00:00Could it be that the entire universe is nothing more than a simple atom?
00:05When you look at a diagram of an atom, which is a basic element of any matter,
00:09you can see that some patterns of the universe are repeated.
00:13Our solar system is an excellent example of this.
00:16There is a giant central star and some small planets that gravitate around it.
00:20You also observe the same arrangement outside our galaxy,
00:24with exoplanets orbiting around their stars.
00:27And you can also testify to this principle on a smaller scale.
00:30This is how particles called protons and neutrons move around the center of an atom,
00:35which is called the core.
00:37So, imagine that you have a positive pile of magnets that you try to stack together.
00:41They continue to repel each other, don't they?
00:44This is what is supposed to happen with protons in an atom.
00:47They are all positively charged, so they should repel each other
00:51and spread in all directions.
00:54But atoms exist, so there must be something that keeps them together.
00:58And this thing is called the strong interaction, or strong force.
01:02The core represents less than 0.01% of the volume of the entire atom,
01:07but it generally represents more than 99.9% of the mass of the atom,
01:12again, similar to our sun.
01:15Anyway, this strong interaction is like a special type of glue
01:18that keeps protons and neutrons together in the core of an atom.
01:22In a similar way, gravity prevents us from flying from the ground to the darkness of space.
01:29Now, this glue comes from very small particles inside protons and neutrons called quarks.
01:35These little guys have a kind of strange charge called color.
01:39It's not like the colors we see around us.
01:42It works like a code that helps quarks stay together inside their high particles.
01:47And this code also infiltrates
01:49and helps to keep protons and neutrons together in the core.
01:53In a way, quarks are like little builders
01:56who work together to build atoms that make up everything around us.
02:00The Big Bang was said to be a magnificent moment when we got time and space.
02:05It's the story we use to explain the evolution of the universe.
02:09At first, there was only a very, very small ball of matter the size of a fish,
02:14but with a temperature of more than a quadrillion degrees.
02:17Ouch, it's hot.
02:19And this bang in the name does not mean that there really was an explosion in space.
02:25This fish began to spread, and space appeared everywhere.
02:29This gave birth to atoms, molecules, stars,
02:33and many celestial bodies that filled the empty space of our cosmos.
02:38Essentially, all the elements that make up us formed in a few minutes at the first stage of the universe,
02:44let's say about one hundredth of a billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second.
02:49Oh wait, give me a second to deal with this three years later.
02:53Very well, let's continue.
02:55Growth at this time was incredible.
02:57The universe spread exponentially and managed to double in size at least 90 times,
03:03like me during the holidays.
03:04Haha, I love chocolate.
03:06After the Big Bang, the universe was a hot and dense soup of particles,
03:10too hot for atoms to exist.
03:12But 390,000 years later, it cooled down enough for electrons to mix with the nucleus and form atoms.
03:20It's a process we call recombination.
03:23And that's what made the universe transparent.
03:25Think of it as if you were turning on a switch.
03:28Suddenly, you can see everything.
03:30But it's not because the universe has become transparent that it was luminous.
03:34It was a dark period, because there were no stars or galaxies yet,
03:38like a large empty canvas waiting for something to be painted on it.
03:41It was only much later, as the universe continued to evolve,
03:45that stars and other luminous objects began to form and illuminate the darkness.
03:51And it continued to evolve, filling itself with planets, asteroids, galaxies and other things.
03:58Okay, so that's the story we've been told for a few decades.
04:02And I must admit that it is pretty good.
04:05Scientists have studied it in detail.
04:07They observed the residual electromagnetic radiation of the young universe.
04:11They measured the presence of the lightest elements,
04:14to realize that they all correspond to the history of the Big Bang.
04:18The new theories do not say that the Big Bang did not take place.
04:21It is a good representation of the cosmos at its beginning.
04:24But it's like an unfinished puzzle with missing important pieces.
04:28We cannot explain what happened before the Big Bang using our current physics.
04:34So we need new mathematics to explain the delicate parts, like the so-called singularity.
04:40It is the point of infinite density, you remember, since the beginning of the Big Bang.
04:44And that's where the string theory comes into play,
04:47like a powerful toolbox capable of handling gravity and all the other combined forces.
04:52Now, one of the ideas that the string theory has brought us is the expiratory universe.
04:58Imagine a big fire that triggers another, and this fire triggers another, and so on.
05:04Well, in this scenario, the Big Bang was not the beginning of everything.
05:08It was just part of a larger process.
05:11It is the idea of the cyclic universe, of endless Russian mountains,
05:15with Big Bangs as a beginning and Big Crunches as an end,
05:19happening again and again, potentially forever.
05:23It's like the universe was constantly pressing the reset button.
05:27And it does it in a really funny way.
05:30We could consider this singularity, according to some theories,
05:34as a single particle in a much larger system.
05:37Just like an atom is composed of subatomic particles.
05:40And taking all this into account,
05:42the idea is that each nucleus of an atom could contain a universe in it.
05:46Thus, our entire universe is only a tiny part of an atom
05:50in a much larger universe made of atoms with more cosmos with more atoms with more cosmos.
05:56So confusing.
05:59The first versions of the idea of the cyclic universe still had a big problem.
06:04They did not correspond to our observations of the cosmological diffuse background,
06:08a fossil light that shows what the universe looked like when it was only 380,000 years old.
06:13Thus, in March 2020, two Canadian physicists, Robert Brandenberger and Ziwei Wang,
06:19published a study that revealed the mathematics behind the cyclic universe
06:23that we had missed before.
06:25If we focus on the moment when the universe shrinks to an incredibly small point,
06:30then bounces back to a state of Big Bang,
06:33we could finally be able to match our observations.
06:37We just have to wait for new experiments to fully test this idea.
06:42The Great Unified Era.
06:44This is how we call the era when the universe was still young.
06:47At that time, matter and antimatter, which are like mirror images of each other,
06:52existed in approximately equal quantities.
06:55But since they are opposite forces, when they come into contact with each other,
07:00they are destroyed in a powerful explosion, like fireworks.
07:04This means that even if matter and antimatter were constantly created and destroyed,
07:09in one way or another, there was always a little more matter than antimatter,
07:13which is a good thing, because otherwise we would be left with nothing.
07:17Over time, particles began to assemble and form more complex things,
07:21like atoms and molecules.
07:23And finally, stars were formed and created even heavier elements.
07:28But one day, in a very, very long time, all these stars will go out.
07:33When the last star cools down slowly and goes out,
07:36the universe will turn into a dark vacuum, without life, light,
07:40or whatever we know or suppose exists.
07:43At some point, voracious black holes will devour all matter in space.
07:48Finally, even these black holes will evaporate into the tiniest amount of light.
07:54Our cosmos will continue to expand.
07:56Light will disperse and will be unable to interact with anything.
08:01Thus, all activity in the universe will stop.
08:04Space will become a huge void, without stars, planets, or anything else,
08:10and it will stop there.
08:11Or it will start right there.
08:13And maybe that's where we'll end up.
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