The BIG BANG

ALİM ERTAŞ
 The Big Bang theory is the current cosmological model explaning the existence of the
observable universe from the earliest known periods through it’s subsequent large-scale
evolution.
The Plank Epoch
 The very first period of our universe.The name comes from it’s duration of one Plank time, or 10^-43 (10
to the power of minus 43 seconds) , the smallest indivisible interval of time.
 During this time ,the temprature was up to 10^32 kelvin-not a big deal , just 1 billion , billion , billion
times hotter than the core of the sun.
 At this time the conditions were so extreme , that all the fundamental forces : gravity , electromagnetic ,
strong and weak forces were unified in just one superforce.
 During this time , scientists don’t really know what was going on mostly because gravity decided to
misbehave , and cannot be yet described in the context of the current quantum theory.
 But everything started to cool down and that universal force realized : «We are running out of gravity.»
 Now there are two forces : gravity and the combination of the other –electronuclear forces.
 During this period , everything was just a giant soup of matter and energy coming in and out of existence.
 Photons were colliding with each other and forming pairs of quarks and antiquarks , which respectively ,
under the influence of gravity , were collapsing on each other and forming, a new pair of photons.
 This peaceful time ended at 10^-35 seconds when the tempreture dropped to 10^26 kelvin.
 When the electronuclear force seperated into the strong and electroweak force…one of those two.
 Thus the Inflationary period began.
 It’s called that because the rapid separation of the Strong force triggered an exponential inflation of the cosmos –
before that it was growing at a relatively small rate.
 The universe was like «my main goal is to blow up» and in just 10^-32 seconds the scale went from an atomic
level – to the size of constellations , a factor of millions of billions of billions (10^26).
 A lot of things have happened until now , and all of it in less than an instant.
 Remember when the universe before the inflation was just a hot messy soup of quarks appearing and
disappearing?
 The whole system was very chaotic because of the high temperature.But when the inflation period started , the
universe just took a screenshot of this mess and expanded it to a tremendous size , still keeping its overall
structure.
 This screenshot can still be observed in the cosmic microwave background , the
brighter spots being the places where fluctuations were more active and vice-
versa.

 This structure will eventually be the skeleton of the future universe , as under the
influence of gravity , those fluctuations will result in today’s super-clusters and
galaxies.
 After the inflation period ended , at 10^-12 seconds (0.000000000001 seconds) ,
the last exotic force , the electroweak one , finally seperated into the
electromagnetic and weak force.
 Now , the universe is governed by the same four types of forces that we know of
today.
 The temperature dropped to 10^15 kelvin and the World entered the quark epoch.
 The new conditions permitted the formation of quarks and gluons as we know them.
 But still , those lads were too energetic and uncoordinated to form more complex structures together.But hey ,
who would have thought?
 The universe became 10^13 kelvin cooler at 10^-6 seconds.Now it was possible for quarks to bind together in
groups of 2 or 3 and form hadrons like protons and neutrons.
 During a further cool down , those two hadrons were nearly the only ones to survive and already gave birth to
light atomic nuclei like hydregon and its older brother deuterium.Yet they weren’t able to form heavier cores or
even atoms.
 And everything that I talked about until now happened in less than only 1 second!

Fasther than you could say bababooey

After that , many more things happened.Like the stabilization of the neutrons , annihilation of residue antimatter ,
creationg of the cosmic neutrino background and many more.
 What followed was the Epoch of Nucleosynthesis.When the universe was already 3 to 10 minutes old and was
chill enough – only one billion kelvins- it started the fusion of protons and neutrons into slightly heavier
elements than hydrogen like Helium and Lithium.
 Nearly a quarter of any helium we see today was formed during this period.
 This similar process will ocur much later in the cores of the stars where the temperature will get to millions of
deegres once again.But for the next 400 million years , the universe will remain a boring place filled with small
atoms cores , until the temperature will drop even more – to 3000 degrees.
 This will allow the recombination of nuclei and electrons into fully functioning atoms and furthermore-
molecules.This will also make the universe suddenly transparent to light , because till now , everything was
like a muddy lake through which photons weren’t able to pass
 These suddenly liberated photons created the Cosmic Radiation Background that we spoke of before , giving
us precious information about the very birth of our dear home we call the Universe.
 100 million years after recombination , under the influence of gravity , the clouds of matter started to collapse
into the first generation of stars.
 What followed was the structuring of the universe that we see today…

 Now , of course many questions remain unanswered about the early universe.
 -How dark matter and dark energy that prevail in the universe was formed?
 -What was before the Big Bang and what triggered it?
 -Are there more universes like ours?
 Sadly , we don’t have yet the technology to look deeper in time.
 Even all of these epochs are only the most accepted theories constructed from observations made in particle
accelerators.
 But science is constantly moving forward , and who knows what new secrets await us in the future.