THEORIES WITH THE FORMATION OF THE UNIVERSE

I. BIG BANG THEORY – states that the universe began as a point and has been expanding since then.
a. Proposed by George Lemaitre
b. A leading explanation on how the universe began
c. The best-supported theory of our universe origin centers on an event known as the big bang.
d. Although the name might seem to imply explosion into space, the theory describes an expansion of space
itself while gravity holds matter in check

TIMELINE OF THE BIG BANG THEORY

1. PLANK EPOCH: Approx. 13.8 billion years ago, the universe was very compact, less than a million
billion billionth the size of a single atom.
a. 10-43 seconds, all matter and energy in the universe existed as hot, dense, tiny state.
b. This hot, dense tiny state is scientists called as the singularity. It is where the four
fundamental forces of the universe were compressed into a single force. The
fundamental forces are the ff: gravity, electromagnetism, weak and strong forces.
2. INFLATION PERIOD: In an unimaginably small fraction of a second (from 10-43 to 10 – 32 seconds) all
that matter and energy expanded outward more or less evenly.
a. Early on, there were no galaxies, no stars and no planets. The universe was instead
filled by a gas of subatomic particles at an extremely high density (quarks, hadrons,
leptons).
b. After the inflation, the universe continued to expand but at a much slower rate.
3. PARTICLE ERA: After the cosmic inflation, energy density dropped and the cosmic plasma cooled.
a. As time passed and matter cooled, more diverse kinds of particles began to form.
b. The universe was a millionth of a second old, the universe had cooled down enough
for the other fundamental forces to separate from one another.
c. The universe’s fundamental particles are about to be formed: proton, neutron, and
electron.
d. Radiation in the early universe was so intense that colliding photons could form pairs
of particles of matter and antimatter.
e. Matter and antimatter were mutually annihilating each other, but due to some
asymmetry in the young universe, more matter were formed compared to the
antimatter, this results to the annihilation of antimatter and the disposition of
matter.
4. ERA OF NUCLEOSYNTHESIS: Within the universe’s first second, it was cool enough for the
remaining matter to coalesce into protons and neutrons, particles that make up the atom’s nuclei.
a. For the next three minutes, protons and neutrons had assembled into hydrogen and
helium nuclei.
b. Despite having atomic nuclei, the young universe was still too hot for electrons to
settle in around them to form stable atoms.
c. The universe’s matter remained an electrically charged fog that was so dense. Light
had a hard time bouncing its way through. Thus, this era was called the “Dark Age”.
5. ERA OF ATOMS: For the next 300,000 years the universe reached a sufficiently low temperature,
cool enough for neutral atoms to form. Finally, electrons settled around the atomic nuclei forming
neutral atom.
a. The cooler universe made it transparent for the first time, which lets the photons
rattling around,
b. The shining of the first light was referred to as the “primordial glow”
 6. ERA OF GALAXIES: fast forward, there wasn’t a single star in the universe until about 180
million years after the Big Bang, gravity gathered clouds of hydrogen and forge them into
stars. This was referred to as “cosmic dawn”.
a. By 400 million years after the Big Bang, the first galaxies were born. In the billions
of years since, stars, galaxies, and cluster of galaxies have formed and reformed.
7. Approx. 4-6 BYA to present: as galaxies cluster together under the gravity, first stars die and
their heavy elements eventually will form into new stars and planets.
a. 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.
8. WE STILL NEED TO KNOW MORE: Even know, the universe is expanding, and surprisingly,
the expansion is accelerating.
a. While much has been discovered about the creation and evolution of the universe,
there are enduring questions that remain unanswered.

Evidences of the Big Bang Theory

1. The expanding universe: “Red Shift”
a. Discovered in 1929 by Edwin Hubble
b. Light with long wavelengths are on the RED end of the visible light spectrum while violet and blue has the
shortest wavelength of the visible light.
c. When the light is red shifted, it means that the wavelengths is increasing due to movement of the wave
source away from the detector, or the person seeing the wave.
d. In red shift, the light appears more red, because the wavelength is getting longer

2. Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation – left- over radiation from the big bang
a. It was first predicted by Robert Herman and George Gamow in 1948
b. Discovered by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson in 1965
i. Researchers with Bell Telephone Lab, creating radio receiver, until one day their microwave antenna
picked up an annoying sound and was puzzled by the noise they were picking up. They discovered
the noise came uniformly from all over the sky.

II. STEADY – STATE THEORY

a. Developed in 1948
b. By Fred Hoyle, Herman Bondi, and Thomas Gold
c. Refer universe as a “perfect cosmological principle” – Newtonian principle
by Isaac newton
d. The universe doesn’t evolve or change over time
e. The Steady State theory gets round this by assuming that new matter is
continuously created out of nothing at the incredibly small rate of 1 atom
of hydrogen per 6 cubic kilometers of space per year. This new matter
eventually forms new stars and new galaxies and, if we take a large enough
 region of the Universe, its density, which is the amount of matter in a given volume of space, doesn’t change
over time. If we take two individual galaxies then their relative distance will get further and further apart
due to to the expansion of the Universe. However, because new galaxies are being formed all the time, the
average distance between galaxies doesn’t change.

III. CYCLIC UNIVERSE THEORY

a. Proposed by Paul Steinhardt and Neil Turok
b. A model of cosmic evolution according to which the universe undergoes endless cycles of expansion and
cooling, each beginning with a “big bang” and ending in a “big crunch”.