UNIT II ORIGIN OF UNIVERSE

2.1 Introduction:
The physical universe is defined as all of space and time (collectively
referred to as spacetime) and their contents. Such contents comprise all of
energy in its various forms, including electromagnetic radiation and matter, and
therefore planets, moons, stars, galaxies, and the contents of intergalactic
space. The universe also includes the physical laws that influence energy and
matter, such as conservation laws, classical mechanics, and relativity.

The universe is often defined as "the totality of existence", or everything that

exists, everything that has existed, and everything that will exist. In fact, some
philosophers and scientists support the inclusion of ideas and abstract concepts
such as mathematics and logic in the definition of the universe. The
word universe may also refer to concepts such as the cosmos, the world,
and nature.

The universe began 13.8 billion years ago, and in its early years, it looked
completely different than it does now. For nearly 400,000 years, the entire
cosmos was opaque, which means we have no direct observations of anything
that happened during that time. Even after the universe became transparent, it
was still a long time before the first stars and galaxies formed, leaving us with
limited information about that period. Despite those problems, the early epochs
of cosmic history are essential for everything that came after, leading
researchers to find ways to figure out exactly what happened when our universe
was in its infancy.
 Until roughly 380,000 years after the Big Bang, the entire universe was a
thick opaque cloud of plasma of electrons and nuclei. As the universe expanded,
it cooled off enough to let the plasma become atoms, and the cosmos became
transparent. We observe the light from this time as the cosmic
microwave background (CMB).

The CMB is remarkably uniform in temperature all across the sky, which
is surprising. Usually for two things to be exactly the same temperature, they
need to be in contact. However, two points on the CMB on opposite sides of the
sky would never have been close together since the Big Bang — unless
something else was going on to connect them.

The most widely accepted hypothesis for that “something else” is cosmic
inflation. In a tiny fraction of a second after the Big Bang, quantum fluctuations
drove the universe to “inflate” much faster than the rate we observe at later eras.
The part of the cosmos that became our observable universe was smaller than it
would seem today, so the points opposite to each other on the sky now would
have been in contact before inflation happened.

Much of the research on inflation involves understanding how it worked,

and determining how we can detect its effects. For example, inflation would
have created gravitational waves in the early universe, leaving small but
potentially observable traces in the CMB. Observatories such as the South Pole
Telescope (SPT) are
looking for these effects.
Cosmic Dark Ages and First Light

When the CMB formed, the ordinary matter in the universe transitioned
from a hot opaque plasma to incandescent hydrogen and helium gas.
Astronomers call this the “dark age” of the universe, since no stars had formed
yet.

Researchers are using the best observatories in the world both to study the
dark age and to find evidence for the first stars in the universe. As the first stars
and black holes formed, they turned much of the hydrogen gas in the universe
into plasma again, a process astronomers call “reionization”. The environment
producing the earliest stars was radically different than star-forming regions
today. The raw ingredients were almost exclusively hydrogen and helium, since
stars themselves produce heavier elements through nuclear fusion.

Astronomers think the first stars may have been very massive compared
with modern stars, and may have formed the first black holes in the cosmos.
Individual stars are too small to be seen from so great a distance, so researchers
look for indirect evidence about the nature of these objects, through how they
influenced their surroundings.

Studying the dark ages and first stars is a way to understand the
genealogy of all stars, including our own Sun. These original stars began the
process of making most of the elements heavier than helium, which includes the
atoms like oxygen and carbon necessary for life. The earliest stars, galaxies, and
black holes changed the cloudy universe of the dark ages into the vast
cosmic structures we see today.

2.2 Early History of Universe

 STEP 1: HOW IT ALL STARTED

The Big Bang was not an explosion in space, as the theory's name might
suggest. Instead, it was the appearance of space everywhere in the universe,
researchers have said. According to the Big Bang theory, the universe was born
as a very hot, very dense, single point in space.
A key part of this comes from observations of the cosmic microwave
background, which contains the afterglow of light and radiation left over from
the Big Bang

STEP 2: THE UNIVERSE'S FIRST GROWTH SPURT

When the universe was very young — something like a hundredth of a billionth
of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second (whew!) — it underwent an incredible
growth spurt. During this burst of expansion, which is known as inflation, the
universe grew exponentially and doubled in size at least 90 times.
The universe was expanding, and as it expanded, it got cooler and less dense,"
David Spergel, a theoretical astrophysicist at Princeton University in Princeton,
N.J., told SPACE.com. After inflation, the universe continued to grow, but at a
slower rate.

As space expanded, the universe cooled and matter formed.

STEP 3: TOO HOT TO SHINE

Light chemical elements were created within the first three minutes of the
universe's formation. As the universe expanded, temperatures cooled and
protons and neutrons collided to make deuterium, which is an isotope of
hydrogen. Much of this deuterium combined to make helium.
For the first 380,000 years after the Big Bang, however, the intense heat
from the universe's creation made it essentially too hot for light to shine

STEP 4: LET THERE BE LIGHT

About 380,000 years after the Big Bang, matter cooled enough for
electrons to combine with nuclei to form neutral atoms. This phase is known as
"recombination," and the absorption of free electrons caused the universe to
become transparent. The light that was unleashed at this time is detectable today
in the form of radiation from the cosmic microwave background.
 Yet, the era of recombination was followed by a period of darkness
before stars and other bright objects were formed.

STEP 5: EMERGING FROM THE COSMIC DARK AGES

Roughly 400 million years after the Big Bang, the universe began to come out
of its dark ages. This period in the universe's evolution is called the age of re-
ionization.

During this time, clumps of gas collapsed enough to form the very first
stars and galaxies. The emitted ultraviolet light from these energetic events
cleared out and destroyed most of the surrounding neutral hydrogen gas. The
process of re-ionization, plus the clearing of foggy hydrogen gas, caused the
universe to become transparent to ultraviolet light for the first time.

STEP 6: MORE STARS AND MORE GALAXIES

Astronomers comb the universe looking for the most far-flung and oldest
galaxies to help them understand the properties of the early universe. Similarly,
by studying the cosmic microwave background, astronomers can work
backwards to piece together the events that came before.

Data from older missions like WMAP and the Cosmic Background
Explorer (COBE), which launched in 1989, and missions still in operation, like
the Hubble Space Telescope, which launched in 1990, all help scientists try to
solve the most enduring mysteries and answer the most debated questions in
cosmology.
STEP 7: BIRTH OF OUR SOLAR SYSTEM

Our solar system is estimated to have been born a little after 9 billion
years after the Big Bang, making it about 4.6 billion years old. According to
current estimates, the sun is one of more than 100 billion stars in our Milky
Way galaxy alone, and orbits roughly 25,000 light-years from the galactic core.

STEP 8: THE INVISIBLE STUFF IN THE UNIVERSE

In the 1960s and 1970s, astronomers began thinking that there might be
more mass in the universe than what is visible. Vera Rubin, an astronomer at the
Carnegie Institution of Washington, observed the speeds of stars at various
locations in galaxies.
 Basic Newtonian physics implies that stars on the outskirts of a galaxy
would orbit more slowly than stars at the center, she found that all stars in a
galaxy seem to circle the center at more or less the same speed.

This mysterious and invisible mass became known as dark matter. Dark
matter is inferred because of the gravitational pull it exerts on regular matter.

STEP 9: THE EXPANDING AND ACCELERATING UNIVERSE

In the 1920s, astronomer Edwin Hubble made a revolutionary discovery

about the universe. Using a newly constructed telescope at the Mount Wilson
Observatory in Los Angeles, Hubble observed that the universe is not static,
but rather is expanding.

Decades later, in 1998, the prolific space telescope named after the
famous astronomer, the Hubble Space Telescope, studied very
distant supernovas and found that, a long time ago, the universe was expanding
more slowly than it is today. This discovery was surprising because it was long
thought that the gravity of matter in the universe would slow its expansion, or
even cause it to contract

TEP 10: WE STILL NEED TO KNOW MORE

While much has been discovered about the creation and evolution of the
universe, there are enduring questions that remain unanswered. Dark matter and
dark energy remain two of the biggest mysteries, but cosmologists continue to
probe the universe in hopes of better understanding how it all began.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), launched in 2021, will

continue the hunt for the elusive dark matter, as well as peering back to the
beginning of time and the evolution of the universe using its infrared
instruments.

2.3 The Big Bang Theory:

The Big Bang Theory is the leading explanation for how the
universe began. It says the universe as we know it started with an infinitely hot
and dense single point that inflated and stretched first at unimaginable speeds,
and then at a more measurable rate over the next 13.7 billion years to the still
expanding cosmos that we know today.
Existing technology doesn't yet allow astronomers to literally peer back at
the universe's birth, much of what we understand about the Big Bang comes
from mathematical formulas and models. Astronomers can, however, see the
"echo" of the expansion through a phenomenon known as the cosmic
microwave background.
While the majority of the astronomical community accepts the theory,
there are some theorists who have alternative explanations besides the Big
Bang such as eternal inflation or an oscillating universe.
In the year 1931, a Belgian priest by the name Georges Lemaitre
proposed the Big Bang Theory. According to this theory, the Universe started
from an unimaginably tiny dot, which began expanding due to its immense heat
and density, following a massive blast known as the “big bang”. It is believed
that the Universe cooled down after this blast, and the stars and the galaxies of
today’s Universe were gradually formed.
According to most astrophysicists, all the matter found in the universe
today including the matter in people, plants, animals, the earth, stars, and
galaxies was created at the very first moment of time, thought to be about 13
billion years ago.

The universe began, scientists believe, with every speck of its energy
jammed into a very tiny point. This extremely dense point exploded with
unimaginable force, creating matter and propelling it outward to make the
billions of galaxies of our vast universe. Astrophysicists dubbed this titanic
explosion the Big Bang.

The Big Bang was like no explosion you might witness on earth today.
For instance, a hydrogen bomb explosion, whose centre registers approximately
100 million degrees Celsius, moves through the air at about 300 meters per
second. In contrast, cosmologists believe the Big Bang flung energy in all
directions at the speed of light (300,000,000 meters per second, a million times
faster than the H-bomb) and estimate that the temperature of the entire universe
was 1000 trillion degrees Celsius at just a tiny fraction of a second after the
explosion. Even the cores of the hottest stars in today's universe are much cooler
than that.

There's another important quality of the Big Bang that makes it unique.
While an explosion of a man-made bomb expands through air, the Big Bang did
not expand through anything. That's because there was no space to expand
through at the beginning of time. Rather, physicists believe the Big Bang
created and stretched space itself, expanding the universe.

A Cooling, Expanding Universe

For a brief moment after the Big Bang, the immense heat created
conditions unlike any conditions astrophysicists see in the universe today.
While planets and stars today are composed of atoms of elements like hydrogen
and silicon, scientists believe the universe back then was too hot for anything
other than the most fundamental particles -- such as quarks and photons.

But as the universe quickly expanded, the energy of the Big Bang became
more and more "diluted" in space, causing the universe to cool. Popping open a
beer bottle results in a roughly similar cooling, expanding effect: gas, once
confined in the bottle, spreads into the air, and the temperature of the beer
drops.

Rapid cooling allowed for matter as we know it to form in the universe,

although physicists are still trying to figure out exactly how this happened.
About one ten-thousandth of a second after the Big Bang, protons and neutrons
formed, and within a few minutes these particles stuck together to form atomic
nuclei, mostly hydrogen and helium. Hundreds of thousands of years later,
electrons stuck to the nuclei to make complete atoms.

About a billion years after the Big Bang, gravity caused these atoms to
gather in huge clouds of gas, forming collections of stars known as galaxies.
Gravity is the force that pulls any objects with mass towards one another -- the
same force, for example, that causes a ball thrown in the air to fall to the earth.

Where do planets like earth come from? Over billions of years, stars
"cook" hydrogen and helium atoms in their hot cores to make heavier elements
like carbon and oxygen. Large stars explode over time, blasting these elements
into space. This matter then condenses into the stars, planets, and satellites that
make up solar systems like our own

Astrophysicists have uncovered a great deal of compelling evidence over

the past hundred years to support the Big Bang theory. Among this evidence is
the observation that the universe is expanding. By looking at light emitted by
distant galaxies, scientists have found that these galaxies are rapidly moving
away from our galaxy, the Milky Way. An explosion like the Big Bang, which
sent matter flying outward from a point, explains this observation.

Another critical discovery was the observation of low levels of

microwaves throughout space. Astronomers believe these microwaves, whose
temperature is about -270 degrees Celsius, are the remnants of the extremely
high-temperature radiation produced by the Big Bang.

Interestingly, astronomers can get an idea of how hot the universe used to
be by looking at very distant clouds of gas through high-power telescopes.
Because light from these clouds can take billions of years to reach our
telescopes, we see such bodies as they appeared eons ago. Lo and behold, these
ancient clouds of gas seem to be hotter than younger clouds.

Scientists have also been able to uphold the Big Bang theory by
measuring the relative amounts of different elements in the universe. They've
found that the universe contains about 74 percent hydrogen and 26 percent
helium by mass, the two lightest elements. All the other heavier elements
including elements common on earth, such as carbon and oxygen make up just a
tiny trace of all matter.

So how does this prove anything about the Big Bang? Scientists have
shown, using theoretical calculations, that these abundances could only have
been made in a universe that began in a very hot, dense state, and then quickly
cooled and expanded. This is exactly the kind of universe that the Big Bang
theory predicts.

All of the observational evidence that we've gathered is consistent with

the predictions of the Big Bang Theory. The three most important observations
are:

1) The Hubble Law shows that distant objects are receding from us at a
rate proportional to their distance — which occurs when there is uniform
expansion in all directions. This implies a history where everything was closer
together.
2) The properties of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB).
This shows that the universe went through a transition from an ionized gas (a
plasma) and a neutral gas. Such a transition implies a hot, dense early universe
that cooled as it expanded. This transition happened after about 400,000 years
following the Big Bang.
3) The relative abundances of light elements (He-4, He-3, Li-7, and
Deuterium). These were formed during the era of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis
(BBN) in the first few minutes after the Big Bang. Their abundances show that
the universe was really hot and really dense in the past (as opposed to the
conditions when the CMB was formed, which was just regular hot and dense —
there's about a factor of a million difference in temperature between when BBN
occurred and when the CMB occurred).
2.4 Hubble Expansion Model of the Universe

During the 1920's and 30's, Edwin Hubble discovered that the Universe is
expanding, with galaxies moving away from each other at a velocity given by
an expression known as Hubble's Law: v = H*r. Here v represents the galaxy's
recessional velocity, r is its distance away from Earth, and H is a constant of
proportionality called Hubble's constant.

The exact value of the Hubble constant is somewhat uncertain, but is

generally believed to be around 70 kilometres per second for every megaparsec
in distance, km/sec/Mpc. (See e.g. the online proceedings of How Far Can You
Go?. A megaparsec is given by 1 Mpc = 3 x 10^6 light-years). This means that
a galaxy 1 megaparsec away will be moving away from us at a speed of about
70 km/sec, while another galaxy 100 megaparsecs away will be receding at 100
times this speed. So essentially, the Hubble constant sets the rate at which the
Universe is expanding.

Additionally, the present age of the Universe can be assessed vis-a-vis the
Hubble constant: the inverse of the Hubble constant has units of time. By
substituting in kilometres for Mpc in the Hubble constant, we find that upon
inverting H we get a quantity with units of seconds (kilometres cancelling out in
the denominator and numerator). For a Hubble constant of 100 kilometres per
second per Mpc, we get 3 x 10^17 seconds, or about 10 billion years.

The standard picture of cosmology, based on Einstein's general theory of

relativity explains how to picture this expanding universe. As an example,
consider a loaf of bread, with raisins sprinkled evenly throughout it. As the
bread expands during cooking all the raisins are moved further and further apart
from each other. Seen from any raisin all the other raisins in the bread appear to
be receding with some velocity.

This model also explains the linearity of the Hubble law, by which we
mean the fact that the recession velocity is proportional to distance. If all the
lengths in the universe double in 10 million years, then something that was
initially 1 megaparsec away from us will end up a further megaparsec away.
Something that was 2 megaparsecs away from us will end up a further 2
megaparsecs away. In terms of the speed at which the objects appear to be
receding from us, the object twice as distant has receded twice as fast!

On very large scales Einstein's theory predicts departures from a strictly

linear Hubble law. The amount of departure, and the type, depends on the
amount and types of mass and energy of the universe. In this way a plot of
recession velocity (or redshift) vs. distance (a Hubble plot), which is a straight
line at small distances, can tell us about the amount of matter in the universe
and provide crucial information about dark matter.