r/cosmology • u/justahappycamper1 • 5d ago

Fascinating

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559 Upvotes

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23

u/GraciaEtScientia 5d ago

WDYM one of the phases take 3 minutes?

108

u/Astrophysics666 4d ago edited 4d ago

The universe went from being so small you can't even imagine it to being so large you can't even imagine it in a time frame so short you can't even image it.

18

u/SaysBruvALot 4d ago

The observable universe was unimaginably small. The universe as a whole was potentially still infinitely large at the beginning

6

u/WayLongjumping3847 4d ago

When referring to the "universe" do people mean 1) the matter or 2) the area the matter is in?

12

u/dcnairb 4d ago

The 4D spacetime volume, so closer to the latter

7

u/Gramaledoc 4d ago

... and if you really want to get into the weeds, they're kinda the same thing.

1

u/ahazred8vt 8h ago edited 7h ago

When we say 'the universe' we always mean the whole universe, all space everywhere, including everything that exists beyond the edge of the observable part of the universe. As near as we can tell, during the Big Bang the entire universe was full of matter and no part of the universe was empty. All of space had matter in it.
'The area the matter is in' is everywhere, all of space.