The Big Bang

The Big Bang

It is always a mystery about how the universe began, whether

if and when it will end. Astronomers construct hypotheses called

cosmological models that try to find the answer. There are two

types of models: Big Bang and Steady State. However, through

many observational evidences, the Big Bang theory can best

explain the creation of the universe.

The Big Bang model postulates that about 15 to 20 billion

years ago, the universe violently exploded into being, in an

event called the Big Bang. Before the Big Bang, all of the

matter and radiation of our present universe were packed together

in the primeval fireball--an extremely hot dense state from which

the universe rapidly expanded.1 The Big Bang was the start of

time and space. The matter and radiation of that early stage

rapidly expanded and cooled. Several million years later, it

condensed into galaxies. The universe has continued to expand,

and the galaxies have continued moving away from each other ever

since. Today the universe is still expanding, as astronomers

have observed.

The Steady State model says that the universe does not

evolve or change in time. There was no beginning in the past,

nor will there be change in the future. This model assumes the

perfect cosmological principle. This principle says that the

universe is the same everywhere on the large scale, at all

times.2 It maintains the same average density of matter forever.

There are observational evidences found that can prove the

Big Bang model is more reasonable than the Steady State model.

First, the redshifts of distant galaxies. Redshift is a Doppler

effect which states that if a galaxy is moving away, the spectral

line of that galaxy observed will have a shift to the red end.

The faster the galaxy moves, the more shift it has. If the

galaxy is moving closer, the spectral line will show a blue

shift. If the galaxy is not moving, there is no shift at all.

However, as astronomers observed, the more distance a galaxy is

located from Earth, the more redshift it shows on the spectrum.

This means the further a galaxy is, the faster it moves.

Therefore, the universe is expanding, and the Big Bang model

seems more reasonable than the Steady State model.

The second observational evidence is the radiation produced

by the Big Bang. The Big Bang model predicts that the universe

should still be filled with a small remnant of radiation left

over from the original violent explosion of the primeval fireball

in the past. The primeval fireball would have sent strong

shortwave radiation in all directions into space. In time, that

radiation would spread out, cool, and fill the expanding universe

uniformly. By now it would strike Earth as microwave radiation.

In 1965 physicists Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson detected

microwave radiation coming equally from all directions in the

sky, day and night, all year.3 And so it appears that

astronomers have detected the fireball radiation that was

produced by the Big Bang. This casts serious doubt on the Steady

State model. The Steady State could not explain the existence of

this radiation, so the model cannot best explain the beginning of

the universe.

Since the Big Bang model is the better model, the existence

and the future of the universe can also be explained. Around 15

to 20 billion years ago, time began. The points that were to

become the universe exploded in the primeval fireball called the

Big Bang. The exact nature of this explosion may never be known.

However, recent theoretical breakthroughs, based on the

principles of quantum theory, have suggested that space, and the

matter within it, masks an infinitesimal realm of utter chaos,

where events happen randomly, in a state called quantum

weirdness.4

Before the universe began, this chaos was all there was. At

some time, a portion of this randomness happened to form a

bubble, with a