What could cause the spontaneous appearance of a universe? At first, it seems a baffling problem – after all, in our daily lives things don’t just materialise out of the blue. You can’t just click your fingers and summon up a cup of coffee when you feel like one. You have to make it out of other stuff like coffee beans, water and perhaps some milk and sugar. But travel down into this coffee cup – through the milk particles, down to the atomic level and right down to the sub-atomic level, and you enter a world where conjuring something out of nothing is possible. At least, for a short while.
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