If we're to go back to the Big Bang, or as close to that as we can get, we think we would find ourselves at a moment a fraction of a second after the beginning of time.
About Jo Dunkley
"I am the Joseph Henry Professor of Physics and Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University. I am a 2015 Philip Leverhulme Prize Winner.
My research is in cosmology, studying the origins and evolution of the Universe. My major projects are the Atacama Cosmology Telescope and the Simons Observatory. I have been the analysis leader for ACT for the past few years, and am currently the Spokesperson of the Simons Observatory. I am a Fellow of the Royal Society."
Key Points
• The universe is roughly 14 billion years old, with just 5% ordinary matter and the rest dark components we still don’t understand.
• General relativity shows how mass curves space-time, letting gravity shape galaxies, stars and planets.
• When atoms formed 380,000 years after the Big Bang, light finally streamed freely, leaving the cosmic microwave background whose tiny ripples became today’s structures.
• The Big Bang was uniform expansion everywhere, not an explosion from a point, so the universe has no center.
