The First 100 Seconds

In astrophysics, there are many epochs that occurred in the first 100 seconds of the universe. We will simplify things a bit and call them one epoch here. The details are fascinating, but it is a lot of particle physics to absorb, and we don’t need to get too bogged down talking about hadrons, leptons, and other particles. Just keep in mind that all the things that make up atoms were freely floating about in a really, really hot, radioactive soup of the universe.

Those particles floating about were the first things to exist. Indeed, the universe itself was even becoming the first thing to exist. It’s easy to think of the Big Bang as something that exploded out in space, but the truth of those first seconds of the universe is far weirder than that.

The Big Bang didn’t explode out into an empty universe. The Big Bang was the universe itself exploding outwards. There was no “outside” to explode into. Even empty space didn’t exist. Even time, as we understand it, might not have existed before the “0”-Point launched the Big Bang.

This was the first dramatic Complexification event we know to have occurred. As such, it was fairly easy to fulfill the requirements of Complexification occurring. 89

Did it create something fundamentally new? Yes. There was nothing beforehand, so anything would have to be considered fundamentally new and different.

profound way? Yes. It started the world, giving us energy, particles and the Fundamental Forces that currently govern the universe.

For Potentialism, we can call this a single epoch because, while different particles were forming during this time, that would be considered complexity and not Complexification. Remember the rule of Complexification here: Something fundamentally more complex would have to be created. A new type of particle is not fundamentally more complex than an already existing one, so we consider it just a rise in complexity.

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