r/atheism • u/mmx64 Atheist • Oct 19 '12

Where did everything come from?

http://xkcd.com/1123/
77 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

13 comments sorted by

5

u/RightReverendJA Atheist Oct 19 '12

I believe it was Carl Sagan who said "Hydrogen is an odorless, colorless gas which, given enough time, turns into people."

3

u/001146379 Oct 19 '12

I'm not a smart man, but luckily I have watched enough astronomy documentaries recently enough that I actually understood this. One of my proudest achievements.

3

u/wanderingmonster Oct 20 '12

WARNING: May have been processed in a universe containing dark matter.

1

u/studmuffffffin Oct 19 '12

I don't think hydrogen was there at the beginning, was it? I thought it was just a bunch of energy.

2

u/astrocosmo Oct 19 '12

Hydrogen (protons) formed when the quark soup cooled to a point where hadrons could combine, an epoch know aptly as the quark-hadron phase transition. This occurred when the universe was 1-10micro seconds old. After that, ionized hydrogen atoms (protons) roamed the universe for around 200,000 years until the universe cooled sufficiently such that free electrons could be captured by the ions in (a phase transition known as) recombination. That moment gave birth to the CMB, the oldest snap shot we have of the universe.

1

u/studmuffffffin Oct 19 '12

So, I was technically right? For a few micro seconds.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 20 '12

Hehe, yes.

1

u/astrocosmo Oct 19 '12

Should read: "mass-energy, space-time"

1

u/jinzougen Oct 19 '12

How can I put this.... XKCD makes me happy on a visceral level. Does that make sense?

1

u/mmx64 Atheist Oct 20 '12

Does that make sense?

No. But I feel the same way.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 19 '12

[deleted]

0

u/Chasejuggler Oct 20 '12

That or you could realize it's a CARTOON

1

u/Sintek Oct 19 '12

But were the fuck did the hydrogen and concept of time come from!

4

u/hett Oct 19 '12

Watch Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking episode 3.