The Big Bang – When it all begun
Those who have faintly heard about The Big Bang Theory know it is amongst the most fascinating thing to have ever taken place. Its when the universe was born. Before the big bang, nothing ever existed-not even space and time. It drives theorists and enthusiasts absolutely crazy when even trying to imagine that nothing existed before the big bang. So you cant even term the state before the big bang as hollow or empty because even that didn’t exist then. Space and time were created because of The Big Bang.
It all happened in a millionth of a millionth of a second approximately 13.8 billions years ago faster than the speed of light. All matter was contained at a single point called the point of singularity. This point was around ten trillion trillion times hotter than the core of our sun (this is not a type error!). It was infinitely dense and thus the general laws of relativity didn’t apply here. This state was probably a million times smaller than even a pin point. This point of singularity suddenly inflated at an unimaginable pace and within a second the blueprints of our universe was created. It is popularly knows as The Big Bang but contrary to popular beliefs, it wasnt an explosion. Life itself, galaxies, stars, planets, black holes etc all came into existence because of this moment of inflation. Why it inflated and what led to it is still a mystery for all of us.
The building blocks were created in the first second of our universe. We use seconds or even milliseconds to explain daily phenomena but even that was way bigger to explain the developments in that one second! Therefore, scientists use a scale called Planck Time. This is smaller than you can imagine. To put it precisely it is 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 of a second(42 zeros followed by 1)! Using this scale helps us to understand how the universe was born. Gravity, electromagnetic forces and the nuclear forces, strong and weak were all created as a result of this big bang.
How do our scientists know that the big bang happened?
Georges LeMaitre was the first to propose the big bang that led to the creation of the universe. Edwin Hubble also accepted this theory while observing the universe using his telescope. Light, when stretched appears red. Therefore, when he looked at the universe far beyond us between intervals of time, they appeared to be tilting more towards the red chart by the passing day. This resulted in a profound conclusion. Why was light turning from blue to red as he observed the universe? It could only mean one thing: That the universe was expanding (dark energy, which we shall discuss at a later stage). It was not just expanding, the pace of expansion was accelerating as time passed by. If you think of it, something that is increasing in size everyday must have a point when it all began. If you looked back at time using this theory, it only meant that the universe was smaller in size yesterday that it is today. As profound as it might sound, space continues to be created as we speak. If you continue looking back, there will be a point when it all began.
Source: Wikipedia
Also, the presence of a radiation called the ‘cosmic microwave background‘ or the ‘CMB’ supports the big bang theory. This was the radiation as a result of the big bang and this explosion was so powerful that one can faintly detect the presence of this radiation even today. Scientists use powerful telescopes to detect CMB and have found it consistently spread across the universe.In fact, when we switch on our television channels and find thousands of small dots on the screen because of weak or no signal, that is nothing but the CMB being picked up by our satellites.
Alternative theories exist?
Most scientists and cosmologists are have widely accepted The Big Bang theory as a model for the creation of the universe. We still have some way to go to get really close to the moments right after the Big Bang Way. The basic foundation for answering the greatest question of all : “Did the universe have a beginning?” have already been established. This poses an intriguing question to the scientific community. If the universe had a beginning, will it have an end too?
Without the Big Bang, we wouldn’t have existed. What caused the Big Bang is still a mystery. How did this point of singularity come into existence itself has no explanation. However, most scientists would agree that The Big Bang theory led to the creation of our universe. That Something smaller than a molecule exploded faster than the speed of light and created the universe around us is puzzling and yet true. This molecule had infinite density and energy which resulted in everything around us-even the unseen forces like Dark Energy and Dark Matter, which we shall discuss later.
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