Lecture 11: The Big Bang

 The Incredible
Expanding Universe

The Big Bang

 The Big Bang refers to the expansion of the universe
(all of space, time, and matter)
from a very small hot, dense beginning
about 14 billion years ago.
 Expanding Universe

How do astronomers know that

the universe is expanding?

All astronomers can do is look at

the light from stars and galaxies.

For astronomers, a telescope is a time machine!

 Astronomers looking far into space
look at ancient light

 Comet Hale-Bopp and the 10 m 
Keck Telescope

 They can actually watch the

cosmic evolution of the
universe as it happens!
Reflecting Telescope
Keck Observatory
Palomar Observatory
The 200-inch Hale Telescope
 Palomar Telescope

 The Palomar Observatory is located in north San Diego

County, California. It is a world-class center of
astronomical research that is owned and operated by
the California Institute of Technology. The observatory
is home to five telescopes that are nightly used for a
wide variety of astronomical research programs. The
research is conducted by Caltech's faculty, post-
doctoral fellows and students, and by researchers at
Caltech's collaborating institutions.
 The Andromeda Galaxy
(2.5 million light years away)

 This is the farthest back in

time you can see with the
naked eye.

 (1 light year =
9,460,000,000,000 km)
 In 1929, Edwin Hubble published his discovery
that the universe is expanding!
 All of the galaxies in the universe
are moving away from Earth.

 Galaxies that are twice as far

away are moving away twice as
fast!
 The straight line is the Hubble
law: v = H0 r
 For each 3.26 million light years
of distance, a galaxy moves away
about 65 km/s faster (Hubble
parameter H0).
 What do astronomers see
when they look deep into space
at the most ancient objects?

This is the Hubble telescope's Deep Field photo

of a random area of "empty sky."
It shows some of the farthest galaxies known.

We are looking so far back in time

that some of these galaxies formed only a billion years after the Big
Bang!
 Cepheid Variable Stars

Cepheid variable stars vary in brightness

over time.
Henrietta Swan Leavitt
(1868 - 1921)

 Observed more than 2400

Cepheid variable stars in the
Small Magellanic Cloud

 She discovered that more

luminous Cepheids took more
time to go through one bright-
dim-bright period.

 SMC photo NOAO/AURA/NSF

 The Distance to the Andromeda Galaxy

 In 1923, Edwin Hubble discovered a

Cepheid variable star in the
Andromeda "nebula."

 The period-luminosity relation

shows that
 the Andromeda galaxy is 2.5 million
light years away.

 A primary mission of the Hubble

Space Telescope is to discover
 very distant Cepheid variable stars.
 Galaxies:
islands of stars making up the universe
 Edwin Hubble

 First to realize that galaxies lie

outside the Milky Way …
Edwin P. Hubble (1889-1953) was
trained as a lawyer, before boredom
made him turn to astronomy instead
 … by measuring their distances
using Cepheid variables as
‘standard candles’

Cepheid variables oscillate in brightness with a regular period

that depends on their luminosity. By measuring this period,
they can be used as standard candles.
 Cosmic Speedometer

 When a galaxy is receding, light waves traveling to us

are red-shifted

 Hubble measured the spectrum

of these galaxies and found the
spectral lines to be red-shifted

 The faster the recession, the

greater the red-shift
 Hubble’s Law

 Hubble then noticed a correlation between the distance

of the galaxies and the speed at which they are moving
away from us
Hubble constant graph
 Expansion of the Universe

… ‘winding’ backwards, the universe must have had a beginning

 Georges Lemaître

 Proposed that the universe began

with the explosion of a ‘primeval atom’ Georges Lemaître (1894-1966) was
a Belgian Catholic priest who was
fond of saying there is no conflict
between science and religion

 His model was improved by George Gamow

and others, who proposed that elements
were forged during this hot and dense stage

 Known as the Big Bang theory today; coined

by Fred Hoyle who proposed a rival theory ...
 Steady State Model

 Universe is expanding, but maintains

a constant average density

 Matter is continually being created in

the voids to form new stars, galaxies

 Universe has no beginning and no end

 But disproved with the discovery of …

 Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB)

 Background radiation from the sky that is isotropic

(same strength in all directions)

 Corresponds to a temperature
of just 2.7 Kelvins

 Identified as the radiation left

over from the Big Bang explosion

Arno Penzias (right) and Robert Wilson

of Bell Laboratories, next to the horn
antenna with which they discovered the
CMB in 1965
Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE)

The COBE was the world’s most sensitive

thermometer, built to probe the heat
radiation left over from the Big Bang. In
1992, it detected fluctuations of just a
few millionths of a degree in the CMB.
CMB Maps by COBE of the Entire Sky

This dipole signal is due to the motion of the Earth through

space. The CMB is blue-shifted in the direction of Earth’s
motion, and red-shifted in the opposite direction

After the dipole signal has been subtracted

out, we are left with a hot central band
running across the sky, which is due to our
own Milky Way

The final CMB map is obtained after both the dipole

and galaxy signals have been removed. The result
is a map of regions that are a few millionths of a
degree hotter (pink) or colder (blue) than average
 If we can look back in time to almost 14 billion
years, before the first galaxies were being
assembled, then what is there to see?
 We see the Cosmic Background Radiation, the afterglow of the
Big Bang. This light was released when the universe became
transparent, when it was only about 300,000 years old.
 The universe has now cooled to a temperature of 2.76 degrees
Celsius above absolute zero!
 The temperature variations shown are only a few 100 micro-
degrees Celsius.
 They mark the density fluctuations that will someday become
galaxies
 and clusters of galaxies.

 
These tiny fluctuations have evolved
into clusters of galaxies today
 Tests of the Big Bang Theory

 Expansion of the universe

 Cosmic microwave background

 Relative abundances of
hydrogen, deuterium,
helium and lithium
 Obtaining the Age of the Universe

 Extrapolate the current expansion rate

(Hubble constant) back to the Big Bang
– 10 to 20 billion years old

 Look for the oldest stars

(in globular clusters)
– 11 to 18 billion years old

 Best current estimate is

13.4 ± 1.6 billion years

M10 Globular Cluster

 Problems with the Big Bang Theory

 Flatness problem
– why is the geometry of universe so close to being flat?

 Horizon problem
– why is the universe so isotropic?

 Smoothness problem
– why is the universe so homogeneous?

Why does the universe appear so uniform

even on opposite sides of the sky, which
could never have been in causal contact
with each other?
 Alan Guth: Inflation

Alan Guth of MIT was only 32 when

he developed the theory of inflation
 Lasted between 10-35 and 10-32 seconds in 1979

after the Big Bang

 Universe expanded by a factor of 1050,

from smaller than an atom to bigger
than a galaxy

 It was driven by vast amounts of

energy released when a ‘symmetry
breaking’ phase transition occurred
 Inflation to the Rescue

 Flatness problem

In each successive frame, the sphere is inflated by a factor of three. By the fourth frame, it

looks like a flat plane. Thus, inflation drives the geometry of the universe toward flatness

 Horizon and smoothness problems

Without inflation, the universe today would consist of a Inflation had the effect of expanding a small region to a very
patchwork of different regions. Instead, it is very uniform large one. Since we are inside such a region, our neighbour-
hood appears uniform
Summary: Timeline of the Universe
Timeline of the Universe 2
Possible Fates of the Universe
 Will the Universe Recollapse?

 Gravitational pull of the galaxies on each other

is slowing down the rate of expansion

 Required density for the universe to

recollapse is 4.5 x 10-30 g/cm3

 Observed density of luminous material

(stars, galaxies) is about 3 x 10-31 g/cm3
 Dark Matter

 But there may be about 10 times this amount

in the form of ‘dark matter’

Measurements of the velocities of stars in

a galaxy show that there must be more
matter in the galaxy than is apparent.
This ‘dark matter’ is known to form an
invisible halo around the galaxy

 So the universe is very close to the threshold for

recollapse! (This is related to the flatness problem)
Possible forms of dark matter
If the universe recollapses ...
If the universe expands forever ...

“Some say the world will end in fire, others say in ice.”
– Robert Frost
 Fire and Ice - Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.