Reddit reviews The First Three Minutes: A Modern View Of The Origin Of The Universe

During at least the first three minutes after the Big Bang started, the universe was too energetic ("hot") for atoms or even atomic nuclei to exist. Nothing could protect someone from that.

During the nucleosynthesis era, which is theorized to have occurred when the universe was between 3 minutes and 20 minutes old, it was so hot that atomic nuclei were formed via atomic fusion. Temperatures would have been comparable to, but mostly hotter than, the core of a star. Nothing could protect someone from that.

After that, the universe continued to expand and cool. But it was so hot that the cooling took a long time - for the next 300,000 years, the universe consisted of a hot plasma consisting of hydrogen and helium nuclei, along with free electrons. In other words, it was still too hot for atoms to form. This is comparable to the environment in the middle to outer layers of a star. Nothing could protect someone from that.

Another point about this period is that the universe was opaque - light couldn't travel very far without being absorbed. So even if you had some magical technology that would allow an astronaut to survive during this period, they would not be able to see anything other than deadly-bright radiation in all directions, which would have to be heavily filtered by their magical protective bubble to avoid vaporizing them.

After about 380,000 years, things had cooled enough for hydrogen and helium atoms to begin to form. It's only after this point that temperatures and density are at a point where it starts to become conceivable that a human could survive it. The problem now is that there are no stars yet, so nothing to see. This period is known as the "Dark Era" because of that - the universe is full of (relatively) cold, dark atoms of hydrogen and helium, and the only light is the leftover radiation from the earlier period when things were hotter - the same light that today, we can detect as the Cosmic Microwave Background. It wouldn't have been microwaves back then, but it would slowly be fading from a reddish glow into the infrared.

This period lasted for at least 150 million years before gravitational collapse began to form objects like quasars. So if the goal is to see interesting things, that would be the first time there'd be something to observe.

There are many online sources that discuss the history of the early universe, e.g. http://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/topics_bigbang_timeline.html

There's also a well-known book by Nobel prize winning physicist Steven Weinberg called The First Three Minutes. The physics is a little out of date now, but for an overall understanding of the early universe it's still an excellent book.

This should keep you busy, but I can suggest books in other areas if you want.

Math books:
Algebra: http://www.amazon.com/Algebra-I-M-Gelfand/dp/0817636773/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251516690&sr=8
Calc: http://www.amazon.com/Calculus-4th-Michael-Spivak/dp/0914098918/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1356152827&sr=1-1&keywords=spivak+calculus
Calc: http://www.amazon.com/Linear-Algebra-Dover-Books-Mathematics/dp/048663518X
Linear algebra: http://www.amazon.com/Linear-Algebra-Modern-Introduction-CD-ROM/dp/0534998453/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255703167&sr=8-4
Linear algebra: http://www.amazon.com/Linear-Algebra-Dover-Mathematics-ebook/dp/B00A73IXRC/ref=zg_bs_158739011_2

Beginning physics:
http://www.amazon.com/Feynman-Lectures-Physics-boxed-set/dp/0465023827

Advanced stuff, if you make it through the beginning books:
E&M: http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Electrodynamics-Edition-David-Griffiths/dp/0321856562/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375653392&sr=8-1&keywords=griffiths+electrodynamics
Mechanics: http://www.amazon.com/Classical-Dynamics-Particles-Systems-Thornton/dp/0534408966/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375653415&sr=8-1&keywords=marion+thornton
Quantum: http://www.amazon.com/Principles-Quantum-Mechanics-2nd-Edition/dp/0306447908/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375653438&sr=8-1&keywords=shankar

Cosmology -- these are both low level and low math, and you can probably handle them now:
http://www.amazon.com/Spacetime-Physics-Edwin-F-Taylor/dp/0716723271
http://www.amazon.com/The-First-Three-Minutes-Universe/dp/0465024378/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1356155850&sr=8-1&keywords=the+first+three+minutes

If you're really curious about this, Steven Weinberg (a nobel laureate in physics) wrote an excellent book for the general public that covers the entire first 3 minutes.

Sure, I know you're not looking for a debate so I won't drag you into one.

But from my experience a lot of people who claim to have been an atheist who suddenly found religion weren't really atheists to begin with, but instead were just "apatheists"--they didn't think much about it or cared.

The way you totally dismissed the big bang is telling. There are graduate-level courses and massive textbooks out there that break down the fractions of a fraction of a fraction of a second-by-second recount of what happened immediately after the big bang. You can't discount all that research and theory as "zero evidence" unless you've really never engaged in it before.

https://youtu.be/9jKzBOMf4bo?t=714

https://www.amazon.com/First-Three-Minutes-Modern-Universe/dp/0465024378

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang

Anyway, it's usually other people who drag these apatheists into the faith, and they stay there because of the community and sense of belonging that they lacked before. I get that. It has nothing to do with the real world or science or evidence, it's just community.

Or maybe there's an unexplainable moment that was deeply emotional, like a religious experience.

I was just curious if your story differed at all from that. It's a topic that's very interesting to me.