How the Universe got its

Spots

The Big Bang

 Goals
• Where did the Universe come from?
• Where is it going?
• How can we see the past?
• How can we learn about the future from
seeing the past?
 Can you accept & understand
concepts like these?
• Nuclear reactions and the weak interaction the rules that govern
the universe are foreign by everyday standards, but there are still
rules; we can know them in detail, and use them to study other
phenomena.
• Dark matter and dark energy the universe is controlled on large
scales by entities unlike us; there is no problem with this – it’s
exciting, and probably solvable.
• Big bang theory the universe is vast in space and time and evolves
over time like our world does, but it is not beyond our ability to
measure with precision!
• Origin and evolution of life we appear to be part of a cosmic
system, organized and tweaked chemically on Earth in a way that
could have happened elsewhere too.
 The Future from the Past
• Is the Universe:
– Slowing down?
– Speeding up?
– Staying the same velocity?
• In the past, was the Universe:
– Going faster?
– Going slower?
– Going the same velocity?
• The Universe is a time machine.
Time line: Cosmic Soup,
Radiation Era, Matter
Dominated Era
 The Big Bang
• Big Bang: the event from which the Universe
began expanding.
• Into what did the Universe expand?
• Where was the Big Bang?
• Where is the center of the Universe?
 Consequences
• If everything is moving away from us and things farther are moving
faster
• Then the Universe is expanding!

This doesn’t mean what you are probably

thinking . . . .
 Expanding Universe
• Space itself is expanding, not matter flying apart within
space.
• Examples:
– dots
– rubber band
– raisin bread
– ants on a balloon

 It does not mean we are at the center

of the Universe
 every part of the Universe sees everything
moving away from it
 Looking Back in Time
• Remember it takes time for light to reach
us
– travels at 300,000 km/s
– So we see things “as they were” some time
ago
• The farther away, the further back in
time we are looking
– 1 billion LY means looking 1 billion years
back in time
• So the greater the redshift, the further
back in time
– redshift of 0.1 is 1.4 billion lightyears which
means we are looking 1.4 billion years into
the past
 Big evidence for Big Bang
• 1992 COBE satellite :Cosmic Background Explorer
satellite : Background radiation
• “it’s the discovery of the century, if not for all time…”
Stephen Hawking
• “the handwriting of God…”
Dr. George Smoot, astrophysicist,
 there was a definite beginning to the universe
 Galactic Redshifts
• Edwin Hubble (1889-1953) and colleagues
– measured the spectra (light) of many galaxies
– found nearly all galaxies are red-shifted
• Redshift (Z)
lobserved - lrest Andromeda galaxy
Z=
lrest
(Doppler effect) Z = v/c
(for speeds approaching c,
we’ll need a relativistic version
of this equation.)

Z = [(1+ v/c)/(1+ v/c)]1/2 - 1

Do you know what Red Shift
is?
Quasars & Cosmology

Redshift

In relativity the space between the galaxies

is expanding.
Department of Physics, Applied Physics & Astronomy, RPI
Hubble’s Law
• Galaxies are moving
away from us.
• The farther away the
faster they go.
• V = Ho x D
 Expanding Universe

• If galaxies are all moving away, then at some

point they were all much closer.
• Hubble’s Law implies the Universe is
expanding.
 Look back Time
• We see everything as it once was.

Young Old
 Age of the Universe
• Since all galaxies are moving away from us,
how long has it been since all galaxies were
together?
time = distance / velocity
velocity = Ho x distance
time = distance / (Ho x distance)
time = 1/Ho
“An expanding universe does
not preclude a creator, but it
does place limits on when he
might have carried out his job.”
-Steven Hawking, A Brief History of
Time
 But does it give us enough
time?
• Agnostic biophysicist Dr. Harold Morowitz
wondered…
– Suppose you break all chemical bonds in the
simplest organism (a bacteria) and put those
atoms under ideal chemical conditions
– Question: How long would it take for it to
reassemble?
 100,000,000,000
Answer: 10
years!
• Written out completely, that would be:
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,0
00,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00
0,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,0
00,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00
0,000,000,000,000,000,000,… (on and on)
 a thousand sets of Encyclopedia
Britannicas filled with zeros!!
 So, is it feasible?
• 10100,000,000,000 yrs is impossible because…
– Hydrogen atoms would decay after [~1033 years]
500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years
– Heat death of the universe will occur at 80,000,000,000
years
– Big Bang restricts the age of the universe to be
<50,000,000,000 years
 We clearly don’t have enough time for
atoms to randomly combine together to
form even a simple bacteria!
 Hubble Space Telescope
• Use HST to find Cepheids in other galaxies.
 Luminosity and Distance
• Brightness goes as 1/D2.
• Move light:
– 2x farther away, one quarter as bright.
– 3x farther, one ninth as bright
– 10x farther, one hundredth as bright.
• If you know:
– How bright it looks
– How bright it SHOULD be
– You know how far away it must be.
• Standard candles yield distances!
 Baby Boomer
Universe

90s
80s
70s

60s

Farther away we look, further back in time we see!

50s
40s
What We See
 Density of the Universe
• Add up all the mass we see and Wo = 0.01
• But we know there is some dark matter in
galaxies and clusters.
• How much?
• Think ~10 x more dark matter than “light”
matter.
• Cosmologists think Wo < 0.3
• Result: Open Universe  Big Freeze!
 Are We Slowing Down?
• In our experience, things
slow down over time.
V=HoD
Slowing • Is the Universe slowing
down at all?

V • Plot distance versus

velocity.
Accelerating
• Use supernovae as
“standard candles.”
– Distant supernovae
(large lookback time).
Present Past
Distance (Lookback time)
Are We Slowing Down?
• Unseen mass making
Slowing stars move fast:
Dark Matter
• Unseen energy
Accelerating accelerating galaxies:
Dark Energy
We are not made of the same type of matter as most of the Universe!
 The End of the Universe
• Will the universe
expand forever?
• Depends on the density
of the Universe.
• Too big: Big Crunch
– Closed Universe
– Bound Universe
• Too small: Big Freeze
– Open Universe
– Unbound Universe
Concluding comments
• "Astronomy leads us to an unique event, a
universe which was created out of nothing and
delicately balanced to provide exactly the
conditions required to support life…the
observations of modern science seem to
suggest an underlying, one might say,
supernatural plan…“
[Nobel Laureate Arno Penzias ]
• “the origin of life appears to be almost a
miracle, so many are the conditions which
would have had to be satisfied to get it going…”
[Nobel Laureate Francis Crick]
 Some references
• John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological
Principle (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996)
• J. P. Moreland (ed.), The Creation Hypothesis (Downers Grove,
Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1994)
• Charles B. Thaxton, Walter L. Bradley, and Roger L. Olsen, The
Mystery of Life’s Origin: Reassessing Current Theories (Dallas:
Lewis and Stanley, 1992)
• Robert Shapiro, Origins: A skeptic’s guide to the creation of life
on earth (New York: Summit Books, 1986)
• www.origins.org - www.arn.org - www.leaderu.com