at just that moment the white parted and complete blackness ensued ; then , in an instant in a place that knew no time , the universe was created in a tiny brilliant flash far away in the blackness and then unfolded its full cosmological history in a dazzling parade of spinning galaxies , gooey nebulae , nascent stars , coalescing solar systems , plodding planets , comets streaking , all beginnings , all endingsthe fullness of time compressed into an instant , the massiveness of the universe constrained to a flash , all in a word : this .