TEACHERS

The Origin of the Universe
By David Fishman

Grades
6–8, 9–12
 

From Grolier's The New Book of Knowledge


This artist's concept represents crucial periods in the development of the Universe according to
one theory. It begins with a tiny fraction of a second after the Big Bang and goes through the way
it looks today-15 billion years later. (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center)

How and when did the universe begin? No other scientific question is more fundamental or
provokes such spirited debate among researchers. After all, no one was around when the universe
began, so who can say what really happened? The best that scientists can do is work out the most
foolproof theory, backed up by observations of the universe. The trouble is, so far, no one has
come up with an absolutely indisputable explanation of how the cosmos came to be.

The Big Bang

Since the early part of the 1900s, one explanation of the origin and fate of the universe, the Big
Bang theory, has dominated the discussion. Proponents of the Big Bang maintain that, between 13
billion and 15 billion years ago, all the matter and energy in the known cosmos was crammed into
a tiny, compact point. In fact, according to this theory, matter and energy back then were the same
thing, and it was impossible to distinguish one from the other.

Adherents of the Big Bang believe that this small but incredibly dense point of primitive
matter/energy exploded. Within seconds the fireball ejected matter/energy at velocities
approaching the speed of light. At some later time—maybe seconds later, maybe years later—
energy and matter began to split apart and become separate entities. All of the different elements
in the universe today developed from what spewed out of this original explosion.

Big Bang theorists claim that all of the galaxies, stars, and planets still retain the explosive motion
of the moment of creation and are moving away from each other at great speed. This supposition
came from an unusual finding about our neighboring galaxies. In 1929 astronomer Edwin Hubble,
working at the Mount Wilson Observatory in California, announced that all of the galaxies he had
observed were receding from us, and from each other, at speeds of up to several thousand miles
per second.
The Redshift

To clock the speeds of these galaxies, Hubble took advantage of the Doppler effect. This
phenomenon occurs when a source of waves, such as light or sound, is moving with respect to an
observer or listener. If the source of sound or light is moving toward you, you perceive the waves
as rising in frequency: sound becomes higher in pitch, whereas light becomes shifted toward the
blue end of the visible spectrum. If the source is moving away from you, the waves drop in
frequency: sound becomes lower in pitch, and light tends to shift toward the red end of the
spectrum. You may have noticed the Doppler effect when you listen to an ambulance siren: the
sound rises in pitch as the vehicle approaches, and fa