Discovering the Big Bang

Our sun is one star of billions in our Milky Way galaxy. How long will it be around and how long will life on our planet Earth last?  Think about a billion years or so.

In 1924, Edwin Hubble discovered a second galaxy, after our Milky Way, which he called   Andromeda. This was the first of 46 galaxies he discovered during his years looking through his telescope. He then noticed that they all were moving away, farther and  farther from the center. At that time astronomers estimated that our Milky Way contained several  million stars. Now they believe it has over 200 billion stars.

Hubble’s discoveries started new thinking about how the universe started and when it started. Since the galaxies were moving away into space they thought of seeing what it would be like if they moved the galaxies backward into their beginnings. They started to think that the galaxies were formed a number of billions of years ago. And then about 60 years ago they decided that our universe started more than 15-and-a-half billion years ago as a tiny dot that then exploded and spread  into material in space and time. They called the explosion the Big Bang.

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In one second the tiny dot, called a singularity, exploded and expanded over several million miles  and its temperature was thought to have been 1 million billion billion billion degrees Kelvin. That’s 10 with 32 zeros! This fireball, called the primordial fireball, rushed away from the singularity in all directions. From the fireball there developed these elementary particles that are called neutrons, protons and electrons.

For a long period of time the particles spread out across the universe that was forming at a tremendously amazing rate. Scientists called this the radiation era and it started the way the universe is composed today. And it was super hot then.

When the particles started to cool down they formed elements such as hydrogen and helium.  These elements became the building blocks that created the stars and planets in the universe. As the universe continued to cool down galaxies formed and the planets became part of the stars in the galaxies.

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The universe is cooling as it expands. If the universe really started more than 15 billion years ago, then the scientists estimate that it should be cooled down to a low temperature of about 3 degrees  Kelvin. That is mighty cold.  But with the use of radio telescopes they can observe these low temperatures throughout the universe.

Another evidence of the Big Bang is the presence of large amounts of helium in the universe, about 25 percent of all matter. Scientists have calculated and decided the tremendous heat of the Big Bang should convert about one-quarter of the particles into helium, and they seem to be right, observing the helium.

The sun is the largest and the most important celestial feature in our solar system. It contains about 98 percent of the total mass and the remaining 2 percent is the planets. The sun has been active for more than 4 billion years and could probably last for another 5 billion years. The photo sphere is its most visible part and its temperature is about 11,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The internal temperature of the sun is 27,000,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

At the end of the sun’s life it will begin to fuse helium into heavier elements, making it swell up in size. It will then become so large that it will consume the Earth and a billion years later it will collapse into a white dwarf. It could take as much as a trillion years to cool off completely. These are fantastically large periods of time.

This does not necessarily mean the end of the human race. If our science and technology activity proceeds and advances it may be possible for us humans to explore and colonize other worlds in space. Where that would be is not possible to see at present, but those homes could be billions of miles from our current home, the world of Earth.

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Let’s look at the origin of our universe again. Scientists are mostly convinced that it started with the explosion of the tiny singularity dot, with the Big Bang. They also believe that there was nothing in existence before the singularity dot. I feel that this might not be true and that the singularity dot was formed by the closing of another universe that preceded ours. How else might the singularity dot have come into existence?

Scientists declare that space and time existed in the singularity dot and came out when it exploded. I find it hard to believe that nothing existed before the singularity dot, but that it was formed by a contracting universe before ours. It may take many years before that is proven or disproven. We can wait and enjoy the science in the meantime.

Sidney X. Shore is a scientist, inventor and educator who lives in Salisbury and holds more than 30 U.S. patents.