00:01In the moments following the Big Bang, the universe expanded rapidly a process known as cosmic inflation.
00:07This inflation was so fast that distances between points in space stretched faster than the speed of light.
00:13However, because space itself was expanding, no laws of physics were violated.
00:17As the universe expanded, it began to cool.
00:20In that cooling, particles began to form first quarks, then protons, neutrons, and electrons.
00:25These fundamental building blocks, still unfathomably small and energetic, would one day form the atoms that make up everything we see around us from the air we breathe to the stars that shine in distant galaxies.
00:36West of the first few hundred thousand years, the universe remained an opaque plaza, a seething hot soup of particles and radiation.
00:43It wasn't until the universe cooled enough for electrons to combine with protons and neutrons to form hydrogen and helium atoms that light could travel freely through space.
00:52This moment is known as the era of recombination and it marks the point at which the universe became transparent.
