His train of thought is interesting. Conventional thinking is that atoms only formed when the universe’s temperature had cooled enough that the strong force could bind quarks together to form protons. But by the same logic, if the universe had that much energy density, why would those atoms not immediately fuze to heavier elements, blasting right up to and through fuzing iron, with the universe’s cooling quickly becoming driven by the energy loss from fuzing the very heavy elements?
Yeah... that’s exactly what I was thinking.
Say, that’s a good question. We’re told that the universe had to work through multiple generations of stars to generate the heavier elements. But if things were so hot and dense right at the beginning, why not then?