At one second old, our universe was dominated by a soup of fundamental particles, with a remarkably uniform temperature and density across vast distances. The seeds of all the structures we see today, from galaxies to planets, were already present as tiny fluctuations in this primordial soup. These fluctuations were amplified over time through gravitational interactions, leading to the formation of larger structures through hierarchical merging. The physical laws governing these processes were set in place at the universe's birth, suggesting that the evolution of the universe and the emergence of complex structures like galaxies, stars, and life were potentially encoded in the initial conditions of the universe.
