Stone

Where did it all begin? Wrong question. In the beginning, there was no “where”. There was nothing at all! No space, no time. Nothing except an infinitely tiny blob of matter, billions of times smaller than an atom. Everything that now exists was concentrated in that little blob. Then, around fourteen billion years ago, the blob exploded and gave birth to time and space. Within just a few minutes, it had expanded to form a vast space full of fiery hot matter. After 700,000 years, the temperature had cooled down from a hundred billion degrees to three thousand degrees. Space was full of billions of swirling clouds of gas and dust. In one of them, a nucleus formed, surrounded by a flat disc-shaped dust cloud. That nucleus became the star we call the sun. And the disc-shaped cloud condensed to form planets. Like planet Earth.