Script in Earth Science
Script in Earth Science
Clive: The origin of the universe is unknown, many are still yet to discover and there are lots to research
about. Many theories about the beginning of the universe are predicted by scientist but only one had
passed all the criteria and that is the Big Bang.
Van: but before we start the journey to explore what happened in the Big Bang, let us first tackle the
origin of it.
Clive: Georges Lemaître, a French astronomer, had a huge idea in 1927. According to him, the cosmos
began as a single point a very long time ago. He said that the universe had stretched and expanded to
reach its current size and that it could continue to do so. A scientist named Edwin Hubble found that
other galaxies were traveling away from us two years later after Lemaitre's hypothesis. Not only that,
but there's a whole lot more. The galaxies that were the furthest away from us moved quicker than the
ones that were closest to us. Galaxies part ways and bid each other farewell. This confirmed Lemaître's
hypothesis that the universe was still expanding. If things were drifting apart, it suggested that
everything was close together not long ago. Stars, planets, comets, and asteroids were not present in
the beginning of our cosmos.
Van: Now, let us go back to the topic, the Big Bang theory. Many say it is a big explosion that caused the
birth of the universe, planets and many celestial bodies but what is actually the Big Bang?
Everything in the universe was condensed into an infinitesimally small singularity, a point of infinite
density and heat, around 13.7 billion years ago.
Suddenly, our universe began to expand at the speed of light, ballooning outwards faster than the speed
of light. According to physicist Alan Guth's 1980 theory, which changed the way we think about the Big
Bang forever, this was a period of cosmic inflation that lasted only fractions of a second — about 10-32
of a second.
When cosmic inflation came to an abrupt and still-mysterious end, the more traditional Big Bang
theories took hold. A flood of matter and radiation, known as "reheating," began populating our
universe with the stuff we know today: particles, atoms, material that would become stars and galaxies,
and so on.
Clive: According to NASA, this all happened within the first second after the universe began, when the
temperature of everything was still insanely hot, at about 10 billion degrees Fahrenheit (5.5 billion
Celsius). The universe now contained a vast array of fundamental particles such as neutrons, electrons,
and protons — the raw materials that would become the building blocks for everything that exists
today.
This early "soup" would have been impossible to see because it couldn't hold visible light. "The free
electrons would have caused light (photons) to scatter in the same way that sunlight scatters from water
droplets in clouds," NASA explained. However, over time, these free electrons collided with nuclei to
form neutral atoms, or atoms with equal positive and negative electric charges.
This allowed light to finally shine through, approximately 380,000 years after the Big Bang. And
eventually galaxies would form after 100 million years from time zeroduring which, through
nucleosynthesis in stars, carbon and elements heavier than carbon wereproduced.
Van: And as this theory stands as the currently accepted theory, it had to withstand test for expansion
and this is we’re the redshift, CMB, and doppler effect. (Red shift)
Edwin Hubble announced his significant discovery of the "redshift" and its interpretation that galaxies
are moving away from each other, thus as evidence for an expanding universe, as predicted by Einstein's
Theory of General Relativity in 1929. And this contradicted the previously held view of a static and
unchanging universe and began to be a proof that the big bang happened and that the universe is
expanding.
(CMB)
Ralph Alpherin predicted the existence of the CMB radiation in 1948 as part of his Big Bang
Nucleosynthesis research with Robert Herman and George Gamow. CMB is known for being the
remnant of the Big Bang and appears as a strikingly uniform faint glow in the microwave band
emanating from all directions—blackbody radiation with an average temperature of about 2.7 degrees
above absolute zero.
Clive:
(Doppler effect)
The Doppler effect, also known as the Doppler shift, describes the changes in frequency produced by a
moving source with respect to an observer. Waves emitted by an object moving toward an observer are
compressed, resulting in a higher frequency as the source gets closer to the observer. Waves emitted by
a source traveling away from an observer, on the other hand, become stretched out. A star emitting
electromagnetic waves can be that source in astronomy; Doppler shifts occur as the star circles around
its own center of mass and moves closer or away from Earth, as seen from our vantage point. These
wavelength shifts can be seen in the spectrum, or the rainbow of colors released by light. When a star
gets closer to us, the wavelengths of its light are compressed, and the spectrum becomes slightly bluer.
The star's spectrum becomes somewhat redder as it moves away from us.
Van: And as the three had been proof that the Big Bang was the birth of the universe we are currently in,
it gives us goosebumps and excitement to discover what we don’t know about the mysterious universe.
and today, many are still finding answers on how to know how the universe began and maybe the
answer we are looking for will be find soon.