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To understand it, we go back to the early moments of time and space.
Not long after its explosive beginnings, the universe was awash in vast stores of hydrogen
gas.
All was dark, until change began to sweep over the cosmos.
Even as the universe expanded, gravity began to rein it in.
Vast clumps of matter began to form, drawing together in ever-denser concentrations.
The earliest stars began to take shape, immense balls of hydrogen gas, hundreds of times the
mass of our sun.
As they contracted inward, they heated up, and ignited.
The universe lit up.
Intense radiation now began to flow through the voids. That had the effect, all through
the universe, of stripping electrons away from the primordial gas.
The universe became filled, not with solids, liquid, or gas, but with a fourth state of
matter: plasma.