can someone explain to me in detail the big bang theory?

Question

i know that it basically consists of their originally having been some sort of huge singularity which then exploded, but wasnt there any thing else out there at that time? even 100 trillion light years away or something? Is it possible for us to answer that question at this time? what was everything like before this huge singularity came into existance? I am curious to know

Answer 1

The Big Bang Theory is the dominant scientific theory about the origin of the universe. According to the big bang, the universe was created sometime between 10 billion and 20 billion years ago from a cosmic explosion that hurled matter and in all directions.
In 1927, the Belgian priest Georges Lema顃re was the first to propose that the universe began with the explosion of a primeval atom. His proposal came after observing the red shift in distant nebulas by astronomers to a model of the universe based on relativity. Years later, Edwin Hubble found experimental evidence to help justify Lema顃re's theory. He found that distant galaxies in every direction are going away from us with speeds proportional to their distance.

The big bang was initially suggested because it explains why distant galaxies are traveling away from us at great speeds. The theory also predicts the existence of cosmic background radiation (the glow left over from the explosion itself). The Big Bang Theory received its strongest confirmation when this radiation was discovered in 1964 by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, who later won the Nobel Prize for this discovery.

Although the Big Bang Theory is widely accepted, it probably will never be proved; consequentially, leaving a number of tough, unanswered questions

Big Bang Cosmology

The Big Bang Model is a broadly accepted theory for the origin and evolution of our universe. It postulates that 12 to 14 billion years ago, the portion of the universe we can see today was only a few millimeters across. It has since expanded from this hot dense state into the vast and much cooler cosmos we currently inhabit. We can see remnants of this hot dense matter as the now very cold cosmic microwave background radiation which still pervades the universe and is visible to microwave detectors as a uniform glow across the entire sky.
Foundations of the Big Bang Model
The Big Bang Model rests on two theoretical pillars:

General Relativity
The first key idea dates to 1916 when Einstein developed his General Theory of Relativity which he proposed as a new theory of gravity. His theory generalizes Isaac Newton's original theory of gravity, c. 1680, in that it is supposed to be valid for bodies in motion as well as bodies at rest. Newton's gravity is only valid for bodies at rest or moving very slowly compared to the speed of light (usually not too restrictive an assumption!). A key concept of General Relativity is that gravity is no longer described by a gravitational "field" but rather it is supposed to be a distortion of space and time itself. Physicist John Wheeler put it well when he said "Matter tells space how to curve, and space tells matter how to move." Originally, the theory was able to account for peculiarities in the orbit of Mercury and the bending of light by the Sun, both unexplained in Isaac Newton's theory of gravity. In recent years, the theory has passed a series of rigorous tests.

The Cosmological Principle
After the introduction of General Relativity a number of scientists, including Einstein, tried to apply the new gravitational dynamics to the universe as a whole. At the time this required an assumption about how the matter in the universe was distributed. The simplest assumption to make is that if you viewed the contents of the universe with sufficiently poor vision, it would appear roughly the same everywhere and in every direction. That is, the matter in the universe is homogeneous and isotropic when averaged over very large scales. This is called the Cosmological Principle. This assumption is being tested continuously as we actually observe the distribution of galaxies on ever larger scales. The accompanying picture shows how uniform the distribution of measured galaxies is over a 30° swath of the sky. In addition the cosmic microwave background radiation, the remnant heat from the Big Bang, has a temperature which is highly uniform over the entire sky. This fact strongly supports the notion that the gas which emitted this radiation long ago was very uniformly distributed.

These two ideas form the entire theoretical basis for Big Bang cosmology and lead to very specific predictions for observable properties of the universe. An overview of the Big Bang Model is presented in a set of companion pages.

Further Reading

Peebles, P.J.E., Schramm, D.N., Turner, E.L. & R.G. Kron 1991, "The Case for the Relativistic Hot Big Bang Cosmology", Nature, 352, 769 - 776.
Peebles, P.J.E., Schramm, D.N., Turner, E.L. & R.G. Kron 1994, "The Evolution of the Universe'', Scientific American, 271, 29 - 33.
Will, Clifford, "Was Einstein Right?"


Big Bang Theory - The Premise
The Big Bang theory is an effort to explain what happened at the very beginning of our universe. Discoveries in astronomy and physics have shown beyond a reasonable doubt that our universe did in fact have a beginning. Prior to that moment there was nothing; during and after that moment there was something: our universe. The big bang theory is an effort to explain what happened during and after that moment.

According to the standard theory, our universe sprang into existence as "singularity" around 13.7 billion years ago. What is a "singularity" and where does it come from? Well, to be honest, we don't know for sure. Singularities are zones which defy our current understanding of physics. They are thought to exist at the core of "black holes." Black holes are areas of intense gravitational pressure. The pressure is thought to be so intense that finite matter is actually squished into infinite density (a mathematical concept which truly boggles the mind). These zones of infinite density are called "singularities." Our universe is thought to have begun as an infinitesimally small, infinitely hot, infinitely dense, something - a singularity. Where did it come from? We don't know. Why did it appear? We don't know.

After its initial appearance, it apparently inflated (the "Big Bang"), expanded and cooled, going from very, very small and very, very hot, to the size and temperature of our current universe. It continues to expand and cool to this day and we are inside of it: incredible creatures living on a unique planet, circling a beautiful star clustered together with several hundred billion other stars in a galaxy soaring through the cosmos, all of which is inside of an expanding universe that began as an infinitesimal singularity which appeared out of nowhere for reasons unknown. This is the Big Bang theory.

Big Bang Theory - Common Misconceptions
There are many misconceptions surrounding the Big Bang theory. For example, we tend to imagine a giant explosion. Experts however say that there was no explosion; there was (and continues to be) an expansion. Rather than imagining a balloon popping and releasing its contents, imagine a balloon expanding: an infinitesimally small balloon expanding to the size of our current universe.

Another misconception is that we tend to image the singularity as a little fireball appearing somewhere in space. According to the many experts however, space didn't exist prior to the Big Bang. Back in the late '60s and early '70s, when men first walked upon the moon, "three British astrophysicists, Steven Hawking, George Ellis, and Roger Penrose turned their attention to the Theory of Relativity and its implications regarding our notions of time. In 1968 and 1970, they published papers in which they extended Einstein's Theory of General Relativity to include measurements of time and space.1, 2 According to their calculations, time and space had a finite beginning that corresponded to the origin of matter and energy."3 The singularity didn't appear in space; rather, space began inside of the singularity. Prior to the singularity, nothing existed, not space, time, matter, or energy - nothing. So where and in what did the singularity appear if not in space? We don't know. We don't know where it came from, why it's here, or even where it is. All we really know is that we are inside of it and at one time it didn't exist and neither did we.

Big Bang Theory - Evidence for the Theory
What are the major evidences which support the Big Bang theory?

First of all, we are reasonably certain that the universe had a beginning.
Second, galaxies appear to be moving away from us at speeds proportional to their distance. This is called "Hubble's Law," named after Edwin Hubble (1889-1953) who discovered this phenomenon in 1929. This observation supports the expansion of the universe and suggests that the universe was once compacted.
Third, if the universe was initially very, very hot as the Big Bang suggests, we should be able to find some remnant of this heat. In 1965, Radioastronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson discovered a 2.725 degree Kelvin (-454.765 degree Fahrenheit, -270.425 degree Celsius) Cosmic Microwave Background radiation (CMB) which pervades the observable universe. This is thought to be the remnant which scientists were looking for. Penzias and Wilson shared in the 1978 Nobel Prize for Physics for their discovery.
Finally, the abundance of the "light elements" Hydrogen and Helium found in the observable universe are thought to support the Big Bang model of origins.

Big Bang Theory - The Only Plausible Theory?
Is the standard Big Bang theory the only model consistent with these evidences? No, it's just the most popular one. Internationally renown Astrophysicist George F. R. Ellis explains: "People need to be aware that there is a range of models that could explain the observations….For instance, I can construct you a spherically symmetrical universe with Earth at its center, and you cannot disprove it based on observations….You can only exclude it on philosophical grounds. In my view there is absolutely nothing wrong in that. What I want to bring into the open is the fact that we are using philosophical criteria in choosing our models. A lot of cosmology tries to hide that."4

In 2003, Physicist Robert Gentry proposed an attractive alternative to the standard theory, an alternative which also accounts for the evidences listed above.5 Dr. Gentry claims that the standard Big Bang model is founded upon a faulty paradigm (the Friedmann-lemaitre expanding-spacetime paradigm) which he claims is inconsistent with the empirical data. He chooses instead to base his model on Einstein's static-spacetime paradigm which he claims is the "genuine cosmic Rosetta." Gentry has published several papers outlining what he considers to be serious flaws in the standard Big Bang model.6 Other high-profile dissenters include Nobel laureate Dr. Hannes Alfvén, Professor Geoffrey Burbidge, Dr. Halton Arp, and the renowned British astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle, who is accredited with first coining the term "the Big Bang" during a BBC radio broadcast in 1950.

Big Bang Theory - What About God?
Any discussion of the Big Bang theory would be incomplete without asking the question, what about God? This is because cosmogony (the study of the origin of the universe) is an area where science and theology meet. Creation was a supernatural event. That is, it took place outside of the natural realm. This fact begs the question: is there anything else which exists outside of the natural realm? Specifically, is there a master Architect out there? We know that this universe had a beginning. Was God the "First Cause"? We won't attempt to answer that question in this short article. We just ask the question: Does God exist?

(This article is a transcript of a lecture Dr. Schaefer presented at the University of colorado in the spring of 1994, sponsored by Christian Leadership and other campus ministries. Over 500 students and professors were present.)

Stephen Hawking's bestseller A Brief History of Time is the most popular book about cosmology ever written. The questions cosmology addresses are scientifically and theologically profound. Hawking's book covers both of these implications.

Cosmology is the study of the universe as a whole--it's structure, origin and development. I won't answer all the questions Hawking raises concerning cosmology, but I will try to make comments on many of them. I caution here that you should not confuse cosmology with cosmetology, the art of beautifying the hair, skin, and nails!

Here are some of the questions cosmology seeks to answer (As elsewhere in this lecture, I borrow heavily from astrophysicist Hugh Ross' excellent books The Fingerprint of God and The Creator and the Cosmos.):

Is the universe finite or infinite in extent and content?
Is it eternal or does it have a beginning?
Was it created? If not, how did it get here? If so, how was this creation accomplished and what can we learn about the agent and events of creation?
Who or what governs the laws and constants of physics? Are such laws the product of chance or have they been designed? How do they relate to the support and development of life?
Is there any knowable existence beyond the known dimensions of the universe?
Is the universe running down irreversibly or will it bounce back?
Let me begin with five traditional arguments for the existence of God. It may seem an unlikely starting point for this topic, but I think you'll see as time goes on that these arguments keep coming up. I'm not going to comment right away on whether these arguments are valid or not, but I will state them because throughout astrophysical literature these arguments are often referred to:

The cosmological argument: the effect of the universe's existence must have a suitable cause.
The teleological argument: the design of the universe implies a purpose or direction behind it.
The rational argument: the operation of the universe, according to order and natural law, implies a mind behind it.
The ontological argument: man's ideas of God (his God-consciousness) implies a God who imprinted such a consciousness.
The moral argument: man's built-in sense of right and wrong can be accounted for only by an innate awareness of a code of law--an awareness implanted by a higher being.
The Big Bang
The idea that the universe had a specific time of origin has been philosophically resisted by some very distinguished scientists. We could begin with Arthur Eddington, who experimentally confirmed Einstein's general theory of relativity in 1919. He stated a dozen years later: "Philosophically, the notion of a beginning to the present order is repugnant to me and I should like to find a genuine loophole." He later said, "We must allow evolution an infinite amount of time to get started."

Albert Einstein's reaction to the consequences of his own general theory of relativity appear to acknowledge the threat of an encounter with God. Through the equations of general relativity, we can trace the origin of the universe backward in time to some sort of a beginning. However, before publishing his cosmological inferences, Einstein introduced a cosmological constant, a "fudge factor," to yield a static model for the universe. Einstein later considered this to be the greatest blunder of his scientific career.

Einstein ultimately gave grudging acceptance to what he called "the necessity for a beginning" and eventually to "the presence of a superior reasoning power." But he never did accept the reality of a personal God.

Why such resistance to the idea of a definite beginning of the universe? It goes right back to that first argument, the cosmological argument: (a) Everything that begins to exist must have a cause; (b) If the universe began to exist, then (c) the universe must have a cause. You can see the direction in which this argument is flowing--a direction of discomfort to some physicists.

In 1946, George Gamow, a Russian-born scientist, proposed that the primeval fireball, the "big bang," was an intense concentration of pure energy. It was the source of all the matter that now exists in the universe. The theory predicts that all the galaxies in the universe should be rushing away from each other at high speeds as a result of that initial big bang. A dictionary definition of the hot big bang theory is "the entire physical universe, all the matter and energy and even the four dimensions of time and space, burst forth from a state of infinite or near infinite density, temperature, and pressure."

The 1965 observation of the microwave background radiation by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson from the Bell Telephone laboratories convinced most scientists of the validity of the big bang theory. Further observations reported in 1992 have moved the big bang theory from a consensus view to the nearly unanimous view among cosmologists: there was an origin to the universe approximately 15 billion years ago.

About the 1992 observations, which were from the COBE (the NASA satellite Cosmic Background Explorer), there was a story on the front page of virtually every newspaper in the world. The thing that the London Times, New York Times, etc. seemed to pick up on was a statement by George Smoot, the team leader from the Lawrence-Berkeley Laboratory. He said, "It's like looking at God." Obviously, this captured the public's attention.

A somewhat more sober assessment of the findings was given by Frederick Burnham, a science-historian. He said, "These findings, now available, make the idea that God created the universe a more respectable hypothesis today than at any time in the last 100 years."

Not everyone was ecstatic about these observations that revealed the so-called "big bang ripples." Certainly, those who had argued so strongly and passionately for a steady-state model of the universe didn't like the interpretation of these results at all--primarily two persons, Fred Hoyle, the British astronomer, and Jeffrey Burbidge, a very distinguished astrophysicist at the University of California at San Diego.

We can begin to get into the philosophical implications of these observations when we assess Burbidge's statement (made during a radio discussion with Hugh Ross) on these things. Burbidge discounts the new experiment. He is a strong advocate still today, in the face of overwhelming evidence, of the steady-state theory. He says these new experiments come from "the first church of Christ of the big bang." I can tell you that my former colleague George Smoot, at the Lawrence-Berkeley Laboratory, took strong exception to this statement. He absolutely insisted his observations were in no way colored by any religious presuppositions.

Burbidge does say something that is true, however. He favors the steady-state hypothesis and claims his view supports Hinduism and not Christianity. That is correct, because a steady-state theory of the universe, were it to be true, would provide some support for the endless cycles taught by Hinduism. The big bang theory is significant evidence against Hinduism.

Hugh Ross, an astrophysicist, has written very persuasively on this topic. He again brings us into the philosophical implications. Ross says that, by definition,

Time is that dimension in which cause and effect phenomena take place. . . . If time's beginning is concurrent with the beginning of the universe, as the space-time theorem says, then the cause of the universe must be some entity operating in a time dimension completely independent of and pre-existent to the time dimension of the cosmos. This conclusion is powerfully important to our understanding of who God is and who or what God isn't. It tells us that the creator is transcendent, operating beyond the dimensional limits of the universe. It tells us that God is not the universe itself, nor is God contained within the universe.
These are two very popular views, which brings us to something very significant metaphysically or philosophically. If the big bang theory is true, then we can conclude God is not the same as the universe (a popular view) and God is not con-tained within the universe (another popular view).

Stephen Hawking has said, in his writings, "the actual point of creation lies outside the scope of presently known laws of physics," and a less well-known but very distinguished cosmologist, Professor Alan Guth from MIT, says the "instant of creation remains unexplained."

I want to quote from a book that I don't recommend. It is by a brilliant physicist, Leon Lederman, a Nobel Prize winner. It is called The God Particle and although the title sounds very appealing, the good information is all in the first paragraph. The rest of it is just a case for the building of the SSC, the Super Conducting-Super Collider, which we now know is not going to be built. Therefore the book is a bit of a Rip Van-Winkle sort of experience! But the first paragraph is wonderful; it's a great summary of what I have said so far:

In the very beginning, there was a void, a curious form of vacuum, a nothingness containing no space, no time, no matter, no light, no sound. Yet the laws of nature were in place and this curious vacuum held potential. A story logically begins at the beginning, but this story is about the universe and unfortunately there are no data for the very beginnings--none, zero. We don't know anything about the universe until it reaches the mature age of a billion of a trillionth of a second. That is, some very short time after creation in the big bang. When you read or hear anything about the birth of the universe, someone is making it up--we are in the realm of philosophy. Only God knows what happened at the very beginning.
That is about all that Lederman has to say about God--in the first paragraph--and that's the end of it. The thing that has made Hawking's book so popular is that he is talking about God from beginning to end.

Stephen Hawking
Hawking is probably the most famous living scientist. His book, A Brief History of Time, is available in paperback and I strongly recommend it. It has sold in excess of 10 million copies, and I think he sold about five million before the paperback version. For a book to sell so many copies is almost unheard of in the history of science writing.

There has been a film made about the book. The film is also good. There has even been a book made about the film. Hawking has a wonderful sense of humor. He writes in the introduction of the second book, "This is the book of the film of the book. I don't know if they are planning a film of the book of the film of the book."

I want to begin by saying something about Stephen Hawking's scientific research. Hawking has made his reputation by investigating, in great detail, one particular set of problems: the singularity and horizons around black holes and at the beginning of time. Now, everyone is sure if you encountered a black hole, it would be the last thing you ever encountered--and that is correct! A black hole is a massive system so centrally condensed that the force of gravity prevents everything within it, even light, from escaping.

Hawking's first major work was published with Roger Penrose, a physicist very famous in his own right, and George Ellis, during the period 1968-1970. They demonstrated that every solution to the equations of general relativity guarantees the existence of a singular boundary for space and time in the past. This is now known as the "singularity theorem," and is a tremendously important finding.

Later, working by himself, in 1974, he began to formulate ideas about the quantum evaporation of exploding black holes, the now famous "Hawking radiation." These are all tremendously important scientific works.

The work most referred to in A Brief History of Time is also the most speculative: the 1984 work with James Hartle, a professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Using an elegant vacuum fluctuation model, they were able to provide a mathematical rationalization for the entire universe popping into existence at the beginning of time. This is also called the "universe as a wave function." I need to emphasize that they were using very simple models. Now, while such mathematical exercises are highly speculative, they may eventually lead us to a deeper understanding of this creation event.

Hawking is certainly the most famous physicist in history who has not won the Nobel Prize. This has puzzled people. They automatically assume he has won the Nobel Prize. He has not yet. This is because the Swedish Royal Academy demands that an award-winning discovery must be supported by verifiable experimental or observational evidence. Hawking's work, to date, remains unproved. The mathematics of his theory, however, are certainly beautiful and elegant. Science is just beginning to verify the existence of black holes, let alone verify "Hawking radiation" or any of his more radical theoretical proposals.

My opinion is that within the next year or two we will have firm evidence for the existence of black holes. Unfortunately, I think the person who will get the Nobel Prize will be the observa-tionalist who comes up with its data. So I think Hawking may not get the Nobel Prize soon, even though he's the world's most famous scientist.

Even if some aspects of Hawking's research turn out to be wrong, he will have had a profound impact on the history of scientific thought. Einstein was wrong about all matter of things, especially quantum mechanics, and we still recognize him as one of the three great geniuses of physics.

And God
A Brief History of Time says a lot about God. God is mentioned in this book from beginning to end. So let us try to put Hawking's opinions about God in some sort of a context. The context is that Stephen Hawking made up his mind about God long before he became a cosmologist.

The principle influence in his early life was his mother, Isabel. Isabel Hawking was a member of the Communist Party in England in the 1930's, and her son has carried a good bit of that intellectual baggage right through his life.

By the time he was 13, Hawking's hero was the atheist philosopher and mathematician, Bertrand Russell. At the same age, two of Hawking's friends became Christians as a result of the 1955 Billy Graham London campaign. According to his 1992 biographers, Hawking stood apart from these encounters with "a certain amused detachment." There is nothing in A Brief History of Time that deviates in a significant way from the religious views of the 13-year old Stephen Hawking.

The most important event of his life occurred on December 31, 1962. He met his future wife, Jane Wilde, at a New Year's Eve party. One month later, he was diagnosed with a terrible disease, ALS, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. He was given two years to live at that time. That was 32 years ago. I have had three friends die of this disease. It's a horrible disease. They lasted two, three, and five years, respectively. By anyone's estimation, Stephen Hawking is a medical miracle.

At this point in his life, 1962, Stephen was by all accounts an average-performing graduate student at Cambridge University. Let me quote from his biographers, White and Gribbon, on this point:

There is little doubt that Jane Wilde's appearance on the scene was a major turning-point in Stephen Hawking's life. The two of them began to see a lot more of one another and a strong relationship developed. It was finding Jane that enabled him to break out of his depression and regenerate some belief in his life and work. For Hawking, his engagement to Jane was probably the most important thing that ever happened to him. It changed his life, gave him something to live for and made him determined to live. Without the help that Jane gave him, he would almost certainly not have been able to carry on or had the will to do so.
They married in July of 1965. Hawking himself has said that "what really made a difference was that I got engaged to a woman named Jane Wilde. This gave me something to live for."

Jane Hawking is an interesting person in her own right. I think she decided early on to get into an academic discipline as far as possible from her husband. She has a doctorate in Medieval Portuguese Literature!

Jane Hawking is a Christian. She made the statement in 1986, "Without my faith in God, I wouldn't have been able to live in this situation;" namely, the deteriorating health of her husband. "I would not have been able to marry Stephen in the first place because I wouldn't have had the optimism to carry me through and I wouldn't have been able to carry on with it."

The reason the book has sold 10 million copies, i.e., the reason for Hawking's success as a popularizer of science, is that he addresses the problems of meaning and purpose that concern all thinking people. The book overlaps with Christian belief and it does so deliberately, but graciously and without rancor. It is an important book that needs to be treated with respect and attention.

There is no reason to agree with everything put forth in A Brief History of Time and you will see that I have some areas of disagreement. It has been said that this is the most widely unread book in the history of literature. I first prepared this material for a lecture in December 1992, because I was asked by a friend in Australia to come and speak on it. He told me, "A great many people in Sydney have purchased this book. Some claim to have read it." So I encourage you to be one of those who have actually read A Brief History of Time.

I think that is enough now. Don't you?

Answer 2

I can't explain it, and I don't really know if there is anything wrong with it. I do know that when it was first proposed, many atheist scientists didn't like it because it sounded too much like creationism. Before the Big Bang theory, they thought the universe was eternal. Now, it's an accepted theory, from what I hear. Why are scientists so afraid of anything that may look like creation? Isn't science a search for truth, even if you don't like the truth that you find?

Answer 3

Well, the idea behind the Big Bang Theory (BBT) is that there was this one huge star that took up 3/4 of the universe. So as you can see even if there were another star 100 trillion light years away it still woudln't matter. Anyways, according the BBT is that the star exploded, spreading trillions and trillions tons of matter across the universe that eventually over millions of years slowly began to form galaxies. So yes, there were probably other stars, but in the BBT this one star was the biggest.

Answer 4

It is not just that there was a huge explosion, it is that this universe did not exist at all. The empty vaccum of space itself did not exist. In theory, our universe started as a small pin point in size and space itself grew extremely rapidly during and immediately following the big bang. As it grew it was very hot, and as it cooled, matter coalesced. Stars and galaxies formed and the universe itself continues to expand. Now we are some 12 billion years (or more) later trying to figure it all out....

Answer 5

There was a large explosion, which probably nobody heard because it was the beginning of the Universe. Unless, God heard it,or maybe he was wearing earplugs.

anyway, according to this theory all matter including you and I are composed of the same stuff as the stars in the Universe. We are all Stars! So, according to Carl Sagin eventually all of the stuff that was blown out will be sucked back in again through a Black Hole

COOL HUH?

Answer 6

The answer is that we cannot know at this point. All the information available to us is contained in the big bang. If there were something outside of that, the information could not reach us because all of our history is contained in the light cone that goes back to that point.

Answer 7

Read "A Brief History of Time" or "A Briefer History of Time" both by Stephen Hawking.

He explains in easy to understand detail the answer to your question.

Answer 8

Check out Brian Greene's "The Fabric of the Cosmos" - but, no, noone can really say.

Answer 9

And God said " Let there be light"

Answer 10

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_bang