Big Bang and Fries, Please

The Referee has recently experienced what might euphemistically be called a "significant" birthday.

In the context of birthdays, "significant" usually means (i) that the second digit is zero, and/or (ii) that the first digit is quite large. In my case, both of these apply.

Now, I don't know about you, but in my experience of birthdays where the second digit is a 0, the first digit tends to be a 3 or, on one occasion I can still remember, even a 2. So when it is a larger number than either of these, one is entitled to be a little surprised, not to mention concerned.

But, as I was on the verge of becoming anxious about this situation, the good old New York Times came to the rescue.

This week, the Times reports that astronomers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, have come a step closer to proving what happened in the first trillionth of a second after time began.

As these experts estimate that the universe has been around for something in the region of 13.7 billion years, one could be forgiven for thinking that the odd second, let alone a trillionth of a second, was neither here nor there. Apparently not so.

The news is that there is fresh evidence to support the theory of "inflation" - ie, in the lovely words of the Times, that, in the first trillionth of a second following the Big Bang, the universe grew "from submicroscopic to astronomical size in the blink of an eye".

The journalist rather understates his case by comparing this to "the kind of growth spurt that would alarm any mom or dad". I should say so. You would hardly have time to take your receipts back to Mothercare before junior's waistline had to be measured in light years.

Now, I don't pretend to understand the science of how they work these things out, but apparently it involves mapping microwaves (the waves, not the ovens) in order to build a picture of what our 13.7 billion-year-old universe looked like after a mere 380,000 years, which provides clues as to what was going on even earlier than that.

One of the conclusions of this technique is that the first stars probably didn't start shining until 400 million years after the Big Bang. This is apparently something of a relief to many astronomers, who had been concerned that the previous estimate of 200 million years was "surprisingly early".

Enough to make you feel young, isn't it?