expansion (inflation)” lurking in empty space to begin with? This is
where quantum mechanics comes into play.In the world of quantum mechanics, a state of “complete nothingness” or “vacuum” does not exist. Energy is constantly being created and annihilated due to minute probabilistic fluctuations (vacuum fluctuations). This leads to the conclusion that even the immense energy that triggered inflation was nothing more than a “quantum mechanical fluctuation within the vacuum (a non-real number domain)” that existed even before the birth of the universe.
The world we inhabit is an “amplification of quantum mechanical errors.”
Viewing this fact from above reveals the ultimate truth.
The “quantum mechanical fluctuations driven by vacuum energy” that occurred during the inflationary period. These microscopic fluctuations were fixed by the space expanding at a frenzied pace, became the heat of the Big Bang, and were transcribed into the “one-hundred-thousandth-of-a-percent clump in the soup” of the universe. And that clump created the gravitational web, formed stars, became galaxies, became Earth, and created you and me.
The entire history of the universe can even be described as a grand fractal—a self-similar pattern—where the quantum fluctuation that occurred 13.8 billion years ago has simply continued to expand exponentially. Our
very existence is nothing less than a “massive macro phenomenon” that blossomed from the seed of information imprinted in the extreme instant 0.00…1 seconds after the universe’s birth, just like countless galaxies.
The Meaning of the Future and Our “Now”
The history of the universe depicted by modern physics unfolds on a scale far beyond our puny comprehension, with a dynamism beyond imagination. The universe, which began 13.
8 billion years ago as a soup of heat and light, may be heading toward a dark, cold world of death (or an entirely new, different dimension) where all galaxies eventually merge into one, leaving only a single black hole in the vast expanse.
Within this immense flow of time, the era we live in now—where stars shine, life emerges, and consciousness can perceive the universe itself—is an unimaginably brief “temporary oasis.”
Incorporating a cosmic perspective (universe shift) into daily life
Knowing this grand narrative, how should we approach our daily lives?
- Embrace Absolute Self-Affirmation
You did not arise isolated by chance, but are part of a beautiful structure born within the cosmic inevitability stemming from quantum fluctuations 13.8 billion years ago. Every single cell, every ripple of thought, is a distant echo of inflationary energy. Here lies the ultimate self-affirmation: “Simply being alive holds meaning within cosmic history.” - Liberation from Attachment (The Ultimate Metacognition)
Relationship troubles, social failures, anxieties about the future. Subjectively, these appear as enormous walls, but measured against “the scale and lifespan of the universe proven by physics,” they are merely fleeting friction between particles.When facing problems, adopting the powerful meta-perspective that “I am a sentient being standing at the forefront of 13.8 billion years of evolution” liberates you from attachment and enables optimal judgment. - Embrace “imperfection” and relish the fluctuations in
action. Remember: if the universe were uniform and perfect, nothing would ever have been born.Daily, harmonious routines (perfection) bring comfort, but no evolution. Occasionally experience the extraordinary, meet new people, step into unknown territories. That “conscious fluctuation and irregularity” is precisely the catalyst that gives birth to countless new “stars (parallel futures)” in your life.
Yasunori Nomura speaks of “the second before the universe was born, unknown to anyone.” This is not some distant, irrelevant tale from the past. It is the ultimate, lifelong scenario that unravels the very essence of your existence, right here, right now.
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