The Big Bang

[Zak Roy Yoballa]

This is a small article I have on the big bang.  Read at least the first paragraph for a very brief description of what happened.  Read the whole thing for a better understanding.

"The Big Bang"

"The universe was born in an enormous explosion, called the Big Bang, about 15 billion years ago, and its fallout created not only mass and energy but also space and time.  From a tiny, fantastically hot 'seed', the universe swelled and cooled.  For hundreds of thousands of years, matter consisted of a seething mass of superheated subatomic particles, buffeted by high-energy radiation.  Today's universe is cold and quiet by comparison, but at its edge astronomers can still detect the faint glow of its fiery birth, and with it the beginning of time.

"Scientists CANNOT explain with any certainty why the Big Bang happened, so it is pointless to speculate about what came "before" it.  Time, along with space, matter and energy, was created in the Big Bang, so there was no "before".  Similarly, scientists cannot tell what happened during the first few moments.  At that point the temperatures and pressures were so high that the laws of physics as we know *or don't know as in most of our situations * them did not apply.  But we do know for certain that as things expand, they also cool.  So as the universe expanded outward from the initial explosion, the temperature and pressure began to drop.

"We can start to piece together the story of the universe from a mere 10-43 seconds after the beginning.  Around this time, the universe divided into energy and matter.  For a while, energy turned into matter and matter back into energy in a seething turmoil of collision and annihilation.  But as the universe expanded and the temperature fell, the type of matter in it changed.  Scientists believe that at first there were many types of matter particles, but that these were short-lived and soon disappeared.  It also seems that in the immediate aftermath of the Big Bang, there was only one kind of force acting between particles.  

Time Line

Time      Diameter       Events
0      0      Time, space, matter and
                                                               energy are born
10-43 sec       10-33 inches   Gravity becomes a separate
                                                               force.
10-35 sec.                   10-28 inches   Universe expands faster than
                                                               before and stops cooling
10-33 sec                   1 inch      Inflation stops: it has doubled
                                                               its size hundreds of times
10-12 sec                   1.02 inches   Electromagnetism splits from
                                                               the weak force
10-6 sec                   2000 ft      Quarks combine to make
                                                               protons, neutrons and   other
                                                               particles
1 sec      400,000 miles   Neutrinos stop interacting
                                                               with other particles almost
                                                               completely
100 sec                   40 mil. miles              Protons and neutrons
                                                               combine to build light nuclei
300,000 yr                  600,000 light-years   First atoms are formed

1 mil yrs                 2 mil light-years   Gas clouds form; first stars
                                                               are born
15 bill yr                 30 bil light-years   Present day


Some other interesting facts

• Other Bangs?  Some have speculated that this might have occurred outside of our universe.  But the edge of ours is moving at the speed of light, we could never catch up to look beyond it.

• Afterglow:  In 1965, two scientists at Bell Labs discovered radiation coming from all over the sky.  It was the afterglow of the Big Bang, on the very edge of the Universe.

• Hot and Cold:  as the edge of the universe advances, it gets colder.  So now, the afterglow from the billion degree Big Bang is just 5.8 F above absolute zero.

• What's  in a name?  In the 1950's British Astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle claimed that the universe has always existed and would exist much the same as it is today.  To ridicule the idea that it had been created in a catastrophic explosion, he called it the "Big Bang" theory.  Although he was being sarcastic, the name stuck!

This comes from the "Secrets of the Universe" and is an excellent source of information.  It was expensive as hell but worth it to a science geek like myself.  I say this to avoid being sued for copying almost verbatim!  

ZRY

[Quest]

Recently my son has been getting into astronomy, checking out books from the school library on the universe and the planets.  I rejoy reading the materials as much as he does.  I took an astronomy course years back in college in Delaware but  really didn't follow through after that.  It's interesting how there are new theories since my college years.

[mike624]

it says that time space and matter is born...but from where? i wonder what was here a trillion years ago, unless everything does have a beginning and an end,then the big bang is the beginning.

[Zak Roy Yoballa]

Well Mike, beginning and ending, from a scientific prespective, is still up in the air.  Here are some quickies on the origin of the universe:

Steady State Theory:  That the universe isn't growing or shrinking but has been this way for all time.  This theory is done for all intents and purposes.  With the ability to see red shifts and blue shifts, the Steady State Theory has been debunked.

Big Bang Theory:  you've already seen a bit on that

Bang Bang Bang theory:  Like the Big Bang but it goes in cycles.  The Big Bang occurred the universe expands for a while, eventually gravity overcomes the momentum and starts to draw everything back together forming a universal black hole, which causes a singularity, this becomes unstable causeing another big bang and so the process repeats itself.  At the present time there is no way to verify this.

One important thing to remember that as humankind increases its knowledge and technology our views on the universe change.  Way back in the day humans thought the earth was flat and the heavens rotated around us.  The heliocentric view came into view and we still thought the whole universe rotated around our sun, Newtons laws became the be all and end all until Astrophysics came into being. (that may be a bad example becasue both are still valid but only in their own areas).  

In short, in a hundred years human kind may be understand the new view of the universe illistrated in Mike624's theory of hyperdynamics.

I hope this helps.  Any other questions, don't hesitate to ask.

ZRY

[omnipotentoculus]

There is a theory that when someone finally understands the universe it will instantly change into something infinitly more complex and ridiculous. There is also a theory that this has already happened.

[Zak Roy Yoballa]

I do believe that is a Hitch Hiker reference!