A Short History of Nearly Everything

Bryson opens the chapter by talking about protons, “the infinitesimal part of an atom.” Protons are the basic building blocks of life, yet they’re so small that “a little dib of ink like the dot on this ican hold something in the region of 500,000,000,000 of them, rather more than the number of seconds contained in half a million years” (9). Despite their miniscule size, protons were fundamental to the creation of the universe. In a theory known as singularity, the creation of the universe occurred when every single particle of existence, every single atom, was squeezed into a space so small that it had no dimensions at all.It is hypothesized, although no one knows for certain, that this moment of singularity combined with a big bang created the universe. Yet, the mystery remains how, from nothing, the universe was birthed.

There is controversy in the scientific community regarding when the moment of creation occurred—some argue that it was 10 billion years ago, while others hypothesize twice that number. While the exact date of creation can never be known, The Big Bang is the most widely accepted theory for how creation came about. The theory was first made in the 1960s, when Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, two radio astronomers, discovered a persistent background noise coming from a large communications antenna.