the Day Universe Began: From Big Bang to First Stars and Galaxies: 1

How did everything begin? Long before Earth, the Sun or even the first star existed, the universe was hotter, denser and stranger than anything we see today. Space itself expanded. Particles formed from energy. Matter survived a near-perfect struggle with antimatter. The first atomic nuclei appeared, light was released from a brilliant cosmic fog, and gravity slowly gathered gas into the earliest stars and galaxies. The Day the Universe Began takes young readers on an extraordinary journey through the first chapters of cosmic history. Discover why the Big Bang was not an explosion into empty space, how scientists use ancient light to look billions of years into the past, why most matter in the universe cannot be seen, and how the first stars changed the cosmos forever. Written in clear, accessible language without oversimplifying the science, this serious and exciting introduction distinguishes firmly established evidence from leading theories and unanswered questions. From quantum particles and the cosmic microwave background to dark matter, supernovae and the formation of the Milky Way, each chapter reveals how scientists have reconstructed events that happened long before humans existed. The first volume in the five-book From Stardust to Us series, this is the remarkable story of how a hot, nearly uniform early universe became a cosmos filled with light, structure and possibility-and how the long chain of events leading eventually to us began.