A Short History of Nearly Everything

To begin with, for you to be here now trillions of drifting atoms had somehow to assemble in an intricate and intriguingly obliging manner to create you.

The bad news is that atoms are fickle and their time of devotion is fleeting—fleeting indeed.

The only thing special about the atoms that make you is that they make you. That is of course the miracle of life.

It may be that our universe is merely part of many larger universes, some in different dimensions, and that Big Bangs are going on all the time all over the place.

For the longest time there wasn't. There were no atoms and no universe for them to float about in. There was nothing—nothing at all anywhere.

To be here now, alive in the twenty-first century and smart enough to know it, you also had to be the beneficiary of an extraordinary string of biological good fortune.

So, from nothing, our universe begins.

It has no dimensions at all. It is known as a singularity.

In the first lively second... produced gravity and the other forces that govern physics.

There are many universes, possibly an infinite number...