The Big Bang Theory represents the best attempts by cosmologists to reconstruct the 14 billion year old history of the universe based on the fragment of existence visible today.
Different people use the term “big bang” in different ways. The observable universe when it thins and cools down from an initially dense and hot state. This description boils down to the idea that the cosmos is expanding, a broad principle analogous to the survival of the fittest in biology that few would consider questionable.
The Big Bang can also refer to the birth of the observable universe itself, the moment when something changed and initiated the events that led to the present. Cosmologists have debated the details of this fraction of a second for decades, and the discussion continues to this day.
The Classic Theory of the Big Bang
For most of human history, sky-watchers have assumed that it is eternal and unchangeable. Edwin Hubb dealt an experimental blow to this story in the 1920s when his observations showed that galaxies existed outside the Milky Way and that their light appeared elongated, a sign that they were moving away from Earth.
George Lemaître, a contemporary Belgian physicist, interpreted the data from Hubble and others as evidence of an expanding universe, a possibility enabled by Einstein’s recently published general relativity field equations. referred to as “primitive atom”.
The first public use of the modern term for Lemaître’s idea actually came from a critic, the English astronomer Fred Hoyle. On March 28, 1949, Hoyle coined the phrase during a defense of his favorite theory of an eternal universe that created matter to offset the dilution of expansion. Hoyle said the notion that “all matter in the universe was created in a big bang at some point in the distant past” was irrational. In later interviews, Hoyle denied that he had deliberately made up a slander, but the nickname stuck, much to the frustration of some.
“The Big Bang is a really bad term,” said Paul Steinhardt, a cosmologist at Princeton. “The Big Stretch would capture the right idea.” The mental image of an explosion causes all kinds, according to Steinhardt of confusion that includes a central point, a widening border, and a scene where light shrapnel is flying faster than heavier pieces. But an expanding universe doesn’t look like it, he said: there is no center, no edge, and galaxies large and small all slide in the same way (although more distant galaxies are receding faster under recent cosmological influence. Dark energy).
The Big Bang Theory, because of its name, found widespread acceptance for its unmatched ability to explain what we see. Amounts of helium and other light atoms.
“There was a small window of time for nuclei to form,” said Glennys Farrar, a cosmologist at New York University. “After that, the universe continued to expand and they couldn’t meet, and it was too hot outside [the window].
A cloudy plasma filled the universe for the next 378,000 years until further cooling allowed electrons and protons to form. neutral hydrogen atoms, and the nebula dispersed. The one during this process, which has since spread to microwaves, is the first known object that researchers can study directly. The so-called cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) is the strongest evidence for many researchers for the big bang.
Explosive Update
But as cosmologists delved deeper into the universe’s earliest moments, history revealed itself. The general relativity equations suggested an initial patch of unlimited heat and density, a singularity. Aside from the fact that a singular origin didn’t make much physical sense, it didn’t match the smooth, flat CMB. Variations in the spot’s impressive temperature and density would have created celestial fringes with different properties, but the temperature of the CMB varies only a fraction of the curvature of spacetime also appears quite flat, implying an initially near perfect balance of matter and curvature, which most do Cosmologists consider unlikely.
Alan Guth proposed a new first split second image in the 1980s, suggesting that the universe grew exponentially faster in its early moments than it is today. At some point that process stalled, and the braking created a dense and hot (but not infinite) jumble of particles that replaced the singularity. “I think it’s the big bang when the universe got hotter,” said Farrar.
Inflation theory, as it is called, has a plethora of competing models today. Although nobody knew much about what was causing the rapid expansion of the universe, the theory became popular because it can explain the seemingly unlikely, faceless CMB: inflation kept fluctuating marginally. (which became the current galaxy clusters) while the main ones were flattened. “It’s a very sweet story,” said Steinhardt, who helped develop the theory. “It’s what we tell our children.
Beyond Inflation
The cosmic narrative of inflation theory. The work of Steinhardt and others suggests that inflation would have stopped in some regions (like our observable universe) but would continue in others, creating a number of separate territories “with” every conceivable cosmological property, “as Steinhardt puts it. Many physicists find this picture of the “multiverse” uncomfortable because it makes an infinite number of unverifiable predictions.
Cosmologists initially hope that inflation created oscillating gravitational waves across galaxies in the CMB, just as they created slight fluctuations in temperature and density. Current experiments should be sensitive enough to find them, but the primordial waves of spacetime have not occurred (despite a false alarm in 2014).
Many researchers hope for more accurate CMB measurements that could destroy or validate the many models of inflation that still exist. Other physicists, on the other hand, do not see the smoothness of the cosmos as a problem at all – it began uniformly and needs no explanation. As experimentalists strive for new levels of precision, some theorists have turned their backs on inflation to seek other ways to crush Steinhardt – for example, he’s working on a “Big Bounce“ model that turns the clock further back the earlier phase of contraction, which smoothed spacetime and set the stage for explosive expansion. For too long, the new signatures will prepare cosmologists with a new story of creation in addition to problems such as the lack of primordial gravitational waves. “Are there any other observable traits to count? Are you looking for?” Steinhardt said: “Ask me again in a few years and I hope I have an answer.
Additional resources:
- Don Lincoln of Fermilab explained exactly what the Big Bang theory does, and doesn’t say.
- Read about why some think it’s odd how flat the universe is.
- PBS’s Space Time explains why inflation has proved such an attractive idea.
