In the scientific world, it is generally accepted that the Universe originated as a result of the Big Bang. This theory is based on the fact that energy and matter (the foundations of all things) were previously in a state of singularity. It, in turn, is characterized by infinity of temperature, density and pressure. The state of singularity itself rejects all known modern world laws of physics. Scientists believe that the Universe arose from a microscopic particle, which, for reasons still unknown, came into an unstable state in the distant past and exploded.
Problems with multiverse theory even if they are sexual with scientific point vision are forcing physicists to stop looking for answers to the most basic questions, such as why physical constants of our Universe are those that exist. Theorists have an idea what could be infinite number Universe, and we can imagine models where numbers, "like fundamental properties particles that we observe" are different for each daughter universe. Voite wants theorists to not say that we are simply "lucky" with this universe where things happen the way they do because there are infinite possibilities, and so we stop theorizing.
The term " Big bang"began to be used since 1949 after the publication of the works of the scientist F. Hoyle in popular science publications. Today, the theory of the “dynamic evolving model” is so well developed that physicists can describe the processes occurring in the Universe within 10 seconds after the explosion of a microscopic particle that laid the foundation for all things.
Carroll, on the other hand, prefers the multi-version, but many others prefer The Big Bounce. To summarize, many physicists pay to discuss and write books about the Big Bang and pretrial models that may describe what we see today. We've simplified the math, but the fact is that there is still a lot to be theorized until we can understand how the universe came to be what it is.
At the same time, it's important for people to know that we don't know what we're talking about, Carroll says. "These speculative ideas are just the beginning of something that needs to be taken seriously, but there is hope that we can solve all of this if we don't give up." The light that comes from the bottom of the microwave travels through the Universe.
There are several proofs of the theory. One of the main ones is cosmic microwave background radiation, which permeates the entire Universe. It could have arisen, according to modern scientists, only as a result of the Big Bang, due to the interaction of microscopic particles. It is the relict radiation that allows us to learn about those times when the Universe was like a burning space, and there were no stars, planets and the galaxy itself. The second proof of the birth of all things from the Big Bang is considered to be the cosmological red shift, which consists in a decrease in the frequency of radiation. This confirms the removal of stars, galaxies from milky way in particular and from each other in general. That is, it indicates that the Universe was expanding earlier and continues to do so to this day.
We cannot speculate on what happened before. This is the wall physical parameter, which prevents scientists from looking at the other side at the time of creation. To overcome this milestone, we will need mathematical theory, which would unify quantum and general relativity, that is, the Grand Unified Theory, which is the Holy Grail that physicists so sincerely seek. Stephen Hawking even went so far as to say with his usual grin that when the time comes, we will know the mind of God.
But for now it continues to decline, despite new evidence supporting this model. Infinite energy in eternal emptiness. A challenge for the reader who is trying to imagine this. A tiny flash of infinite energy in an eternal void. This is all we can know about the Big Bang. What happened before this moment eluded our understanding.
A Brief History of the Universe
- 10 -45 - 10 -37 sec - inflationary expansion
- 10 -6 sec- emergence of quarks and electrons
- 10 -5 sec- formation of protons and neutrons
- 10 -4 sec - 3 min- emergence of deuterium, helium and lithium nuclei
- 400 thousand years- formation of atoms
- 15 million years- continued expansion of the gas cloud
- 1 billion years- the birth of the first stars and galaxies
- 10 - 15 billion years- the appearance of planets and intelligent life
- 10 14 billion years- cessation of the process of star birth
- 10 37 billion years- energy depletion of all stars
- 10 40 billion years- evaporation of black holes and the birth of elementary particles
- 10 100 billion years- completion of the evaporation of all black holes
The Big Bang theory was a real breakthrough in science. It allowed scientists to answer many questions regarding the birth of the Universe. But at the same time, this theory gave rise to new mysteries. The main one is the cause of the Big Bang itself. The second question that has no answer modern science- how space and time appeared. According to some researchers, they were born along with matter and energy. That is, they are the result of the Big Bang. But then it turns out that time and space must have some kind of beginning. That is, a certain entity, constantly existing and independent of their indicators, could well have initiated the processes of instability in the microscopic particle that gave birth to the Universe.
Planck's constant is part of the formula that relates the energy content of a quantum to the frequency of the corresponding electromagnetic wave. This figure carries other mathematical boundaries, such as the Planck length, that is, the smallest possible distance between the two, apparently separate objects, and the Planck mass, the minimal expression of material existence. Here we set the limit on how much we can know about the origin of the universe.
Monstrous energy and density beyond stunning. Our reason is mad when we think about the billionth of a second that passes between one action and another in at the moment. But we cannot think of this as the total time of our universe.
The more research is carried out in this direction, the more questions astrophysicists have. The answers to them await humanity in the future.
Most astronomers support the idea that the universe originated from a “bubble” thousands of times smaller than the head of a pin, but incredibly hot and dense. Almost 13.8 billion years ago it exploded, and this event is called the “Big Bang”. At that moment, space, time, energy and matter began to exist. In a very short period of time, the Universe expanded from the size of a subatomic particle to the size of an orange, and then continued to expand, gradually acquiring modern look. It is the Big Bang that explains the various parameters of the Universe we know today, and it was the Big Bang that determined how it will develop in the future and perhaps die billions and billions of years from now. The study of the Big Bang is a search for an answer to the question of what the beginning of “everything” was and what its end will be.
One of these bursts of time, that is, a mega-millionth of a second for us, would be the equivalent of an eternity for the supposed being that existed at that moment of creation. The similarity might be that one of them is the size of the nucleus of an atom up to orange color, a proportion that we almost cannot imagine, greater than that which separates this orange from the universe that surrounds us. There is only one particle in this universe, which in turn will give rise to the first particles of matter.
The momentum of the Big Bang is still going on. When three minutes have passed since the initial big bang, there will be nothing more important in the Universe, and everything will move very slowly. It takes one hundred million years for the first stars to form in and inside plasma gas vortex baths, thanks to nuclear reactions, which arise from the fusion of hydrogen and helium atoms, will be generated heavy elements, such as iron, which would not appear until many millions of years later and would become consubstantial to our existence today.
First moments
Astrophysicists wonder what was at the beginning of the Universe and what was before its beginning. Thanks to physical and mathematical research, some answers to such questions have already been obtained. But answers that satisfy theoretical physicists are not always understandable to the general public and transferable to our everyday reality. In other words, a number of concepts should be accepted "by definition" without trying to find empirical examples in today's Universe, which would allow us to understand what happened in the first moments after the Big Bang.
Since then, the momentum of this first explosion has continued, and so the galaxies move away from each other with the same effect as if we were swelling balloon. Thus, a complex universe is expanding these days, although with enough extravaganzas to raise all sorts of mysteries.
The Big Bang Theory and the Origin of the Universe
The so-called Big Bang, literally a great flash, represents the moment when all matter arises from “nothing”, that is, the origin of the Universe. One of unresolved problems in the expanding universe model is whether the universe is open or closed. The most acceptable are the Big Bang theory and Inflation, which complement each other.
Start
At the beginning of time and space, it is likely that there was a "gravitational singularity", that is, what we can define as geometric point, in which the gravitational field reached infinitely large size. Gravitational singularities, the existence of which is provided for by Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, are formed when the density of matter is so high that it causes the collapse of space-time. The singularity is very difficult to imagine as something concrete; it can be described mainly in terms of mathematical concepts. Having suggested that the universe was born from the Big Bang, some researchers have wondered whether there was something before it. The problem is complicated by the fact that the Big Bang gave rise not only to space, but also to time itself, so that general theory relativity we're talking about about “space-time” as a single whole. This leads us to the idea that the Big Bang did not occur in “empty space”, which was subsequently filled by the expanding Universe, but itself created both space and time.
Cosmic inflation is a set of proposals within theoretical physics to explain the ultra-rapid expansion of the Universe in initial moments and solutions to the so-called horizon problem. Inflation is now considered to be part of the standard hot Big Bang cosmological model. Elementary particle or the hypothetical field thought to be responsible for inflation is called the inflaton.
The running time trick
As the Universe expanded, residual radiation from the Big Bang continued to cool. I was asked to write about the origin of the universe. You can't ask for anything more complex, I wasn't there. So from now on. The universe is expanding, several doubts remain from this. So the idea that everyone comes to mind is this.
Planck era
What appeared immediately after the Big Bang had such pressure and temperature that its behavior cannot be described using the laws operating in modern universe. The phase immediately following the Big Bang is called the “Planck era” after the German scientist Max Planck. It covers the period from the Big Bang to the time 10 × -43 degrees s after it (this time is called “Planck time”). During this very short period, the Universe reached a size of 10 × - 33 degrees cm, and the temperature dropped to 10 × 32 degrees Celsius, that is, one hundred thousand billion billion billion degrees.
If the Universe is expanding and all the galaxies are moving away from each other, they should have been more together in the past, and if we go to the limit, everything we see should be contained in a point. And we have already connected it, because from this it is deduced that everything was at one point and that at some point is about fourteen billion years, within a year, a year down, the origin of the Universe exploded.
The idea is not implemented, although it is very attractive, it does not have physical meaning. Yes, at first there was nothing, everything was empty. But of course we are in physics, we live in a physical universe, so we will have to explain what we mean by void in physics.
The smallest space
In order to define this phase, Planck made a relatively simple conclusion. He asked himself if there was a minimum wavelength below which no information could be obtained, that is, minimum value, less than which the concept of space loses its meaning.
Since gamma rays have the shortest electromagnetic wavelength (it is 10 × -33 degrees cm), Planck guessed that for shorter wavelengths there was no way to obtain complete physical information. A gamma ray traveling at the speed of light travels in 10 × -43 degrees s. a distance of 10 × -33 degrees cm. Shorter periods of time are beyond the scope of measurement. Therefore, between zero point The Big Bang and the end of the Planck era cannot obtain any physical information about the Universe at the first stage of development.
What we have learned from playing with physics over the last 120 years, more or less, is that the void is in no way an inert theoretical entelechy by definition. When we imagine emptiness, we think that we have drawn everything from a certain region. There is nothing left, no energy, no particles, no nothing. Therefore, little can escape from there.
However, emptiness is something amazing. Vacuum is a state of systems that can interact with other configurations. Vacuum is not inert; vacuum is very rich in its behavior. IN quantum theory we know that physical fields are associated with the presence of particles. The electromagnetic field is due to the presence of photons to give best example.
Soon after the Big Bang
At the end of the Planck era, the gravitational force separated from the total energy available in the Universe and became independent. Immediately after this it was the turn of the strong nuclear interaction(keeping it in a stable state atomic nuclei), which, together with the forces of gravity, electromagnetic interaction And weak interaction(the latter is responsible for radioactive decay) is one of four fundamental forces, present in nature. With their help, particles exchange energy. All this since the Big Bang took up to 10 × -36 degrees of s.
When do we say that we have emptiness? Well, this question may seem trivial. When we do not have a particle associated with the field in question. But it forces us to admit that emptiness is right for everyone physical field. That is, I may have different fields, and one or more of them are in an empty state, and the rest are not.
But best of all, the field vacuum is acceptable physical condition this field and can interact with other states, other than emptiness, of other physical fields. For example, if we look at the field responsible for the strong force, we see that it is associated with the presence of particles called gluons. The vacuum of the indicated field will be a state in which there are no such gluons.
Inflation
At this point, the “era of inflation” began. It is called so because at this stage the Universe was subjected to very rapid expansion- “inflation” (from English to inflate - “to inflate”). Within a few billionths of a second, the Universe increased its size by a factor of 10 × 50. During the inflationary period that lasted from the Big Bang to 10 × -32 s. "quantum fluctuations" caused by the spontaneous formation of particle/antiparticle pairs have been observed, giving space-time a rather irregular and complex shape. These fluctuations formed the basis of gravitational disturbances of homogeneity, which, being insignificant at first, grew over time and eventually formed the gigantic disturbances observed today. space structures, such as galaxies and galaxy clusters. Particles of matter and antimatter, colliding, were mutually destroyed and produced radiation. Nevertheless, in this game of destruction, a surplus of matter was preserved: it made up the modern Universe.
What energy does the void field have? Because it seems natural to think that if there are none of the particles associated with it, then the field will have the least energy. Then the vacuum will be minimal energy state specific field. If a field gains more energy, then it can put that energy into creating bound particles, so states that contain particles can be thought of as excited states of the field, referring to its vacuum.
However, the vacuum cannot be at a minimum energy all the time, because in quantum it is forbidden for a system to always have the same energy. That is, we cannot know the energy of the system at any time. Therefore, vibrations appear in the void. In case strong interaction these interactions of their void are interpreted as gluons that appear and disappear. They rob and reintegrate energy so quickly that these appearances and disappearances cannot be detected directly. This is not philosophy or mythology, it is scientific proof, as you can see here: Prof.
Quarks
About 10 × -35 s after the Big Bang, the first particles began to form - quarks, antiquarks, W particles, Z particles and electrons.
The combination of several quarks subsequently formed protons, neutrons and their antiparticles. The protons and antiprotons annihilated each other, producing electromagnetic radiation. Only at this moment did the weak nuclear and electromagnetic interactions separate.
There are very beautiful simulations of these oscillations. We cannot know whether these oscillations exist or whether the vacuum is a physical state that can interact with other states of the system. What is this all for? Yes, that's a good answer. To answer, we look inside a proton or neutron, which are the particles that make up atomic nuclei and are primarily responsible for our mass. A proton or neutron is formed by three quarks.
Where does the rest of the proton mass come from? You probably guessed it. It should be noted that quarks combine by exchanging gluons and are plunged into the vacuum of the strong interaction, which modifies such interactions and contributes to the structure of the proton. So every time you go up the scale, you think that what you are measuring has a lot to do with the structure of the void.
These phenomena occurred between 10×-32 and 10×-5 s after the Big Bang, when the first atomic nuclei were formed. With their birth, matter began to prevail over the radiation that had dominated before. However, the temperature of the Universe reached another 10 billion degrees, so radiation and matter turned into each other.
Only about 300 thousand years after the Big Bang, when the temperature dropped to 3300°C, the Universe, which had previously been a shapeless cloud, became transparent to electromagnetic radiation. And then the first atoms of hydrogen, helium and lithium began to form - the lightest elements of the Universe.
All this to inform you that. Emptiness is something physical that you can play with. . As we said, the void must accomplish two things. This is the state of minimum energy. There are no particles in the field. Most fields we know confirm that a vacuum fulfills these two characteristics. After all, this is what one would expect from this question.
But since nature is here to surprise us and harden our lives with things that escape what man expects, there are fields, some of which are already known, that do not follow this rule. Its minimum energy state contains particles or, in other words, its state without particles is not minimum energy. One field that has this behavior is the Higgs.
Background radiation
About 300 thousand years after the Big Bang, cosmic background radiation appeared - the closest radiation to the Big Bang that we receive today. This is the first type of radiation that, in the now rarefied Universe, is not immediately captured by atomic or subatomic particles, but wanders through space in the form of photons. From this moment on, the primary matter begins to gradually form into stars, quasars and galaxies. Today, with the help of the most powerful telescopes we are trying to catch a glimpse of these objects - the oldest and most distant in our Universe. Any additional information, obtained from them, may allow us to better understand the most mysterious moment in our history - the Big Bang.
Models of the Universe
In the 1920s, the idea of a Universe in which repulsive and attractive forces were popular among cosmologists. gravitational forces are in a delicate equilibrium, made possible by the “cosmological constant” speculatively introduced by Albert Einstein in his general theory of relativity. He introduced this constant in order to explain the presence of a repulsive force of matter, which was supposed to balance gravitational attraction. This was necessary to obtain equilibrium cosmological model- a property that was considered basic for all models of our Universe.
Extension
Meanwhile, many astronomers noted that most galaxies detected a redshift in the spectrum of their light, a phenomenon known as “redshift.” This fact lends itself simple explanation, if it is perceived as the result of the Doppler effect - the same thing due to which the sound of a retreating siren is heard lower than that of an approaching one. All this made sense if we took it for granted that galaxies were moving away from each other. A fundamental contribution to this research was made by the German astronomer Karl Wirtz: having studied in detail about forty galaxies, he discovered that the weaker their light, the farther they are from us, the stronger the red shift in their spectra. This meant that more distant galaxies were moving away faster than nearby ones. But to be convinced of the correctness of Wirtz’s conclusions, we had to wait for the research of Edwin Hubble.
Unstable space
Russian mathematician Alexander Friedman and Belgian astronomer Georges-Henri Lemaitre concluded that, despite the introduction of a cosmological constant, Einstein's Universe is unstable and a small fluctuation would be enough to cause it to expand or contract indefinitely. Hubble's observations led to the conclusion that the Universe is expanding. Lemaitre also developed the theory that the Universe originates from the “primordial atom” that gave rise to everything. Despite numerous data supporting this theory, it has been subjected to severe criticism. However, the idea did not die; on the contrary, it was supported by physicist George Gamow, who theoretically confirmed the possibility of the birth of the Universe as a result of a colossal explosion.
Stationary Universe
Meanwhile, another astronomer, Fred Hoyle, put forward the idea that the Universe might be expanding at " stationary state": galaxies are moving away from each other, but new matter is constantly being born in the space between them. It was Hoyle who ironically called his colleagues’ hypothesis the “Big Bang.” But in the end scientific world supported the Big Bang hypothesis put forward by Gamow, and in the late 1960s it was transformed into a specific theory, confirmed in the late 1990s by the COBE and WMAP satellites.
Background radiation
A few hundred seconds after the Big Bang, the radius of the Universe was only a few light minutes, and matter already included basic elements atoms - electrons, protons, neutrons interacting with each other, and also neutrinos and photons (particles that transfer energy). When temperatures dropped to about 3300°C several hundred thousand years after the Big Bang, the number of collisions between photons and other particles decreased, and photons began to spread freely throughout the Universe.
It's getting colder and colder
The expansion entailed a further decrease in temperature, eventually dropping to 3 K, that is, only three degrees higher absolute zero(-273°C). This temperature was “imprinted” on wandering photons, which, colliding less and less with other particles in an increasingly less dense Universe, have survived to this day. Today they are considered the most important witnesses of those distant times. It is the wandering photons that form the so-called “background” cosmic radiation" It was discovered in 1964 by radio astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, who were awarded for this Nobel Prize in physics in 1978.
Opened by accident
In fact, the researchers were setting up a new type of antenna for receiving microwaves. During the work, scientists received unknown radiation, and at first they decided that it had earthly origin. But soon Penzias and Wilson realized that they were “listening” to cosmic radiation, the existence of which Gamow and his colleagues had assumed back in 1948 - something like the “echo” of the Big Bang. Opening background radiation was of enormous importance because standard model The universe provided for the presence of a homogeneous signal in it, propagating at a wavelength of about a millimeter and penetrating the entire space. This is exactly what scientists discovered.
From satellites
The discovery of Penzias and Wilson has been tested several times over the years, but has always been confirmed. Tests were carried out from aboard balloons (for example, the Boomerang experiment, carried out jointly by Italy and the USA). Three satellites (COBE, WMAP and Planck) were specifically designed to study background radiation and produced excellent results, especially the last two, which made it possible to measure the radiation and obtain details that were previously inaccessible. Thanks to the analysis of data received from satellites, differences in the temperature of background radiation were discovered by only hundred thousandths of a degree. This small "ripple" is like genetic code living being: it determines the evolution of the Universe.
The discovery of background radiation became the most important evidence in favor of the Big Bang model, burying Hoyle's theory of a stationary Universe.
Doubts that arise
If we could truly understand how the Big Bang happened, we would answer a thousand unanswered questions about the birth of the Universe and its structure. But there are no answers to these questions yet, despite the most modern instruments at the disposal of astronomers. Main and most difficult question- how and why the Big Bang happened.
Our capabilities in studying the past of the Universe extend into the depths of time and stop, as already mentioned, at the point 10 × -43 s after the Big Bang. Only the theoretical physics, and only new hypotheses will take us back to the time “before” the Big Bang.
Dark matter and dark energy
Another important topic that may be explained by the circumstances of the Big Bang is the origin of dark matter And dark energy. The Universe consists of only 5% of matter, which we can observe in traditional ways, for example, through a telescope, and which appears to us in the form of stars, nebulae, and galaxies. The rest is 27% dark matter and 68% dark energy. Regarding dark matter, some specific hypotheses have been put forward today: this matter is invisible, it detects its presence in galaxies and galaxy clusters due to its gravitational force, it could consist of several still unknown types of particles, neutrinos (if their mass is not zero) or stars of exceptionally low brightness.
Dark energy, on the other hand, is still a mystery. What is known about it is that it acts as a repulsive force and causes the Universe to expand at an accelerating rate, rather than decelerating, as would be expected if this energy did not exist.
Redshift
While some questions challenge those who study the origins of the universe, others challenge the Big Bang theory itself. The first of these questions concerns the redshift of light from galaxies. Some astrophysicists, including the American astronomer Halton Arp, believe that the red shift is caused not only by the removal of galaxies, but also by a phenomenon associated with the very nature of the observed objects. If this is so, then part of the support on which the theory of the expansion of the Universe rests will collapse. Those who still support Fred Hoyle's theory of a stationary universe base their polemics on this very thesis. If Arp is right, the Big Bang theory is simply not needed to explain the birth of the Universe. However, what Arp proposes is met with rebuttals from supporters of the theory of the expansion of the Universe.
Cyclic Universe
The theories of the Big Bang and the stationary Universe are not the only ones that explain the existence of our world. There is at least one more theory that suggests the cyclical existence of the Universe. According to this theory, whenever the Universe comes to the end of its evolution, it “starts over” with a new Big Bang. Perhaps, with each rebirth, the Universe “forgets” the characteristics of its past and forms new ones physical laws, born during the inflation stage.
