The Inflationary Epoch

The light that we see in the cosmic micaray background is predominantly the left over heat fossil relic of the formation of the nuclei. So for the first about 300 thousand years of the universe, it was dark. But there's a time when the the protons and electrons start to bind together to make the primordial hydrogen, the first elements in the universe. And so that is when bryan and i talk about the cosmic microwave background. That's what we're referring to,. I think he tells me, 380 thousand years after the big bang, that light starts to escape. The analogue for the inflation epoch would be revealed by waves of gravity.