Idea Similar To The Big Bang Theory example essay topic

The Big Bang Why is the Universe expanding? What is Cosmic Back Ground Radiation (CBR)? There are many questions asked about our Universe, which we know so little about. Scientists, in their attempt to answer these and other confrontations, have found one idea that seems to explain much of what we don't understand: The Big Bang Theory. An explosion of incomprehensible speed was the beginning of our known Universe and existence.

At that time matter as small as the head of a pin inflated to become larger than the visible Universe of today in less then one millisecond. The newly born Universe cooled very quickly and continued to grow. Still, the heat was too great for normal elementary particles like protons and neutrons to be bound together. Instead, the particles were in their free form and were called quarks.

These quarks and the massive amount of radiation released form the explosion made up most of the Universe in the first microsecond. Within the quarks, matter and antimatter (elementary particles such as protons and electrons, yet with an opposite charge) was distributed in a 2: 1 ratio. The matter and antimatter soon began to cancel each other out, for antimatter and matter cannot coexist in close range for more than a few seconds without annihilating each other. Because the matter had more particles then the antimatter, there was a little residue left over. It was this leftover debris that created the galaxies, the stars, the planets, and even you and me. At this point the Universe was one second old, and it began fusing lighter elements like helium.

This nuclear activity only lasted a few minutes, but it is one of the reasons the Universe has an abundance of light elements. The Universe continued to grow and cool, later fusing the heavier elements and then what we see around us today. All of it began at the Big Bang. The Big Bang is a well known and believed theory of how the universe was created. It is described as a tremendous explosion that has a certain place and time.

In fact, the Big Bang is considered to be the beginning of time as well as the beginning of the universe. Scientists today, don't know what happened before the Big Bang. However, they have concluded that if something had happened, it would not have effected the explosion in any way. Most have agreed that what ever there was, or wasn't before the Big Bang, has no importance and it should be left out of the scientific model of the universe. The Big Bang is therefore considered the beginning of time. There were many people who worked together to come up with the present theory of creation.

Edwin Hubble, Arno Penzias, Robert Wilson and Alan Guth all contributed greatly to the formation of the Big Bang theory. Edwin Hubble used his large telescope to see far away stars and galaxies. He knew that the elements in the stars reflected back specific colors, and you could tell what a star was made of by its color "DNA". Hubble noticed that this pattern had been slightly shifted to the red side of the spectrum, otherwise called a red shift. He knew, based on the Doppler effect, that a red shift was caused by the stretched wavelengths of an object moving away from a point. If the galaxies he had observed had shifted to the red side then it meant that they were moving away from Earth.

He also discovered that the galaxies were moving away from each other, as well. With these observations in mind, Hubble announced that the universe was expanding. He then came to this syllogism: If the universe is expanding, then at one point it was smaller. The result of his postulations was the Big Bang theory.

Another mystery of the universe was the Cosmic Background Radiation (CBR). CBR is made up of photons throughout the universe that are floating for no apparent reason in space. Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson spent their lives trying to explain the origin of this radiation and why it is still existent today. Their discoveries led them to an idea similar to the Big Bang theory. They were able to prove that the radiation could only result from a huge explosion as great as the Big Bang and that the radiation had at one point dominated the Universe. Although the two scientists measured the CBR's temperature to be 2.73 degrees above absolute zero, they found that at the time of the Big Bang it was 3000 Kelvin and very bright.

However, as the Universe expanded, so did the radiation, causing the radiation to stretch and in turn slowly grow weaker. The most important aspect of the discoveries about the CBR was the fact that it supported the Big Bang theory. While studying the radiation, Alan Guth found that throughout the universe CBR consists of the same temperature and has most everything in common. He knew that the radiation was very sparse and that it had stopped reacting when the universe was 300,000 years old. Guth was faced with the question: How can the CBR be so similar in completely different parts of the Universe when it has not had active communication for millions of years? If this question were answered it would also explain why the Universe is so uniform when it is so vast.

The explanation that Guth gave is the inflation theory. This theory simply stated that at one point the Universe was very small and that it then inflated to an enormous size in a tiny fraction of a second. This was called the inflation period. Before this period, when the Universe was smaller everything was in "casual contact".

Casual contact is when one thing is done at a certain place and time and that event affects another thing at a certain place and time. The CBR was in casual contact at this point and continued to be after the inflation of the universe. This allowed the radiation to be similar even though it stretched a great distance. The Inflation theory also helped the Big Bang theory explain why the universe is so uniform and homogenous. Copernicus' Cosmological principle is supported by the inflation theory. Since the Universe expanded in every direction with large parts of it in casual contact, there is no uniquely preferred place in the universe and it all looks the same.

In other words, although everything is moving away from us, we are not the center of the Universe. Another characteristic that the Big Bang did not explain thoroughly was the fact that the Universe gives the appearance of being flat. The inflation theory allows this to be the case. Compare the expanding Universe to a balloon being blown up. As the balloon becomes larger and larger its front tends to look flat. Apply this idea to the Universe.

It is expanding, because of the inflation theory, just like the balloon and appears to be flat when looking straight at it. The Universe may not always be expanding though. Scientists have come up with three possible fates for the Universe depending on its mass as it continues to grow. If the Universe is not dense enough to utilize gravity, it will keep expanding forever. This is called an open universe. If the density is just right, the universe will continue expanding but will slow down and ultimately stop completely.

This is called a flat Universe. The third option has almost been ruled out, but there is always a possibility. If the universe is denser than we think, gravity will eventually become stronger than the expansion, perhaps resulting in the universe collapsing in on itself in a "Big Crunch". We may not know where our Universe is heading, but the Big Bang theory helps us understand where we have come from. Although there are still many unanswered questions, there is plenty of time left in this young Universe, and plenty of places to explore.