One of my favorite shows on television
right now is The Big Bang Theory. I think that feeling is shared by
many. But despite my love for the show, I found it sad that the fifth
result on google is the first to actually link to a site about the
theory and not the show. Admittedly, I know only the basic idea of
the theory myself so I hope to enlighten myself and others.
Humans are never satisfied with just
accepting things as they are. We question why we are here, how we
were created and whether or not the universe has always existed. The
Big Bang theory is one explanation of the latter.
Once upon a time, there existed only a
singularity. It is unknown what exactly a singularity is or where one comes from but it is believed it is an infinity dense zone,
possibly existing at the core of a black hole. The singularity that
gave us our universe, was infinitely small, hot and dense. At some point in time, about 13.7
billion years ago, the singularity began to cool and expand. This
expansion and cooling is still going on.
Many people question what evidence
exists to support this theory. One thing is that we are fairly certain
that the universe had some beginning and we know that galaxies are
moving away from each other. There is also a lot of light elements in
the universe and the cosmic microwave background is made up of the remnants
of heat from the singularity. Also, it’s possible to ignore that the temperature and distribution of
galaxies is uniform across the universe.
The term Big Bang is a little
deceptive. There was no actual explosion that occurred; it was actually an expansion. It is also incorrect
to envision the singularity as some fiery ball of matter floating in
space. An extended version of Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity
showed that there once existed neither time nor space. Therefore, the singulaity would have had to exist outside of space if it in fact it was the dense version of the universe. The
explanation of where, when and how the singularity came to be is
still unknown but I’m sure someone is working on an explanation…
Like most theories, it has it’s
challengers and there are other theories that explain the findings
about the universe. That being said, it is now widely accepted in the
scientific community. Of course it leaves questions about where God comes into play with this theory. That is a much more complex question than this blog could possibly address…