The essence of life as we know it was produced in the first three minutes after the beginning of the universe. By this, I mean the stuff that we and the Earth are made of, particles of matter that we call baryons. But well before the baryons were created, the universe began from virtually nothing. There was empty space, and time, but no more. Yet within instants, thanks to the occurrence of quantum fluctuations, it attained its huge size, homogeneity and isotropy. The universe is enormous, it is relatively uniform when we smooth over the galaxies, and it looks the same in all directions. More remarkably, during this enormous inflation of space, the universe very early on developed the seeds from which all structure eventually formed.

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-first-three-minutes-of-creation

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.

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