Big Bang facts for kid

Kids Encyclopedia
For other uses, see Big Bang (disambiguation).

The Big Bang model is that the universe begun in an extremely dense and hot condition and has expanded. The theory
suggests, and measurements show, that the universe is still expanding today.

The Big Bang is a scientific theory about how the universe started, and then made
the stars and galaxies we see today.
The universe began very hot, small, and dense, with no stars, atoms, form, or structure (called a
"singularity"). Then about 13.8 billion years ago, space expanded very quickly (thus the name
"Big Bang"). This started the formation of atoms, which eventually led to the formation of stars
and galaxies. It was Georges Lemaître who first noted (in 1927) that an expanding universe
could be traced back in time to an originating single point. The universe is still expanding today,
but getting colder as well.
As a whole, universe is growing and the temperature is falling as time passes. Cosmology is the
study of the universe began and its development. Scientists that study cosmology agree the Big
Bang theory matches what they have observed so far.
Fred Hoyle called the theory the "Big Bang" on his radio show. He did not believe the Big Bang
was correct. Scientists who did not agree with him thought the name was funny and decided to
use it. Since then, Fred Hoyle's reasons for not agreeing with the theory have been proved wrong.
Scientists base the Big Bang theory on many different observations. The most important is
the redshift of very far away galaxies. 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. 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.
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. Scientists also have found
 "cosmic microwaves background radiation". This radiation is known as radio waves, and they are
everywhere in the universe. This radiation is now very weak and cold, but a long time ago it was
very strong and very hot.
It could be said that time had no meaning before the Big Bang. If the Big Bang was the
beginning of time, then there was no universe before the Big Bang, since there could not be any
"before" if there was no time! Other ideas state that the Big Bang was not the beginning of time
13.8 billion years ago. Instead, some believe that there was a completely different universe
before the Big Bang, and it may have been very different from the one we know today.
More reading
Images for kids

 Timeline of the metric expansion of space, where space (including hypothetical non-
observable portions of the universe) is represented at each time by the circular
sections. On the left, the dramatic expansion occurs in the inflationary epoch; and at
the center, the expansion accelerates (artist's concept; not to scale).
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Panoramic view of the entire near-infrared sky reveals the distribution of galaxies beyond the Milky
Way. Galaxies are color-coded by redshift.

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Abell 2744 galaxy cluster - Hubble Frontier Fields view.
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Artist's depiction of the WMAP satellite gathering data to help scientists understand the Big Bang
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Focal plane of BICEP2 telescope under a microscope - used to search for polarization in the CMB.
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The overall geometry of the universe is determined by whether the Omega cosmological parameter
is less than, equal to or greater than 1. Shown from top to bottom are a closed universe with positive
curvature, a hyperbolic universe with negative curvature and a flat universe with zero curvature.