this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2026
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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.
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.
It probably would never appear green, due to the black-body radiation distribution. When the peak is at green, it just looks like white to us. Our sun is kinda a "green" star due to this
But it would go from blue to white to red. Similar colour progression that we can find in the distribution of stars
Indeed! Good point! For some reason, I was under the impression that the CMB was monochromatic (corresponding to a red shifted equivalent of the precise energy of W and Z boson annihilation to produce photons). Thanks!!