Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Colleen Purcell


Colleen Purcell
Big Bang term paper
December 1, 2012
How Our Universe Began
            Even now most of us still wonder where and how did our universe start.  Most of everyone have their own beliefs and may also have their doubts.  Everyday science has proved how certain animals or plants have become or are now living.  Science has a theory called the Big Bang Theory that is an explanation to how our universe started and the beginning of the world.  With science there is always evidence to prove why and how certain things are happening or happened.  In the Big Bang theory they have evidence to prove to us why and how the world has started to make us believe them.  But with that evidence that also means that there are some doubts that can’t be totally proven.  Most people don’t fully believe anything until they see it happen with their own eyes.  So with all the doubts we have theories of the history of our earth with pieces of evidence to try and make us all believe this is the way it has all began.
            While searching science Hubble’s law proved that the Earth is expanding all the time.  Which this law led science to show and prove the Big Bang Theory to explain our universe.  Science these days have such high technology that enables us to do so much.  We are able to prove and see that our earth started between 13.75 to 14 years ago.  Many objects and living things that are important to us occurred and were beginning within seconds to minutes after the Big Bang occurred.  Our universe at one point was just a hot dense state which was a rapid expansion that cooled.  When this cooling occurring energies were turned into protons, neutrons, electrons, and particles.  As most have learned hydrogen was the first element to be produced.  All these particles being created eventually made the stars and galaxies.  There were different era’s that led up to what our galaxies and universe is now made of.  These eras were Planck, GUT, electroweak, particle, nuclei, nucleosynthesis, atoms, and galaxies.  This all started in the Planck era that to this day we cannot describe because we do not understand the physics of it.  That was followed by the GUT era that caused inflation by the release of enormous about of energy.  But still to this day they are not 100 percent that this is correct but have tests to back it up.  In the electroweak era three forces which are gravity, a strong force, and electroweak force produced matter and antimatter particles.  “In the particle era photons continued to turn into all sorts of exotic particles that were no longer find freely existing in the universe today, including quarks-the building blocks of photons and neutrons.  By the end of the particle era, all quarks had combined into protons and neutrons, which shared the universe with other particles such as electrons, neutrinos, and perhaps WIMPS.”(Bennett, 2012)  Next in the nucleosynthesis era that was over in five minutes after the universe began helium was made.  In this era the heat still was so high that most nuclei broke as they formed.  As that held for about 380,00 years the nuclei era started where if the nuclei captured an electron it would ionize it to make it an atom.  Making those atoms then formed the era of atoms that assembled together with plasma to create protogalactic clouds.  So by the time the universe was one billion years old in the era of galaxies the clouds had created stars and galaxies that still continue to create to this day. “Since the Big Bang, the universe has been continuously expanding and, thus, there has been more and more distance between clusters of galaxies. This phenomenon of galaxies moving farther away from each other is known as the red shift. As light from distant galaxies approach earth there is an increase of space between earth and the galaxy, which leads to wavelengths being stretched.”(Lacrocco, Big Bang)  All of these eras were created with the start of the Big Bang theory.  The origin of this theory came from Hubble because of his discovery of the universe continuously expanding.  But this theory was studied by many scientists and was proven to work from many different people.
            To prove every theory and make people believe them we have to have evidence to back it all up.  The first piece of evidence was discovered in 1965 by two men named Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson.  Their antenna showed a noise that was coming from all different parts instead of one certain area.  This moving that radiation was still all over with finding that “noise” which is cosmic microwave background.  Finding this they were able to look back when the Earth was 380,000 years old showing that the radiation came from a red star that had a few hundred nanometers.  Which this was also retested in the 1990’s by COBE and still proved that it was all correct.  With the discovery of cosmic microwave background they were also able to explain how the galaxies were formed from the helium because of how hot the universe was.  They found that the variations in temperatures did vary from place to place.  Because of how fast the universe was expanding it wasn’t able to produce too much of heavier elements but these heavier elements then were eventually made in stars.  But a big part of our understanding of the Big Bang theory comes from particle physics.  But also we have Olbers’ paradox that is “we can see only a finite number of stars because the universe began at a particular moment.  While the universe may contain an infinite number of stars, we can only see those that lie within the observable universe.”(Bennett, 2012) So all in all to back up the theory we have both the cosmic microwave background and the composition of the universe.  This theory is respected by many scientists and is still what many to believe how our earth has started.  This theory is not accepted by all people where others have their beliefs on how it started but not all they have facts or evidence to back it up.  Some people just rely on faith and belief.  Sometimes growing up in a religious background or family I can see many people have a hard time to believe in this theory and it to be true.  They believe that God has created the Earth and everything or anyone that is on it.  I grew up in a religious home and I do believe in God but I still have my doubts on how our earth and universe was created.  I believe in part of this Big Bang but I like other people have a hard time believing things without seeing and fully understanding.  I have enough knowledge that I can comprehend but I do think I will always be stuck in that stage of wonder.
            One key explanation that has been found to explain our universe is inflation.  Inflation is considered to be a dramatic burst of expansion.  Inflations answers dome of the questions that some people still ask that the Big Bang theory doesn’t explain to them.  In 1981, a physicist Alan Guth came up with explanations to all those open questions on the Big Bang theory.  He said that the energy through space is irregular and tiny quantum make up those irregulars.  These quantum’s’ could have been seeds that eventually created galaxies with their enhancements.  The inflation would have stretched the enhancements to the size of our solar system.  Next he said that inflation causes two regions to never be able to come into contact more than once with each other.  Inflation causes these regions to be equalized and separated from each other.  With that, this means that these regions were moving faster than the speed of light, which according to Einstein nothing moves faster than the speed of light.  Inflation says between these regions thought they move so quickly nothing can move between them faster than the speed of light.  Alan believed that the universe was flat which saying that critical matter and density of matter are equal.  Each of these explanations of inflation was tested by WAMP.  To test these predictions of inflation that had to correspond the records to what will be happening now or later times.  They said for these to be correct the density matter and critical matter had to match with the deuterium of the universe.  The age of our earth would need to be about 13.7 billion years which did match with Hubble’s law.  But with every theory of explanation people are going to search and find reasons to why it doesn’t work or why it needs to be changed.
            We all want to know for sure how our universe came about.  Some, I believe even question why were we all formed and why was everything formed in that way?  But science can only take us so far to answer some of all the questions and having evidence to prove it.  But science has grown so much over the years it is consistently changing.  But with science and physics they were able to come up with the Big Bang theory.  Not only did they come up with a theory but they were able to prove most of it with evidence.  But with theories that always leaves open ends or questions.  These other questions of the Big Bang were answer with the explanation of inflation.  But no matter what some people are still not going to believe whether they have the evidence or not.  I believe many in this world don’t have the knowledge to completely understand this theory which causes them to still be in wonder.
Works cited
Bennett, Jeffrey. The Essential Cosmic Perspective. 6th ed. San Francisco: Addison-Wesley, 2012. Print.
Hawking, Steven. "Big Bang Theory." Big Bang Theory. Allaboutscience, 2011. Web. 6 Dec. 2012.
Carr, Karen. "Big Bang." - Space Science for Kids! Dewahost, 23 Oct. 2012. Web. 6 Dec. 2012
"The Big Bang - NASA Science." The Big Bang - NASA Science. NASA, 18 Oct. 2012. Web. 6 Dec. 2012.
Larocco, Chris. "THE BIG BANG: ." THE BIG BANG. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Dec. 2012http://www.umich.edu/~gs265/bigbang.htm

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