Big Bang: The beginning of the Universe
The Big Bang model
Intrduction
Since humans appeared, the world around is always a mystery. Thanks to explore the world around that people know things and phenomena and their laws. The human understanding about the world around is called knowledge. From knowledge of many are aggregated into knowledge of humanity.
Because human knowledge is limited by the perception of the world should not know what the very remote, vast and abstrate sothat human beings have supernatural like the God, Budda and the divines…created the world and the universe. Thus, humans have always believed that supernatural powers available plan for all things in the nature and people only to comply with and not allowed to know.
Therefore, the theocracy exited millions of years and humanity under the lull may not know about the world. Today many people still believe in the supernatural power as in the religions. People think that there is the the supernatural creator that created all natural things including human races, the world and the universe as they knew.
The scientific understanding and to create tools for scientific research that humanities have made discoveries about the world around, including of space and the universe based on the scientific basis.
Thanks to scientific knowledge that humanities has know about the world around them, about the structure of land warrants, the space around Earth, the Solar system and to galaxy…
To learn about space, the universe… reqires a vast amount of knowledge of humanities. First is the theory posed by exploring the results of the scientists, and then proven true test of that theory. The conclusions from proven theories would add to knowledge base of humanities. Understanding the origin of the universe is also in this rule.
To understand the origin of the universe is a great discover of humanities. With scientific basis we need to understand the world around us and the universe that we inhabit. First we learn about the Big Bang theory, an event began to shape the universe based on science, not based on blind trust from the spirit and religious rights, including the explanation prevailing religions of the world.
The history of the Big Bang theory began with the Big Bang's development from observations and theoretical considerations. Much of the theoretical work in cosmology now involves extensions and refinements to the basic Big Bang model.
Because human knowledge is limited by the perception of the world should not know what the very remote, vast and abstrate sothat human beings have supernatural like the God, Budda and the divines…created the world and the universe. Thus, humans have always believed that supernatural powers available plan for all things in the nature and people only to comply with and not allowed to know.
Therefore, the theocracy exited millions of years and humanity under the lull may not know about the world. Today many people still believe in the supernatural power as in the religions. People think that there is the the supernatural creator that created all natural things including human races, the world and the universe as they knew.
The scientific understanding and to create tools for scientific research that humanities have made discoveries about the world around, including of space and the universe based on the scientific basis.
Thanks to scientific knowledge that humanities has know about the world around them, about the structure of land warrants, the space around Earth, the Solar system and to galaxy…
To learn about space, the universe… reqires a vast amount of knowledge of humanities. First is the theory posed by exploring the results of the scientists, and then proven true test of that theory. The conclusions from proven theories would add to knowledge base of humanities. Understanding the origin of the universe is also in this rule.
To understand the origin of the universe is a great discover of humanities. With scientific basis we need to understand the world around us and the universe that we inhabit. First we learn about the Big Bang theory, an event began to shape the universe based on science, not based on blind trust from the spirit and religious rights, including the explanation prevailing religions of the world.
The history of the Big Bang theory began with the Big Bang's development from observations and theoretical considerations. Much of the theoretical work in cosmology now involves extensions and refinements to the basic Big Bang model.
The Big Bang Expansion process
History of discovering Big Bang theory
In 1910s
Observationally, in the 1910s, Vesto Slipher and later, Carl Wilhelm Wirtz, determined that most spiral nebulae were receding from Earth. Slipher used spectroscopy to investigate the rotation periods of planets, the composition of planetary atmospheres, and was the first to observe the radial velocities of galaxies. Wirtz observed a systematic Redshift of nebulae, which was difficult to interpret in terms of a cosmology in which the Universe is filled more or less uniformly with stars and nebulae. They weren't aware of the cosmological implications, nor that the supposed nebulae were actually galaxies outside our own Milky Way.
Also in that decade, Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity was found to admit no static cosmological solutions, given the basic assumptions of cosmology described in the Big Bang's theoretical underpinnings. The universe (i.e., the space-time metric) was described by a metric tensor that was either expanding or shrinking (i.e., was not constant or invariant). This result, coming from an evaluation of the field equations of the general theory, at first led Einstein himself to consider that his formulation of the field equations of the general theory may be in error, and he tried to correct it by adding a cosmological constant. This constant would restore to the general theory's description of space-time an invariant metric tensor for the fabric of space/existence. The first person to seriously apply general relativity to cosmology without the stabilizing cosmological constant was Alexander Friedmann.
In 1920s
In 1922 Friedmann derived the expanding-universe solution to general relativity field equations.
In 1924 Friedmann's papers included "Über die Möglichkeit einer Welt mit konstanter negativer Krümmung des Raumes" (About the possibility of a world with constant negative curvature) which was published by the Berlin Academy of Sciences on 7/1/ 1924. Friedmann's equations describe the Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker universe.
In 1927 Georges Lemaître (1894-1966) was a Belgian priest, astronomer and professor of physics at the Catholic University of Leuven. He was the first person to propose the theory of the expansion of the Universe.
The famous work of Lemaître, G. (1927) was "Un univers homogène de masse constante et de rayon croissant rendant compte de la vitesse radiale des nébuleuses extragalactiques". Annals of the Scientific Society of Brussels 47A: 41. (French). (Translated in: "A Homogeneous Universe of Constant Mass and Growing Radius Accounting for the Radial Velocity of Extragalactic Nebulae").
Georges Lemaître proposed an expanding model for the universe to explain the observed redshifts of spiral nebulae, and forecast the Hubble law. He based his theory on the work of Einstein and De Sitter, and independently derived Friedmann's equations for an expanding universe. Also, the red shifts themselves were not constant, but varied in such manner as to lead to the conclusion that there was a definite relationship between amount of red-shift of nebulae, and their distance from observers.
This discovery was the first observational support for the Big Bang theory.
In 1929, Edwin Hubble (1889-1953) provided a comprehensive observational foundation for Lemaître's theory. Hubble's experimental observations discovered that, relative to the Earth and all other observed bodies, galaxies are receding in every direction at velocities (calculated from their observed red-shifts) directly proportional to their distance from the Earth and each other.
Hubble and Milton Humason formulated the empirical Redshift Distance Law of galaxies, nowadays known as Hubble's law, which, once the redshift is interpreted as a measure of recession speed, is consistent with the solutions of Einstein’s General Relativity Equations for a homogeneous, isotropic expanding space. The isotropic nature of the expansion was direct proof that it was the space (the fabric of existence) itself that was expanding, not the bodies in space that were simply moving further outward and apart into an infinitely larger preexisting empty void. It was this interpretation that led to the concept of the expanding universe. The law states that the greater the distance between any two galaxies, the greater their relative speed of separation. This discovery later resulted in the formulation of the Big Bang model.
Hubble discovered that the distances to far away galaxies were generally proportional to their Redshifts - an idea originally suggested by Lemaître in 1927. Hubble's observation was taken to indicate that all very distant galaxies and clusters have an apparent velocity directly away from our vantage point: the farther away, the higher the apparent velocity.
Hubble formulated the empirical Redshift Distance Law of galaxies, nowadays termed simply Hubble's law, which, if the redshift is interpreted as a measure of recession speed, is consistent with the solutions of Einstein’s equations of general relativity for a homogeneous, isotropic expanding space.
So the discovery by Edwin Hubble that the Universe is in fact expanding at enormous speed was revolutionary. Hubble noted that galaxies outside our own Milky Way were all moving away from us, each at a speed proportional to its distance from us. He quickly realized what this meant that there must have been an instant in time (now known to be about 14 billion years ago) when the entire Universe was contained in a single point in space. The Universe must have been born in this single violent event which came to be known as the "Big Bang."
In 1930s
In 1931 Lemaître went further and suggested that the evident expansion of the universe, if projected back in time, meant that the further in the past the smaller the universe was, until at some finite time in the past all the mass of the Universe was concentrated into a single point, a "primeval atom" where and when the fabric of time and space came into existence.
Lemaître proposed in his "hypothèse de l'atome primitif" (hypothesis of the primeval atom) that the universe began with the "explosion" of the "primeval atom" - what was later called the Big Bang. Lemaître first took cosmic rays to be the remnants of the event, although it is now known that they originate within the local galaxy. Lemaître had to wait until shortly before his death to learn of the discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation, the remnant radiation of a dense and hot phase in the early Universe.
In the 1930s Hubble was involved in determining the distribution of galaxies and spatial curvature. These data seemed to indicate that the universe was flat and homogeneous, but there was a deviation from flatness at large redshifts. According to Allan Sandage.
During the 1930s other ideas were proposed as non-standard cosmologies to explain Hubble's observations, including the Milne model, the oscillatory Universe (originally suggested by Friedmann, but advocated by Albert Einstein and Richard Tolman) and Fritz Zwicky's tired light hypothesis.
In 1940s
After World War II, two distinct possibilities emerged. One was Fred Hoyle's steady state model, whereby new matter would be created as the Universe seemed to expand. In this model the Universe is roughly the same at any point in time. The other was Lemaître's Big Bang theory, advocated and developed by George Gamow, who introduced big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) and whose associates, Ralph Alpher and Robert Herman, predicted the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB). Ironically, it was Hoyle who coined the phrase that came to be applied to Lemaître's theory, referring to it as "this big bang idea" during a BBC Radio broadcast in March 1949. For a while, support was split between these two theories. Eventually, the observational evidence, most notably from radio source counts, began to favor Big Bang over Steady State.
In 1949 Fred Hoyle is credited with coining the term Big Bang during a 1949 radio broadcast (on 28/3/1949, on the BBC Third Programme).
In 1950s
Hoyle repeated the term in further broadcasts in early 1950, as part of a series of five lectures entitled The Nature of The Universe. The text of each lecture was published in The Listener a week after the broadcast, the first time that the term "big bang" appeared in print.
As evidence in favour of the Big Bang model mounted, and the consensus became widespread, Hoyle himself, albeit somewhat reluctantly, admitted to it by formulating a new cosmological model that other scientists later referred to as the "Steady Bang".
For a number of years, the support for these theories was evenly divided, with a slight imbalance arising from the fact that the Big Bang theory could explain both the formation and the observed abundances of hydrogen and helium, whereas the Steady State could explain how they were formed, but not why they should have the observed abundances. However, the observational evidence began to support the idea that the universe evolved from a hot dense state. Young objects such as quasars were only observed at the very edges of the universe, indicating that such objects only existed in times long past, whereas the Steady State predicted that young galaxies should be scattered all over the universe, both near and far.
Before the late 1960s, many cosmologists thought the infinitely dense and physically paradoxicalsingularity at the starting time of Friedmann's cosmological model could be avoided by allowing for a universe which was contracting before entering the hot dense state, and starting to expand again. This was formalized as Richard Tolman's oscillating universe. In the sixties, Stephen Hawking and others demonstrated that this idea was unworkable, and the singularity is an essential feature of the physics described by Einstein's gravity. This led the majority of cosmologists to accept the notion that the universe as currently described by the physics of general relativity has a finite age. However, due to a lack of a theory of quantum gravity, there is no way to say whether the singularity is an actual origin point for the universe, or whether the physical processes that govern the regime cause the universe to be effectively eternal in character.In 1960s
In 1964 After the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation, and especially when its spectrum (i.e., the amount of radiation measured at each wavelength) was found to match that of thermal radiation from a black body, most scientists had become fairly convinced that some version of the Big Bang scenario must have occurred.
The discovery and confirmation of the cosmic microwave background radiation in 196 4 secured the Big Bang as the best theory of the origin and evolution of the cosmos. Much of the current work in cosmology includes understanding how galaxies form in the context of the Big Bang, understanding the physics of the Universe at earlier and earlier times, and reconciling observations with the basic theory.
In 1965 In addition, the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation in 1965 was considered the death knell of the Steady State, although this prediction was only qualitative, and failed to predict the actual temperature of the CMB. After some reformulation, the Big Bang has been regarded as the best theory of the origin and evolution of the cosmos.
In 1990s
Significant progress in Big Bang cosmology have been made since the late 1990s as a result of advances in telescope technology as well as the analysis of data from satellites such as COBE, the Hubble Space Telescope and WMAP. Cosmologists now have fairly precise and accurate measurements of many of the parameters of the Big Bang model, and have made the unexpected discovery that the expansion of the Universe appears to be accelerating.
Huge advances in Big Bang cosmology were made as a result of major advances in telescope technology in combination with large amounts of satellite data, such as that from COBE and the Hubble Space Telescope.
In 1989 NASA launched the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite (COBE). Its findings were consistent with predictions regarding the CMB, finding a residual temperature of 2.726 K (more recent measurements have revised this figure down slightly to 2.725 K) and providing the first evidence for fluctuations (anisotropies) in the CMB, at a level of about one part in 105. John C. Mather and George Smoot were awarded the Nobel Prize for their leadership in this work. During the following decade, CMB anisotropies were further investigated by a large number of ground-based and balloon experiments.
In 2000s
In 2000–2001 several experiments, most notably BOOMERanG, found the shape of the Universe to be spatially almost flat by measuring the typical angular size (the size on the sky) of the anisotropies.
In 2003, NASA's WMAP took more detailed pictures of the universe by means of the cosmic microwave background radiation. The images can be interpreted to indicate that the universe is 13.7 billion years old (within 1% error) and that the Lambda-CDM model and the inflationary theory are correct. No other cosmological theory can yet explain such a wide range of observed parameters, from the ratio of the elemental abundances in the early Universe to the structure of the cosmic microwave background, the observed higher abundance of active galactic nuclei in the early Universe and the observed masses of clusters of galaxies.
Observationally, in the 1910s, Vesto Slipher and later, Carl Wilhelm Wirtz, determined that most spiral nebulae were receding from Earth. Slipher used spectroscopy to investigate the rotation periods of planets, the composition of planetary atmospheres, and was the first to observe the radial velocities of galaxies. Wirtz observed a systematic Redshift of nebulae, which was difficult to interpret in terms of a cosmology in which the Universe is filled more or less uniformly with stars and nebulae. They weren't aware of the cosmological implications, nor that the supposed nebulae were actually galaxies outside our own Milky Way.
Also in that decade, Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity was found to admit no static cosmological solutions, given the basic assumptions of cosmology described in the Big Bang's theoretical underpinnings. The universe (i.e., the space-time metric) was described by a metric tensor that was either expanding or shrinking (i.e., was not constant or invariant). This result, coming from an evaluation of the field equations of the general theory, at first led Einstein himself to consider that his formulation of the field equations of the general theory may be in error, and he tried to correct it by adding a cosmological constant. This constant would restore to the general theory's description of space-time an invariant metric tensor for the fabric of space/existence. The first person to seriously apply general relativity to cosmology without the stabilizing cosmological constant was Alexander Friedmann.
In 1920s
In 1922 Friedmann derived the expanding-universe solution to general relativity field equations.
In 1924 Friedmann's papers included "Über die Möglichkeit einer Welt mit konstanter negativer Krümmung des Raumes" (About the possibility of a world with constant negative curvature) which was published by the Berlin Academy of Sciences on 7/1/ 1924. Friedmann's equations describe the Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker universe.
In 1927 Georges Lemaître (1894-1966) was a Belgian priest, astronomer and professor of physics at the Catholic University of Leuven. He was the first person to propose the theory of the expansion of the Universe.
The famous work of Lemaître, G. (1927) was "Un univers homogène de masse constante et de rayon croissant rendant compte de la vitesse radiale des nébuleuses extragalactiques". Annals of the Scientific Society of Brussels 47A: 41. (French). (Translated in: "A Homogeneous Universe of Constant Mass and Growing Radius Accounting for the Radial Velocity of Extragalactic Nebulae").
Georges Lemaître proposed an expanding model for the universe to explain the observed redshifts of spiral nebulae, and forecast the Hubble law. He based his theory on the work of Einstein and De Sitter, and independently derived Friedmann's equations for an expanding universe. Also, the red shifts themselves were not constant, but varied in such manner as to lead to the conclusion that there was a definite relationship between amount of red-shift of nebulae, and their distance from observers.
This discovery was the first observational support for the Big Bang theory.
In 1929, Edwin Hubble (1889-1953) provided a comprehensive observational foundation for Lemaître's theory. Hubble's experimental observations discovered that, relative to the Earth and all other observed bodies, galaxies are receding in every direction at velocities (calculated from their observed red-shifts) directly proportional to their distance from the Earth and each other.
Hubble and Milton Humason formulated the empirical Redshift Distance Law of galaxies, nowadays known as Hubble's law, which, once the redshift is interpreted as a measure of recession speed, is consistent with the solutions of Einstein’s General Relativity Equations for a homogeneous, isotropic expanding space. The isotropic nature of the expansion was direct proof that it was the space (the fabric of existence) itself that was expanding, not the bodies in space that were simply moving further outward and apart into an infinitely larger preexisting empty void. It was this interpretation that led to the concept of the expanding universe. The law states that the greater the distance between any two galaxies, the greater their relative speed of separation. This discovery later resulted in the formulation of the Big Bang model.
Hubble discovered that the distances to far away galaxies were generally proportional to their Redshifts - an idea originally suggested by Lemaître in 1927. Hubble's observation was taken to indicate that all very distant galaxies and clusters have an apparent velocity directly away from our vantage point: the farther away, the higher the apparent velocity.
Hubble formulated the empirical Redshift Distance Law of galaxies, nowadays termed simply Hubble's law, which, if the redshift is interpreted as a measure of recession speed, is consistent with the solutions of Einstein’s equations of general relativity for a homogeneous, isotropic expanding space.
So the discovery by Edwin Hubble that the Universe is in fact expanding at enormous speed was revolutionary. Hubble noted that galaxies outside our own Milky Way were all moving away from us, each at a speed proportional to its distance from us. He quickly realized what this meant that there must have been an instant in time (now known to be about 14 billion years ago) when the entire Universe was contained in a single point in space. The Universe must have been born in this single violent event which came to be known as the "Big Bang."
In 1930s
In 1931 Lemaître went further and suggested that the evident expansion of the universe, if projected back in time, meant that the further in the past the smaller the universe was, until at some finite time in the past all the mass of the Universe was concentrated into a single point, a "primeval atom" where and when the fabric of time and space came into existence.
Lemaître proposed in his "hypothèse de l'atome primitif" (hypothesis of the primeval atom) that the universe began with the "explosion" of the "primeval atom" - what was later called the Big Bang. Lemaître first took cosmic rays to be the remnants of the event, although it is now known that they originate within the local galaxy. Lemaître had to wait until shortly before his death to learn of the discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation, the remnant radiation of a dense and hot phase in the early Universe.
In the 1930s Hubble was involved in determining the distribution of galaxies and spatial curvature. These data seemed to indicate that the universe was flat and homogeneous, but there was a deviation from flatness at large redshifts. According to Allan Sandage.
During the 1930s other ideas were proposed as non-standard cosmologies to explain Hubble's observations, including the Milne model, the oscillatory Universe (originally suggested by Friedmann, but advocated by Albert Einstein and Richard Tolman) and Fritz Zwicky's tired light hypothesis.
In 1940s
After World War II, two distinct possibilities emerged. One was Fred Hoyle's steady state model, whereby new matter would be created as the Universe seemed to expand. In this model the Universe is roughly the same at any point in time. The other was Lemaître's Big Bang theory, advocated and developed by George Gamow, who introduced big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) and whose associates, Ralph Alpher and Robert Herman, predicted the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB). Ironically, it was Hoyle who coined the phrase that came to be applied to Lemaître's theory, referring to it as "this big bang idea" during a BBC Radio broadcast in March 1949. For a while, support was split between these two theories. Eventually, the observational evidence, most notably from radio source counts, began to favor Big Bang over Steady State.
In 1949 Fred Hoyle is credited with coining the term Big Bang during a 1949 radio broadcast (on 28/3/1949, on the BBC Third Programme).
In 1950s
Hoyle repeated the term in further broadcasts in early 1950, as part of a series of five lectures entitled The Nature of The Universe. The text of each lecture was published in The Listener a week after the broadcast, the first time that the term "big bang" appeared in print.
As evidence in favour of the Big Bang model mounted, and the consensus became widespread, Hoyle himself, albeit somewhat reluctantly, admitted to it by formulating a new cosmological model that other scientists later referred to as the "Steady Bang".
For a number of years, the support for these theories was evenly divided, with a slight imbalance arising from the fact that the Big Bang theory could explain both the formation and the observed abundances of hydrogen and helium, whereas the Steady State could explain how they were formed, but not why they should have the observed abundances. However, the observational evidence began to support the idea that the universe evolved from a hot dense state. Young objects such as quasars were only observed at the very edges of the universe, indicating that such objects only existed in times long past, whereas the Steady State predicted that young galaxies should be scattered all over the universe, both near and far.
Before the late 1960s, many cosmologists thought the infinitely dense and physically paradoxicalsingularity at the starting time of Friedmann's cosmological model could be avoided by allowing for a universe which was contracting before entering the hot dense state, and starting to expand again. This was formalized as Richard Tolman's oscillating universe. In the sixties, Stephen Hawking and others demonstrated that this idea was unworkable, and the singularity is an essential feature of the physics described by Einstein's gravity. This led the majority of cosmologists to accept the notion that the universe as currently described by the physics of general relativity has a finite age. However, due to a lack of a theory of quantum gravity, there is no way to say whether the singularity is an actual origin point for the universe, or whether the physical processes that govern the regime cause the universe to be effectively eternal in character.In 1960s
In 1964 After the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation, and especially when its spectrum (i.e., the amount of radiation measured at each wavelength) was found to match that of thermal radiation from a black body, most scientists had become fairly convinced that some version of the Big Bang scenario must have occurred.
The discovery and confirmation of the cosmic microwave background radiation in 196 4 secured the Big Bang as the best theory of the origin and evolution of the cosmos. Much of the current work in cosmology includes understanding how galaxies form in the context of the Big Bang, understanding the physics of the Universe at earlier and earlier times, and reconciling observations with the basic theory.
In 1965 In addition, the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation in 1965 was considered the death knell of the Steady State, although this prediction was only qualitative, and failed to predict the actual temperature of the CMB. After some reformulation, the Big Bang has been regarded as the best theory of the origin and evolution of the cosmos.
In 1990s
Significant progress in Big Bang cosmology have been made since the late 1990s as a result of advances in telescope technology as well as the analysis of data from satellites such as COBE, the Hubble Space Telescope and WMAP. Cosmologists now have fairly precise and accurate measurements of many of the parameters of the Big Bang model, and have made the unexpected discovery that the expansion of the Universe appears to be accelerating.
Huge advances in Big Bang cosmology were made as a result of major advances in telescope technology in combination with large amounts of satellite data, such as that from COBE and the Hubble Space Telescope.
In 1989 NASA launched the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite (COBE). Its findings were consistent with predictions regarding the CMB, finding a residual temperature of 2.726 K (more recent measurements have revised this figure down slightly to 2.725 K) and providing the first evidence for fluctuations (anisotropies) in the CMB, at a level of about one part in 105. John C. Mather and George Smoot were awarded the Nobel Prize for their leadership in this work. During the following decade, CMB anisotropies were further investigated by a large number of ground-based and balloon experiments.
In 2000s
In 2000–2001 several experiments, most notably BOOMERanG, found the shape of the Universe to be spatially almost flat by measuring the typical angular size (the size on the sky) of the anisotropies.
In 2003, NASA's WMAP took more detailed pictures of the universe by means of the cosmic microwave background radiation. The images can be interpreted to indicate that the universe is 13.7 billion years old (within 1% error) and that the Lambda-CDM model and the inflationary theory are correct. No other cosmological theory can yet explain such a wide range of observed parameters, from the ratio of the elemental abundances in the early Universe to the structure of the cosmic microwave background, the observed higher abundance of active galactic nuclei in the early Universe and the observed masses of clusters of galaxies.
The Big Bang Theory
The Premise
The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological model that explains the early development of the Universe.
Singularities are zones which defy our current understanding of physics. They are thought to exist at the core of "black holes." Black holes are areas of intense gravitational pressure. The pressure is thought to be so intense that finite matter is actually squished into infinite density (a mathematical concept which truly boggles the mind). These zones of infinite density are called "singularities." Our universe is thought to have begun as an infinitesimally small, infinitely hot, infinitely dense, something - a singularity.
After its initial appearance, it apparently inflated (the "Big Bang"), expanded and cooled, going from very, very small and very, very hot, to the size and temperature of our current universe. It continues to expand and cool to this day and we are inside of it: incredible creatures living on a unique planet, circling a beautiful star clustered together with several hundred billion other stars in a galaxy soaring through the cosmos, all of which is inside of an expanding universe that began as an infinitesimal singularity which appeared out of nowhere for reasons unknown. This is the Big Bang theory.
According to the Big Bang theory, the Universe was once in an extremely hot and dense state which expanded rapidly. This rapid expansion caused the Universe to cool and resulted in its present continuously expanding state. According to the most recent measurements and observations, the Big Bang occurred approximately 13.75 billion years ago, which is thus considered the age of the Universe.
After its initial expansion from a singularity, the Universe cooled sufficiently to allow energy to be converted into various subatomic particles, including protons, neutrons, and electrons. While protons and neutrons combined to form the first atomic nuclei only a few minutes after the Big Bang, it would take thousands of years for electrons to combine with them and create electrically neutral atoms. The first element produced was hydrogen, along with traces of helium and lithium. Giant clouds of these primordial elements would coalesce through gravity to form stars and galaxies, and the heavier elements would be synthesized either within stars or during supernovae.
The Big Bang is a well-tested scientific theory which is widely accepted within the scientific community because it is the most accurate and comprehensive explanation for the full range of phenomena astronomers observe. Since its conception, abundant evidence has arisen to further validate the model.
The framework for the Big Bang model relies on Albert Einstein's general relativity and on simplifying assumptions such as homogeneity and isotropy of space. The governing equations had been formulated by Alexander Friedmann.
According to the standard theory, our universe sprang into existence as "singularity" around 13.7 billion years ago.
According to the Big Bang model, the Universe expanded from an extremely dense and hot state and continues to expand today. A common analogy explains that space itself is expanding, carrying galaxies with it, like spots on an inflating balloon. The graphic scheme above is an artist's concept illustrating the expansion of a portion of a flat universe.
Extrapolation of the expansion of the Universe backwards in time using general relativity yields an infinite density and temperature at a finite time in the past. This singularity signals the breakdown of general relativity. How closely we can extrapolate towards the singularity is debated-certainly no closer than the end of the Planck epoch. This singularity is sometimes called "the Big Bang",but the term can also refer to the early hot, dense phase itself, which can be considered the "birth" of our Universe. Based on measurements of the expansion using Type Ia supernovae, measurements of temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background, and measurements of the correlation function of galaxies, the Universe has a calculated age of 13.75 ± 0.11 billion years, The agreement of these three independent measurements strongly supports the ΛCDM model that describes in detail the contents of the Universe.
The earliest phases of the Big Bang are subject to much speculation. In the most common models the Universe was filled homogeneously and isotropically with an incredibly high energy density and huge temperatures and pressures and was very rapidly expanding and cooling. Approximately 10−37 seconds into the expansion, a phase transition caused a cosmic inflation, during which the Universe grew exponentially. After inflation stopped, the Universe consisted of a quark–gluon plasma, as well as all other elementary particles. Temperatures were so high that the random motions of particles were at relativistic speeds, and particle–antiparticle pairs of all kinds were being continuously created and destroyed in collisions. At some point an unknown reaction calledbaryogenesis violated the conservation of baryon number, leading to a very small excess of quarks and leptons over antiquarks and antileptons—of the order of one part in 30 million. This resulted in the predominance of matter over antimatter in the present Universe.
The Universe continued to grow in size and fall in temperature, hence the typical energy of each particle was decreasing. Symmetry breaking phase transitions put the fundamental forces of physics and the parameters of elementary particles into their present form.[19] After about 10−11 seconds, the picture becomes less speculative, since particle energies drop to values that can be attained in particle physics experiments. At about 10−6 seconds, quarks and gluons combined to form baryons such as protons and neutrons. The small excess of quarks over antiquarks led to a small excess of baryons over antibaryons. The temperature was now no longer high enough to create new proton–antiproton pairs (similarly for neutrons–antineutrons), so a mass annihilation immediately followed, leaving just one in 1010 of the original protons and neutrons, and none of their antiparticles. A similar process happened at about 1 second for electrons and positrons. After these annihilations, the remaining protons, neutrons and electrons were no longer moving relativistically and the energy density of the Universe was dominated by photons (with a minor contribution from neutrinos).
A few minutes into the expansion, when the temperature was about a billion (one thousand million; 109; SI prefix giga-) kelvin and the density was about that of air, neutrons combined with protons to form the Universe's deuterium and helium nuclei in a process called Big Bang nucleosynthesis. Most protons remained uncombined as hydrogen nuclei. As the Universe cooled, the rest mass energy density of matter came to gravitationally dominate that of the photon radiation. After about 379,000 years the electrons and nuclei combined into atoms (mostly hydrogen); hence the radiation decoupled from matter and continued through space largely unimpeded. This relic radiation is known as the cosmic microwave background radiation.
Over a long period of time, the slightly denser regions of the nearly uniformly distributed matter gravitationally attracted nearby matter and thus grew even denser, forming gas clouds, stars, galaxies, and the other astronomical structures observable today. The details of this process depend on the amount and type of matter in the Universe. The four possible types of matter are known as cold dark matter, warm dark matter, hot dark matterand baryonic matter. The best measurements available (from WMAP) show that the data is well-fit by a Lambda-CDM model in which dark matter is assumed to be cold (warm dark matter is ruled out by early reionization), and is estimated to make up about 23% of the matter/energy of the universe, while baryonic matter makes up about 4.6%. In an "extended model" which includes hot dark matter in the form of neutrinos, then if the "physical baryon density" Ωbh2 is estimated at about 0.023 (this is different from the 'baryon density' Ωb expressed as a fraction of the total matter/energy density, which as noted above is about 0.046), and the corresponding cold dark matter density Ωch2 is about 0.11, the corresponding neutrino density Ωvh2 is estimated to be less than 0.0062.
Independent lines of evidence from Type Ia supernovae and the CMB imply that the Universe today is dominated by a mysterious form of energy known as dark energy, which apparently permeates all of space. The observations suggest 73% of the total energy density of today's Universe is in this form. When the Universe was very young, it was likely infused with dark energy, but with less space and everything closer together, gravity had the upper hand, and it was slowly braking the expansion. But eventually, after numerous billion years of expansion, the growing abundance of dark energy caused the expansion of the Universe to slowly begin to accelerate. Dark energy in its simplest formulation takes the form of the cosmological constant term in Einstein's field equations of general relativity, but its composition and mechanism are unknown and, more generally, the details of its equation of state and relationship with the Standard Model of particle physics continue to be investigated both observationally and theoretically.
All of this cosmic evolution after the inflationary epoch can be rigorously described and modeled by the ΛCDM model of cosmology, which uses the independent frameworks of quantum mechanics and Einstein's General Relativity. As noted above, there is no well-supported model describing the action prior to 10−15 seconds or so. Apparently a new unified theory of quantum gravitation is needed to break this barrier. Understanding this earliest of eras in the history of the Universe is currently one of the greatest unsolved problems in physics.
The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological model that explains the early development of the Universe.
Singularities are zones which defy our current understanding of physics. They are thought to exist at the core of "black holes." Black holes are areas of intense gravitational pressure. The pressure is thought to be so intense that finite matter is actually squished into infinite density (a mathematical concept which truly boggles the mind). These zones of infinite density are called "singularities." Our universe is thought to have begun as an infinitesimally small, infinitely hot, infinitely dense, something - a singularity.
After its initial appearance, it apparently inflated (the "Big Bang"), expanded and cooled, going from very, very small and very, very hot, to the size and temperature of our current universe. It continues to expand and cool to this day and we are inside of it: incredible creatures living on a unique planet, circling a beautiful star clustered together with several hundred billion other stars in a galaxy soaring through the cosmos, all of which is inside of an expanding universe that began as an infinitesimal singularity which appeared out of nowhere for reasons unknown. This is the Big Bang theory.
According to the Big Bang theory, the Universe was once in an extremely hot and dense state which expanded rapidly. This rapid expansion caused the Universe to cool and resulted in its present continuously expanding state. According to the most recent measurements and observations, the Big Bang occurred approximately 13.75 billion years ago, which is thus considered the age of the Universe.
After its initial expansion from a singularity, the Universe cooled sufficiently to allow energy to be converted into various subatomic particles, including protons, neutrons, and electrons. While protons and neutrons combined to form the first atomic nuclei only a few minutes after the Big Bang, it would take thousands of years for electrons to combine with them and create electrically neutral atoms. The first element produced was hydrogen, along with traces of helium and lithium. Giant clouds of these primordial elements would coalesce through gravity to form stars and galaxies, and the heavier elements would be synthesized either within stars or during supernovae.
The Big Bang is a well-tested scientific theory which is widely accepted within the scientific community because it is the most accurate and comprehensive explanation for the full range of phenomena astronomers observe. Since its conception, abundant evidence has arisen to further validate the model.
The framework for the Big Bang model relies on Albert Einstein's general relativity and on simplifying assumptions such as homogeneity and isotropy of space. The governing equations had been formulated by Alexander Friedmann.
According to the standard theory, our universe sprang into existence as "singularity" around 13.7 billion years ago.
According to the Big Bang model, the Universe expanded from an extremely dense and hot state and continues to expand today. A common analogy explains that space itself is expanding, carrying galaxies with it, like spots on an inflating balloon. The graphic scheme above is an artist's concept illustrating the expansion of a portion of a flat universe.
Extrapolation of the expansion of the Universe backwards in time using general relativity yields an infinite density and temperature at a finite time in the past. This singularity signals the breakdown of general relativity. How closely we can extrapolate towards the singularity is debated-certainly no closer than the end of the Planck epoch. This singularity is sometimes called "the Big Bang",but the term can also refer to the early hot, dense phase itself, which can be considered the "birth" of our Universe. Based on measurements of the expansion using Type Ia supernovae, measurements of temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background, and measurements of the correlation function of galaxies, the Universe has a calculated age of 13.75 ± 0.11 billion years, The agreement of these three independent measurements strongly supports the ΛCDM model that describes in detail the contents of the Universe.
The earliest phases of the Big Bang are subject to much speculation. In the most common models the Universe was filled homogeneously and isotropically with an incredibly high energy density and huge temperatures and pressures and was very rapidly expanding and cooling. Approximately 10−37 seconds into the expansion, a phase transition caused a cosmic inflation, during which the Universe grew exponentially. After inflation stopped, the Universe consisted of a quark–gluon plasma, as well as all other elementary particles. Temperatures were so high that the random motions of particles were at relativistic speeds, and particle–antiparticle pairs of all kinds were being continuously created and destroyed in collisions. At some point an unknown reaction calledbaryogenesis violated the conservation of baryon number, leading to a very small excess of quarks and leptons over antiquarks and antileptons—of the order of one part in 30 million. This resulted in the predominance of matter over antimatter in the present Universe.
The Universe continued to grow in size and fall in temperature, hence the typical energy of each particle was decreasing. Symmetry breaking phase transitions put the fundamental forces of physics and the parameters of elementary particles into their present form.[19] After about 10−11 seconds, the picture becomes less speculative, since particle energies drop to values that can be attained in particle physics experiments. At about 10−6 seconds, quarks and gluons combined to form baryons such as protons and neutrons. The small excess of quarks over antiquarks led to a small excess of baryons over antibaryons. The temperature was now no longer high enough to create new proton–antiproton pairs (similarly for neutrons–antineutrons), so a mass annihilation immediately followed, leaving just one in 1010 of the original protons and neutrons, and none of their antiparticles. A similar process happened at about 1 second for electrons and positrons. After these annihilations, the remaining protons, neutrons and electrons were no longer moving relativistically and the energy density of the Universe was dominated by photons (with a minor contribution from neutrinos).
A few minutes into the expansion, when the temperature was about a billion (one thousand million; 109; SI prefix giga-) kelvin and the density was about that of air, neutrons combined with protons to form the Universe's deuterium and helium nuclei in a process called Big Bang nucleosynthesis. Most protons remained uncombined as hydrogen nuclei. As the Universe cooled, the rest mass energy density of matter came to gravitationally dominate that of the photon radiation. After about 379,000 years the electrons and nuclei combined into atoms (mostly hydrogen); hence the radiation decoupled from matter and continued through space largely unimpeded. This relic radiation is known as the cosmic microwave background radiation.
Over a long period of time, the slightly denser regions of the nearly uniformly distributed matter gravitationally attracted nearby matter and thus grew even denser, forming gas clouds, stars, galaxies, and the other astronomical structures observable today. The details of this process depend on the amount and type of matter in the Universe. The four possible types of matter are known as cold dark matter, warm dark matter, hot dark matterand baryonic matter. The best measurements available (from WMAP) show that the data is well-fit by a Lambda-CDM model in which dark matter is assumed to be cold (warm dark matter is ruled out by early reionization), and is estimated to make up about 23% of the matter/energy of the universe, while baryonic matter makes up about 4.6%. In an "extended model" which includes hot dark matter in the form of neutrinos, then if the "physical baryon density" Ωbh2 is estimated at about 0.023 (this is different from the 'baryon density' Ωb expressed as a fraction of the total matter/energy density, which as noted above is about 0.046), and the corresponding cold dark matter density Ωch2 is about 0.11, the corresponding neutrino density Ωvh2 is estimated to be less than 0.0062.
Independent lines of evidence from Type Ia supernovae and the CMB imply that the Universe today is dominated by a mysterious form of energy known as dark energy, which apparently permeates all of space. The observations suggest 73% of the total energy density of today's Universe is in this form. When the Universe was very young, it was likely infused with dark energy, but with less space and everything closer together, gravity had the upper hand, and it was slowly braking the expansion. But eventually, after numerous billion years of expansion, the growing abundance of dark energy caused the expansion of the Universe to slowly begin to accelerate. Dark energy in its simplest formulation takes the form of the cosmological constant term in Einstein's field equations of general relativity, but its composition and mechanism are unknown and, more generally, the details of its equation of state and relationship with the Standard Model of particle physics continue to be investigated both observationally and theoretically.
All of this cosmic evolution after the inflationary epoch can be rigorously described and modeled by the ΛCDM model of cosmology, which uses the independent frameworks of quantum mechanics and Einstein's General Relativity. As noted above, there is no well-supported model describing the action prior to 10−15 seconds or so. Apparently a new unified theory of quantum gravitation is needed to break this barrier. Understanding this earliest of eras in the history of the Universe is currently one of the greatest unsolved problems in physics.
Evidence for the Theory
The major evidences which support the Big Bang theory are:
1-First of all, we are reasonably certain that the universe had a beginning.
2-Second, galaxies appear to be moving away from us at speeds proportional to their distance. This is called "Hubble's Law," named after Edwin Hubble (1889-1953) who discovered this phenomenon in 1929. This observation supports the expansion of the universe and suggests that the universe was once compacted.
3-Third, if the universe was initially very, very hot as the Big Bang suggests, we should be able to find some remnant of this heat. In 1965, Radioastronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson discovered a 2.725 degree Kelvin (-454.765 degree Fahrenheit, -270.425 degree Celsius) Cosmic Microwave Background radiation (CMB) which pervades the observable universe. This is thought to be the remnant which scientists were looking for. Penzias and Wilson shared in the 1978 Nobel Prize for Physics for their discovery.
4-Finally, the abundance of the "light elements" Hydrogen and Helium found in the observable universe are thought to support the Big Bang model of origins.
1-First of all, we are reasonably certain that the universe had a beginning.
2-Second, galaxies appear to be moving away from us at speeds proportional to their distance. This is called "Hubble's Law," named after Edwin Hubble (1889-1953) who discovered this phenomenon in 1929. This observation supports the expansion of the universe and suggests that the universe was once compacted.
3-Third, if the universe was initially very, very hot as the Big Bang suggests, we should be able to find some remnant of this heat. In 1965, Radioastronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson discovered a 2.725 degree Kelvin (-454.765 degree Fahrenheit, -270.425 degree Celsius) Cosmic Microwave Background radiation (CMB) which pervades the observable universe. This is thought to be the remnant which scientists were looking for. Penzias and Wilson shared in the 1978 Nobel Prize for Physics for their discovery.
4-Finally, the abundance of the "light elements" Hydrogen and Helium found in the observable universe are thought to support the Big Bang model of origins.
Big Bang under NASA's Vision
Astronomers combine mathematical models with observations to develop workable theories of how the Universe came to be. The mathematical underpinnings of the Big Bang theory include Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity along with standard theories of fundamental particles. Today NASA spacecraft such as the Hubble Space Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope continue Edwin Hubble's work of measuring the expansion of the Universe. One of the goals has long been to decide whether the Universe will expand forever, or whether it will someday stop, turn around, and collapse in a "Big Crunch?"
Background Radiation
According to the theories of physics, if we were to look at the Universe one second after the Big Bang, what we would see is a 10-billion degree sea of neutrons, protons, electrons, anti-electrons (positrons), photons, and neutrinos. Then, as time went on, we would see the Universe cool, the neutrons either decaying into protons and electrons or combining with protons to make deuterium (an isotope of hydrogen). As it continued to cool, it would eventually reach the temperature where electrons combined with nuclei to form neutral atoms. Before this "recombination" occurred, the Universe would have been opaque because the free electrons would have caused light (photons) to scatter the way sunlight scatters from the water droplets in clouds. But when the free electrons were absorbed to form neutral atoms, the Universe suddenly became transparent. Those same photons - the afterglow of the Big Bang known as cosmic background radiation - can be observed today.
Missions Study Cosmic Background Radiation
NASA has launched two missions to study the cosmic background radiation, taking "baby pictures" of the Universe only 400,000 years after it was born.
The first of these was the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE).
In 1992, the COBE team announced that they had mapped the primordial hot and cold spots in cosmic background radiation. These spots are related to the gravitational field in the early Universe and form the seeds of the giant clusters of galaxies that stretch hundreds of millions of light years across the Universe. This work earned NASA's Dr. John C. Mather and George F. Smoot of the University of California the 2006 Nobel Prize for Physics.
The second mission to examine the cosmic background radiation was the Wilkinson Microware Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). With greatly improved resolution compared to COBE, WMAP surveyed the entire sky, measuring temperature differences of the microwave radiation that is nearly uniformly distributed across the Universe. The picture shows a map of the sky, with hot regions in red and cooler regions in blue. By combining this evidence with theoretical models of the Universe, scientists have concluded that the Universe is "flat," meaning that, on cosmological scales, the geometry of space satisfies the rules of Euclidean geometry (e.g., parallel lines never meet, the ratio of circle circumference to diameter is pi, etc).
A third mission, Planck, is led by the European Space Agency with significant participation from NASA. Launched in 2009, Planck is making the most accurate maps of the microwave background radiation yet. With instruments sensitive to temperature variations of a few millionths of a degree, and mapping the full sky over 9 wavelength bands, it measures the fluctuations of the temperature of the CMB with an accuracy set by fundamental astrophysical limits.
The first of these was the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE).
In 1992, the COBE team announced that they had mapped the primordial hot and cold spots in cosmic background radiation. These spots are related to the gravitational field in the early Universe and form the seeds of the giant clusters of galaxies that stretch hundreds of millions of light years across the Universe. This work earned NASA's Dr. John C. Mather and George F. Smoot of the University of California the 2006 Nobel Prize for Physics.
The second mission to examine the cosmic background radiation was the Wilkinson Microware Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). With greatly improved resolution compared to COBE, WMAP surveyed the entire sky, measuring temperature differences of the microwave radiation that is nearly uniformly distributed across the Universe. The picture shows a map of the sky, with hot regions in red and cooler regions in blue. By combining this evidence with theoretical models of the Universe, scientists have concluded that the Universe is "flat," meaning that, on cosmological scales, the geometry of space satisfies the rules of Euclidean geometry (e.g., parallel lines never meet, the ratio of circle circumference to diameter is pi, etc).
A third mission, Planck, is led by the European Space Agency with significant participation from NASA. Launched in 2009, Planck is making the most accurate maps of the microwave background radiation yet. With instruments sensitive to temperature variations of a few millionths of a degree, and mapping the full sky over 9 wavelength bands, it measures the fluctuations of the temperature of the CMB with an accuracy set by fundamental astrophysical limits.
The Universe's "baby picture". WMAP's map of the temperature of the microwave background radiation shows tiny variations (of few microdegrees) in The 3K background. Hot spots show as red, cold spots as dark blue.
Inflation
One problem that arose from the original COBE results, and that persists with the higher-resolution WMAP data, was that the Universe was too homogeneous. How could pieces of the Universe that had never been in contact with each other have come to equilibrium at the very same temperature? This and other cosmological problems could be solved, however, if there had been a very short period immediately after the Big Bang where the Universe experienced an incredible burst of expansion called "inflation." For this inflation to have taken place, the Universe at the time of the Big Bang must have been filled with an unstable form of energy whose nature is not yet known. Whatever its nature, the inflationary model predicts that this primordial energy would have been unevenly distributed in space due to a kind of quantum noise that arose when the Universe was extremely small. This pattern would have been transferred to the matter of the Universe and would show up in the photons that began streaming away freely at the moment of recombination. As a result, we would expect to see, and do see, this kind of pattern in the COBE and WMAP pictures of the Universe.
But all this leaves unanswered the question of what powered inflation. One difficulty in answering this question is that inflation was over well before recombination, and so the opacity of the Universe before recombination is, in effect, a curtain drawn over those interesting very early events. Fortunately, there is a way to observe the Universe that does not involve photons at all. Gravitational waves, the only known form of information that can reach us undistorted from the instant of the Big Bang, can carry information that we can get no other way. Two missions that are being considered by NASA, LISA and the Big Bang Observer, will look for the gravitational waves from the epoch of inflation.
One problem that arose from the original COBE results, and that persists with the higher-resolution WMAP data, was that the Universe was too homogeneous. How could pieces of the Universe that had never been in contact with each other have come to equilibrium at the very same temperature? This and other cosmological problems could be solved, however, if there had been a very short period immediately after the Big Bang where the Universe experienced an incredible burst of expansion called "inflation." For this inflation to have taken place, the Universe at the time of the Big Bang must have been filled with an unstable form of energy whose nature is not yet known. Whatever its nature, the inflationary model predicts that this primordial energy would have been unevenly distributed in space due to a kind of quantum noise that arose when the Universe was extremely small. This pattern would have been transferred to the matter of the Universe and would show up in the photons that began streaming away freely at the moment of recombination. As a result, we would expect to see, and do see, this kind of pattern in the COBE and WMAP pictures of the Universe.
But all this leaves unanswered the question of what powered inflation. One difficulty in answering this question is that inflation was over well before recombination, and so the opacity of the Universe before recombination is, in effect, a curtain drawn over those interesting very early events. Fortunately, there is a way to observe the Universe that does not involve photons at all. Gravitational waves, the only known form of information that can reach us undistorted from the instant of the Big Bang, can carry information that we can get no other way. Two missions that are being considered by NASA, LISA and the Big Bang Observer, will look for the gravitational waves from the epoch of inflation.
Dark Energy
During the years following Hubble and COBE, the picture of the Big Bang gradually became clearer. But in 1996, observations of very distant supernovae required a dramatic change in the picture. It had always been assumed that the matter of the Universe would slow its rate of expansion. Mass creates gravity, gravity creates pull, the pulling must slow the expansion. But supernovae observations showed that the expansion of the Universe, rather than slowing, is accelerating. Something, not like matter and not like ordinary energy, is pushing the galaxies apart. This "stuff" has been dubbed dark energy, but to give it a name is not to understand it. Whether dark energy is a type of dynamical fluid, heretofore unknown to physics, or whether it is a property of the vacuum of empty space, or whether it is some modification to general relativity is not yet known.
During the years following Hubble and COBE, the picture of the Big Bang gradually became clearer. But in 1996, observations of very distant supernovae required a dramatic change in the picture. It had always been assumed that the matter of the Universe would slow its rate of expansion. Mass creates gravity, gravity creates pull, the pulling must slow the expansion. But supernovae observations showed that the expansion of the Universe, rather than slowing, is accelerating. Something, not like matter and not like ordinary energy, is pushing the galaxies apart. This "stuff" has been dubbed dark energy, but to give it a name is not to understand it. Whether dark energy is a type of dynamical fluid, heretofore unknown to physics, or whether it is a property of the vacuum of empty space, or whether it is some modification to general relativity is not yet known.
The future of theory
In the past and current time
In the past, there was much discussion as to whether the Big Bang would need to be completely abandoned as a description of the universe, but such proponents of non-standard cosmology have become fewer in number over the last few decades.
Much of the current work in cosmology includes understanding how galaxies form in the context of the Big Bang, understanding what happened at the Big Bang, and reconciling observations with the basic theory. Cosmologists continue to calculate many of the parameters of the Big Bang to a new level of precision. Observations suggest that the expansion of the universe appears to be accelerating, a fact that is not yet explained, and may call for modifications of the underlying theory.
The future according to the Big Bang theory
Before observations of dark energy, cosmologists considered two scenarios for the future of the Universe. If the mass density of the Universe were greater than the critical density, then the Universe would reach a maximum size and then begin to collapse. It would become denser and hotter again, ending with a state similar to that in which it started -a Big Crunch. Alternatively, if the density in the Universe were equal to or below the critical density, the expansion would slow down but never stop. Star formation would cease with the consumption of interstellar gas in each galaxy; stars would burn out leaving white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes. Very gradually, collisions between these would result in mass accumulating into larger and larger black holes. The average temperature of the Universe would asymptotically approach absolute zero - a Big Freeze. Moreover, if the proton were unstable, then baryonic matter would disappear, leaving only radiation and black holes. Eventually, black holes would evaporate by emitting Hawking radiation. The entropy of the Universe would increase to the point where no organized form of energy could be extracted from it, a scenario known as heat death.
Modern observations of accelerating expansion imply that more and more of the currently visible Universe will pass beyond our event horizon and out of contact with us. The eventual result is not known. The ΛCDM model of the Universe contains dark energy in the form of a cosmological constant. This theory suggests that only gravitationally bound systems, such as galaxies, will remain together, and they too will be subject to heat death as the Universe expands and cools. Other explanations of dark energy, calledphantom energy theories, suggest that ultimately galaxy clusters, stars, planets, atoms, nuclei, and matter itself will be torn apart by the ever-increasing expansion in a so-called Big Rip.
In the past, there was much discussion as to whether the Big Bang would need to be completely abandoned as a description of the universe, but such proponents of non-standard cosmology have become fewer in number over the last few decades.
Much of the current work in cosmology includes understanding how galaxies form in the context of the Big Bang, understanding what happened at the Big Bang, and reconciling observations with the basic theory. Cosmologists continue to calculate many of the parameters of the Big Bang to a new level of precision. Observations suggest that the expansion of the universe appears to be accelerating, a fact that is not yet explained, and may call for modifications of the underlying theory.
The future according to the Big Bang theory
Before observations of dark energy, cosmologists considered two scenarios for the future of the Universe. If the mass density of the Universe were greater than the critical density, then the Universe would reach a maximum size and then begin to collapse. It would become denser and hotter again, ending with a state similar to that in which it started -a Big Crunch. Alternatively, if the density in the Universe were equal to or below the critical density, the expansion would slow down but never stop. Star formation would cease with the consumption of interstellar gas in each galaxy; stars would burn out leaving white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes. Very gradually, collisions between these would result in mass accumulating into larger and larger black holes. The average temperature of the Universe would asymptotically approach absolute zero - a Big Freeze. Moreover, if the proton were unstable, then baryonic matter would disappear, leaving only radiation and black holes. Eventually, black holes would evaporate by emitting Hawking radiation. The entropy of the Universe would increase to the point where no organized form of energy could be extracted from it, a scenario known as heat death.
Modern observations of accelerating expansion imply that more and more of the currently visible Universe will pass beyond our event horizon and out of contact with us. The eventual result is not known. The ΛCDM model of the Universe contains dark energy in the form of a cosmological constant. This theory suggests that only gravitationally bound systems, such as galaxies, will remain together, and they too will be subject to heat death as the Universe expands and cools. Other explanations of dark energy, calledphantom energy theories, suggest that ultimately galaxy clusters, stars, planets, atoms, nuclei, and matter itself will be torn apart by the ever-increasing expansion in a so-called Big Rip.
Underlying assumptions
The Big Bang theory depends on two major assumptions: the universality of physical laws, and the cosmological principle. The cosmological principle states that on large scales the Universe is homogeneous and isotropic.
These ideas were initially taken as postulates, but today there are efforts to test each of them. For example, the first assumption has been tested by observations showing that largest possible deviation of the fine structure constant over much of the age of the universe is of order 10−5. Also, general relativity has passed stringent tests on the scale of the Solar System and binary stars while extrapolation to cosmological scales has been validated by the empirical successes of various aspects of the Big Bang theory.
If the large-scale Universe appears isotropic as viewed from Earth, the cosmological principle can be derived from the simpler Copernican principle, which states that there is no preferred (or special) observer or vantage point. To this end, the cosmological principle has been confirmed to a level of 10−5 via observations of the CMB. The Universe has been measured to be homogeneous on the largest scales at the 10% level.
The Big Bang is not an explosion of matter moving outward to fill an empty universe. Instead, space itself expands with time everywhere and increases the physical distance between two comoving points. Because the FLRW metric assumes a uniform distribution of mass and energy, it applies to our Universe only on large scales—local concentrations of matter such as our galaxy are gravitationally bound and as such do not experience the large-scale expansion of space.
These ideas were initially taken as postulates, but today there are efforts to test each of them. For example, the first assumption has been tested by observations showing that largest possible deviation of the fine structure constant over much of the age of the universe is of order 10−5. Also, general relativity has passed stringent tests on the scale of the Solar System and binary stars while extrapolation to cosmological scales has been validated by the empirical successes of various aspects of the Big Bang theory.
If the large-scale Universe appears isotropic as viewed from Earth, the cosmological principle can be derived from the simpler Copernican principle, which states that there is no preferred (or special) observer or vantage point. To this end, the cosmological principle has been confirmed to a level of 10−5 via observations of the CMB. The Universe has been measured to be homogeneous on the largest scales at the 10% level.
The Big Bang is not an explosion of matter moving outward to fill an empty universe. Instead, space itself expands with time everywhere and increases the physical distance between two comoving points. Because the FLRW metric assumes a uniform distribution of mass and energy, it applies to our Universe only on large scales—local concentrations of matter such as our galaxy are gravitationally bound and as such do not experience the large-scale expansion of space.
References
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