It occurred to me earlier today as i was watching "Through the Wormhole" After the big bang happened, how long was it before visible light was existent. :shrug: Lets say, for arguments sake, the big bang happened and 0. It might have been 1 or 2 before visible light was existent, on the other hand, it might have been 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 before visible light was existent (this is no measurement of time, just an example). When the big bang happened the 4 key forces in our universe were separated, and the only elements that existed were hydrogen and helium. How long would it have taken for that empty space to cool down to allow the helium and hydrogen to create the first sign of visible wavelengths of light? For a star to form, at first it must be fairly close to absolute zero so that the electrons in the atoms slow down enough for gravity to take hold and can pull individual atoms together, after enough of both hydrogen and helium atoms form into a small sphere, they begin to heat up due to friction and compression, and eventually ignite into a star. Could this event, witch typically takes billions of years have happened within the first microseconds of the big bang? Or could the number 13.7 billion simply be a guess at when the first signs of visible light were created? For all we know, the universe could be hundreds of billions of years old, or even trillions of years old.
What must be close to absolute zero? If you mean the average temperature of the universe then you are wrong, when stars first formed the temperature was quite high.
Well, this is just a loose theory. But still, we don't actually "know" what happened. We can only make educated guesses. This is just my tid-bit thought on the beginnings of the universe.
