• Rooskie91@discuss.online
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    12 hours ago

    If that blows your mind then think about this: As the universe expanded after the Big Bang, it cooled from unimaginably high temperatures. In principle, this suggest that there could have been a very short window much later, tens of millions of years after the Big Bang, when the background temperature of the entire universe was capable of sustaining life everywhere. Some physicists have suggested this might have created a brief, universe-wide “habitable epoch,” though this remains theoretical.

    I’m not an expert, so this is probably not a muture understanding, but it’s cool to imagine a universe where life was incredibly abundant.

    Edit: I got this idea from a video, and I found it! Please transfer all criticism of my comment to this video.

    • 8baanknexer@lemmy.world
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      13 hours ago

      I’m skeptical of this. Life doesn’t just need a certain temperature, it needs to convert lower entropy energy to higher entropy. A uniform environment temperature does not provide any usable energy. You would still need a star or some other energy source.

      • cynar@lemmy.world
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        24 minutes ago

        It also needs something that can form complex molecules. The lightest element we know of that can form these is carbon. That didn’t appear in reasonable quantities until the first stars exploded.

    • marcos@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      but it’s cool to imagine a universe where life was incredibly abundant

      There was probably nothing but helium, hydrogen and a tiny bit of lithium at that period.

    • OpenStars@piefed.social
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      14 hours ago

      Well, “life as we know it”. But for all we know energy rather than matter-based beings could have existed more readily back then, and perhaps struggle to exist now under lower density conditions. Thereby making that earlier era more habitable for their type of life, even as our current era is more habitable for our own type.

    • wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      More weird to me is that, at some point before the first stars, the entire universe glowed through the entire rainbow, so there is a moment when, were you to travel back in time, the entire universe would glow blindingly green.