The Planck Epoch
13.80 billion years ago
The Edge of Knowledge
What came before everything? Before stars, before atoms, before the explosion we call the Big Bang, there was the Planck Epoch — the first 10⁻⁴³ seconds of time. In that sliver, the four forces that govern the universe today (gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force) were fused into a single undifferentiated energy. Space-time was not a smooth fabric but a churning quantum foam. Gravity was as strong as the nuclear forces. Every particle, every law of physics, every star that would ever burn descends from what happened here.
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What came before everything? Before stars, before atoms, before the explosion we call the Big Bang, there was the Planck Epoch — the first 10⁻⁴³ seconds of time. In that sliver, the four forces that govern the universe today (gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force) were fused into a single undifferentiated energy. Space-time was not a smooth fabric but a churning quantum foam. Gravity was as strong as the nuclear forces. Every particle, every law of physics, every star that would ever burn descends from what happened here.