SCIENCE:

Cosmological theory - BIG BANG THEORY

The BIG BANG MODEL:

a. The universe may have begun as an infinitely hot and dense initial singularity, a point with all of space, time, matter and
energy. This means that there was nowhere, when or what. There is no space around the singularity – just nothingness. The initial
singularity is called the Primeval atom or the cosmic egg, which is thousand times smaller than a pin head.

b. All of it then began to rapidly expand in a process known as inflation. Space itself expanded faster than the speed of light. In
this still hot and dense mass of the universe, pairs of matter and antimatter (quarks and antiquarks) were formed from energy, but
these pairs cancelled each other back into energy (annihilation).

c. The universe cooled down as it expanded. An excess of matter (electrons, protons, neutrons and other particles) somehow
came to be in a highly energetic “plasma soup.” Photons (light particles) were being scattered everywhere in this “soup”. Protons and
neutrons came together to form different types of nuclei by nucleosynthesis or nuclear fusion.

d. Much later on, electrons started to bind to ionized protons and nuclei forming neutral atoms in a process called recombination.
The bound particles no longer scattered photons so light and energy moved freely across space. The period was hence known as the
“dark ages”.

e. Gravity caused these atoms to collapse onto one another to form stars and galaxies and eventually, other matter. This still
happens until today. Space also continues to expand at an accelerating rate, thus increasing the distance between the matters inside it.

COSMOLOGY - is the study of how the universe began and its development
EVIDENCES of THE BIG BANG
1. REDSHIFT
Redshift is the Doppler effect occurring in light. When an object moves away from Earth, its color rays look more similar to the
color red than they actually are, because the movement stretches the wavelength of light given off by the object.

The farther a star moves away, the lower frequency, the more it shifts to higher wavelength,
red color in the visible spectrum. Scientists use the word "red hot" to describe this stretched
light wave because red is the longest wavelength on the visible spectrum. The more redshift
there is, the faster the object is moving away. By measuring the redshift, scientists proved that
the universe is expanding, and they can work out how fast the object is moving away from the
Earth. With very exact observation and measurements, scientists believe that the universe was a singularity approximately
13.8 billion years ago. Because most things become colder as they expand, scientists assume that the universe was very small
and very hot when it started.
Evidence from red-shift

Astronomers have discovered that, in general, the further away a galaxy is, the more red-shifted its light is. This means that
the further away the galaxies are, the faster they are moving. This is similar to an explosion, where the bits moving fastest
travel furthest from the explosion.

2. RELATIVE ABUNDANCE OF LIGHT ELEMENTS IN THE UNIVERSE

• Other observations that support the Big Bang theory are the amounts of chemical elements in the universe.
Amounts of very light elements, such as hydrogen, helium, and lithium seem to agree with the theory of the Big
Bang
• Nucleosynthesis: free protons and neutrons would routinely combine and separate from each other due to the high energies at
the time.
• Due to Extreme heat and pressure, nuclear fusion happens. One example is tritium and deuterium (which are hydrogen atom
isotopes) forming a helium atom, giving off a free neutron and energy.
• Hydrogen isotopes (p, D, T)

3. COSMIC WAVE BACKGROUND

due to the rapid cooling due to expansion, nucleosynthesis ground to a halt about three minutes after the Big Bang
occurred. This left us with mostly H isotopes (p, D and T), He isotopes and a very tiny bit of other elements like Lithium. The
relative abundance of He and H did not change much until today..
 Universe’s ordinary matter:
24% helium 2% other elements
74% hydrogen

These figures only make sense if nucleosynthesis in the Big Bang model actually occurred since no chemical process
significantly changes these percentages.

The third part of evidence for the Big Bang model: cosmic microwave background, or the energy (thermal radiation) that was
left as a result of recombination. Atoms became neutral due to the binding of nuclei and electrons. The remaining radiation then began
to scatter. This is seen by scientists as a faint microwave glow not emitted by any object in space.