Would someone be willing to translate the first part of this into something more understandable by someone who has no idea what “envelope expansion” or “density perturbations” are? 
Also, how accurate is this history as a whole? Has anything come to light in the last 9 years that would need to be corrected? (stumbled upon this from Kottke’s remaindered links)
Before time there was nothing. Then there was something. That something expanded and cooled breaking the symmetrical forces that controlled the expansion down into 4 forces. Eventually it cooled enough that elements formed, primarily hydrogen and helium. There were small differences between regions that were greatly smoothed out by a sudden expansion of spacetime. These small regions of denser material formed stars and galaxies. Those stars died producing heavy elements. Eventually our solar system formed out of the hydrogen, helium and heavier element, the earth cooled and humans appeared and invented digital watches.
Maybe the inflation/expansion bit might have some new tweaks to them that didn’t exist back then.
Actually, just after the ‘beginning’, no one knows whether ‘something’ was there or ‘not’.
Any story will go back to ALMOST the beggining of whatever chain of events started everything. No one can take you back to the first sentence of the first chapter of the story.
In layman’s terms: Every blurple was coblumple. Maybe.
"Well, let’s see. First the earth cooled. And then the dinosaurs came, but they got too big and fat, so they all died and they turned into oil. And then the Arabs came and they bought Mercedes Benzes. And Prince Charles started wearing all of Lady Di’s clothes. I couldn’t believe it. "
I wonder if this can be rearranged in an interesting way.
First there was the observer. The observer found that it was moving in time and space, made of atoms and subject to 4 forces. The observer saw that time did not go infinitely far back but started at a point of unknown size and attribute a long time ago. Near that starting point all the 4 forces were the same … etc. etc.
“In the beginning there was the Word, and the word was Observer…”
[cybernetic ghost of christmas past]
THOUSANDS of years ago…
[/cgocp]
Let’s see:
Quantum fluctuation. Inevitably, a very speculative start. Shorthand for some process whereby the universe pops into existence. But people do speculate about the details. Whatever happened, the “size” of the universe in this state is very small compared to what comes later.
Inflation. The universe that popped up is likely to have a random instability. The whole lot falls into a more stable state. This releases vast amounts of energy. As a result, the universe expands very, very quickly in a very, very short time. Any patch of space expands by a factor of something like a billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion times in a tiny fraction of a second. Energy is also converted into mass. So we go from a small, empty universe to a relatively large one with stuff in it.
[There remains a minority of experts who have yet to be convinced by inflation. But, from here on in, the physics are the sort of effects that can either be observed in the universe today or reproduced in laboratories, so things get much more definite.]
Expansion. The extreme expansion of inflation doesn’t last forever, but having been forced into expanding, both space and stuff will continue to coast apart. We’ve now got a universe filled with an extremely hot plasma made up of subatomic particles. As the universe expands, this stuff in space both thins out and gets colder.
Strong nuclear interaction. The big thing that happens about here is baryogenesis. Initially, the stuff in the universe is balanced between matter and antimatter. But over time, the interactions between the quarks and antiquarks give rise to a tiny asymmetry between the two. By about 1 part in a billion, there’s now slightly more matter than antimatter.
Particle-antiparticle annihilation. As the temperature falls due to the expansion, virtually all the antimatter collides with matter and becomes light. That tiny difference from the last stage means that there’s a “little” matter left over. (In fact, this is pretty much what we now see as matter, so there’s actually still a lot of it.)
Deuterium and helium production. By now, all the quarks etc. have formed into protons and neutrons. It’s now all nuclear physics and these collide to form the nuclei of the lighter elements. We’ve still got a hot plasma - now of ions and electrons - filling the universe.
Density perturbations. Purely by chance, this plasma has bits that are slightly denser than others. These differences are going to be important. Because of what happens next, we can actually measure what these differences were at this time.
Recombination. With the temperature continuing to fall due to the continuing expansion, conditions reach the point where the nuclei and electrons can form atoms. We go from it being a hot plasma to a hot gas that’s mainly hydrogen, with some helium. Rather quickly, the stuff filling the universe becomes transparent for the first time.
Blackbody radiation. Because of the transparency, the light that’s also filling the universe stops interacting with the matter. Over the next 15 billion years the expansion of the universe cools this light and it’s now the famous 3K cosmic background radiation. By looking at the details of it, the density fluctuations two stages back can be measured.
Local contraction. So on to how galaxies start to form. As the gas cools, the “lumps” in it due to the density fluctuations can start to collapse under their own gravity.
Cluster formation. The gas splits into what will eventually become clusters of galaxies.
Reionization? As the lumps in the gas collapse, they start to heat up. These may reach temperatures such that the atoms split back into ions and electrons.
Violent relaxation. Virialization. I’ve put these together because they’re both technical terms for processes that take place when many bodies - in this case, all the lumps in the gas - are interacting gravitationally.
Biased galaxy formation? The lumps become individual galaxies. Here “biased” is another technical term and can be ignored.
Turbulent fragmentation. These galaxy-sized lumps break up into smaller lumps, which will eventually become stars.
Contraction. These star-sized lumps collapse even more, heating up as they do so.
Ionization. The atoms get so hot they split into nuclei and electrons.
Compression. This plasma continues to collapse under it’s own weight.
Opaque hydrogen. The hydrogen gas is getting very hot and dense.
Massive star formation. We now have lots of collapsing gas clouds, each of which is goign to become a star. But these stars are BIG compared to those that we see today.
Deuterium ignition. Stand well back. Deuterium is a form of hydrogen that’s significantly easier to fuse together than normal hydrogen. So nuclear reactions are starting in the core of the star. This baby’s gonna shine.
Hydrogen fusion. The core heats up to the point where normal hydrogen nuclei can fuse together. The temperature in the core allows the star to hold up its own weight and the collapse stops. We’ve now got lots of big stable stars that will shine happily for a good long time.
Hydrogen depletion. But, as already noted, these stars are much, much heavier than the likes of the Sun. In general, big stars burn their nuclear fuel much, much faster than the Sun. So these stars burn through their hydrogen relatively quickly.
Core contraction. Stuff like helium, produced by nuclear burning of the hydrogen, starts to build up. To maintain stability, the core of the star shrinks and gets hotter.
Envelope expansion. But this temperature increase in the core means that the outer layers of the star get pressed outward. The star expands.
Helium fusion. Temperatures in the core reach the point where helium can start to burn. This fusion in turn forms heavier nuclei. The temperature in the core keeps going up.
Carbon, oxygen, and silicon fusion. These heavier nuclei start to fuse. This star is getting into a more and more extreme state.
Iron production. The end result of the burning of the lighter nuclei is eventually iron. But you can’t get fusion energy out of iron nuclei. The star’s worked its way into a nuclear deadend.
Implosion. Getting here can have taken millions or billions of years, but the end is sudden. In about a second or two, the core gives way under the weight of the star.
Supernova explosion. The collapse of the core gives rise to a sudden burst of new nuclear processes in it. These release a shockwave in the star that blows the outer layers off. As it does so, nuclei in these layers are smashed together forming all the elements heavier than iron. The core turns itself into a big black hole.
Metals injection. Those outer layers are thrown clear. While we originally started with a star formed from mainly hydrogen, that’s now partially blown apart into a gas that’s still mainly hydrogen and helium, but which has also got all the other elements in it.
Star formation.Supernova explosions. Rinse and repeat.
Star formation. By now, the gas clouds that are forming a star are rich in heavy elements.
Condensation. As stars form, not all of the cloud falls into the centre. So the star has a cloud of gas around it. Because the star’s started shining in the middle, the cloud heats up and the lighter elements move to the outer parts of the cloud. The end result will be rocky planets near the star, gas ones further out.
Planetesimal accretion. All this stuff orbiting the star gradually bumps into each other and stick together. These become planets.
Planetary differentiation. This process of formation heats up the planets. Stuff like iron tends to sink in these molten lumps to become cores.
Crust solidification. As the planets stop growing, they can start cooling down. The outer layer hardens into a crust.
Volatile gas expulsion. The lighter gases trapped below the crust escape, either into space or to form an atmosphere. We have a young Earthlike planet.
Pretty good. I wouldn’t add anything too major, apart from baryogenesis. The area which is probably most fluid in current research, other than the first step, would be the stuff relating to galaxy formation.
It also all ignores the abiding mystery of dark matter, but that probably only plays a significant role as clusters and galaxies are forming.
That’s exatly what I thought when I saw the thread title.
whoa thanks bonzer. i’m going to be reading over that many, many times
egocentric
“In the Beginning there was nothing, which exploded.”
More the strong anthropic principle, which is pretty similar to egocentricity