In the beginning, about 15 to 20 billion years ago, everything was a small particle of dense, hot dust. That particle finally exploded from that size and it has been expanding ever since. This is what many people call the Big Bang, where the perfect 10-dimensional universe was created. 10 seconds after this, the 10-dimensional universe became unstable and collapsed into four dimensions, our universe which is still expanding. In addition, a six- dimensional, "sister" universe which scientists say has curled into the size of the Planck length, 100 billion billion times smaller than a proton-sized ball, was also created. 10 seconds after the creation of the universe, quarks began to condense into neutrons and protons. Quarks are what heavy particles are made of.

Three minutes after, the protons, made up of three quarks, joined with gluons, and the neutrons condensed into stable nuclei. Three hundred thousand years after this enormous explosion, the air cooled. Until now, the universe had not cooled off enough for the electrons to begin circling the protons and neutrons. This meant atoms couldnąt be formed. They would start to develop but be ripped apart by the temperature. When the atoms could finally condense, our universe began forming.

Five billion years later, the first galaxies appeared. In an additional five to­ ten billion years after, our solar system was born. It took a few billion more years after all of that for the first life forms to appear on earth.