Wonders of the Universe

THE EARLY UNIVERSE

In order to understand where we come from we have to understand events that happened in the first few seconds of the life of the Universe. When the Universe began it was unimaginably hot and dense – we literally don’t have the scientific language to describe it. It was beautiful in a very real sense. There was no structure, there was certainly no matter, and it was exactly the same whichever way you looked at it. It’s a difficult concept to grasp, but we can get some idea of what happened to the early Universe by looking at the behaviour of one of the most common substances on Earth: water.

Water is one of the most common substances on Earth, but it can produce some of the most spectacular geological wonders on our planet. The El Tatio Geysers in Chile are just one example of water’s awesome activity.

© Charles O’Rear/CORBIS

One of Earth’s most incredible natural wonders, the El Tatio Geysers make up the largest geyser field in the world. As they are located at a height of 4,200 metres (13,800 feet) in the Chilean Andes, they are also the highest.