ELEMENTS

AND THE
UNIVERSE
 COSMOLOGY
Cosmos – the universe
Cosmology - the study of how
the universe began, how it
continues to exist, and how it
will end
 RELIGIOUS COSMOLOGY
•Religious cosmology is an explanation of
the origin, evolution, and eventual fate of
the universe, from a religious perspective.
This may include beliefs on origin in the
form of a creation myth, subsequent
evolution, current organizational form and
nature, and eventual fate or destiny.
 THE BIGBANG THEORY
•Science brings forth a cosmological theory,
not from belief, but from scientific evidence
that the universe once began to expand and
continues to expand until today. This theory
was eventually called the Big Bang theory
or Big Bang model. Astronomers George
Lemaître and Edwin Hubble were some of
its first proponents.
WHAT HAPPENED
DURING THE BIG
BANG?
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 no where, when or
what. There is no space around the
singularity – just nothingness.
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).
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.
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”.
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.
 NUCLEOSYNTHE
SIS
•Nucleosynthesis is the process that
creates new atomic nuclei from pre-
existing nucleons (protons and
neutrons). The first nuclei were formed a
few minutes after the Big Bang, through
the process called Big Bang
nucleosynthesis.