You are made of more atoms than there are stars in the universe. In Atomic Universe , we follow just one of those atoms on an astonishing journey backwards through time - all the way to the Big Bang. Moving in reverse through the history of everything, you'll witness the birth of stars, feel the violence of the collision that created Earth, and imagine the first sound ever to break the silence of the cosmos. As the clock runs backwards, the vast timeline of the universe begins to collapse: millions of years become minutes, minutes become seconds, until there are just 15 minutes to go. a nanosecond. and then, at last, the instant of the Big Bang itself. Along the way, Atomic Universe also tells the remarkable story of the atom - one of the smallest things in existence, yet the key to understanding almost everything we can (and can't) see. Through the discoveries that revealed the atom's secrets, the book shows how the unimaginably tiny and the unimaginably vast are inextricably linked - and how we are all part of that same cosmic story.