However, what happened before the big bang? What caused the big bang? Where is the center of the explosion? Where is the edge of the universe? In fact, these questions completely misunderstood the meaning of the Big Bang. The Big Bang does not mean that many galaxies spread violently from a common center to the depths of infinite vacuum. Here, space itself was born in the Big Bang, and time itself was born in the Big Bang. The point appearing in space is not located on any object, it is not an object surrounded by nothingness, but the starting point of infinitely compressed space itself. This point will not stay there for an infinite time, it will immediately start from scratch and immediately expand, and the material event itself will start from this point. Time and space have the same starting point as the physical universe, which may be the most critical and difficult place to understand the big bang theory.
This small starting point is technically called singularity. When you go back to the past, the universe shrinks and the curvature of spacetime increases infinitely until the singularity becomes infinite. Roughly speaking, it is similar to the top of a cone, and the cone structure gradually tapers until it ends at an infinite point, from which space and time begin.
Once this concept is accepted, the question "What happened before the Big Bang" is obviously meaningless. There was never such a period before the Big Bang, because time began with the Big Bang. Unfortunately, this question is often answered with such a simple sentence: "I didn't bring anything before the Big Bang". Many people interpret "nothing" as empty space, but as pointed out above, space did not exist before the Big Bang.
Does "nothing" here mean something more subtle, such as the "front space" from which space emerges? Or some kind of abstract state?
Not really, as Stephen Hawking said, "What is the north of the Arctic?" This question can also be answered by "nothing", not because there is a mysterious "infinite place", but because the mentioned area does not exist at all, not only physically but also logically. The so-called "period before the Big Bang" is like this.
Does time have a definite beginning?
If time does not exist forever, can we be sure that there must be discontinuity and suddenly "turn on the switch" at a certain moment? If so, it means that there is a first event, or the first event. This first event is different from other ordinary events because nothing happened before it. It is a causal event-a strange supernatural event. Are you sure about this?
Not necessarily. For example, is there a minimum real number greater than zero? Obviously not. Choose any positive real number, such as one billion, one trillion ... This number can always be halved, and it can be halved again to get a smaller number than the last one. Similarly, if time is continuous, then at any moment (for example, a billionth of a second, a trillionth of a second ...), there is always a moment before it. Here, we can't find a definite initial moment.
Of course, time may be discontinuous, just like a movie, every picture of the movie is still, but when it is shown at a fast speed, it gives us a continuous illusion. Is the giant cosmic drama as fleeting as a series of movies with discontinuous static frames (25 frames per second), and we don't even notice the connection point of these events, which makes us think that time is continuous? Someone did put forward such an idea, but no such evidence was found. Today, the smallest time scale that physicists can study has reached L0 ~ 26 seconds, and no clues of time discontinuity have been found.
Is there a reason for the beginning of time?
Then, why did time and space suddenly "turn on the switch"? In daily life, we seldom doubt that everything has a reason. A bridge collapsed due to overload. The snow melted because the air became hot. A tree grows because it has planted tree species. ...
Our minds think with the causal chain of cause and effect, and every event must have a reason. Because the normal causal relationship occurs in time, there is a natural tendency to imagine a causal chain extending in time, which can finally be traced back to the first reason for the creation of the universe. But does every event have a reason? Will something appear for no reason? Yes According to quantum theory, particles can come out for no reason. Quantum theory is a branch of physics, which is suitable for subatomic world, and its characteristics are expressed by Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. According to this principle, the behavior of particles is usually unpredictable. You can't know exactly what a particle will do between this moment and the next. The trajectory of the particle is basically random, it just appears suddenly and irregularly.
When the quantum theory is applied to the creation moment of the universe, the cusp smaller than the particle obeys the quantum theory. Without any reason, time and space will spontaneously appear, just like the particle spontaneously, without any reason. There is no reason for the creation of the universe, which is the natural result of quantum theory.
1932, Lemaistre put forward the modern big bang theory for the first time: the whole universe first gathered in a "primitive atom", and then the big bang happened, and the fragments scattered in all directions, forming our universe. Since then, the Big Bang theory has become the focus of debate among many scientists. Recently, at the Cosmological Congress held in Portugal, two groups of scientists with different views once again debated the theory of the origin of the universe.
BIGBANG is just a theory, an idea based on astronomical observation and research.
About 5 billion years ago, all the substances in the universe were highly concentrated at one point and had extremely high temperatures, which led to a huge explosion. After the big bang, matter began to expand outward, forming the universe we see today. The whole process of the Big Bang is complicated, and now we can only describe the history of the development of the ancient universe on the basis of theoretical research. In this/kloc-0.5 billion year, galaxy clusters, galaxies, our galaxies, stars, solar systems, planets, satellites and so on were born one after another. Now all the celestial bodies and cosmic substances we see and can't see have formed today's cosmic form, and human beings were born in this cosmic evolution.
How can people speculate that there may be a big explosion? It depends on astronomical observation and research. Our sun is just one of the120 billion stars in the Milky Way. Such as our Milky Way, extrasolar galaxies and Qian Qian. From the observation, it is found that those distant galaxies are leaving us. The farther away galaxies are, the faster they fly, thus forming an expanding universe.
In this regard, people began to reflect, if we look at these galaxies that are far away from each other in all directions, they may have been emitted from the same source from the beginning. Was there an unimaginable big bang at the beginning of the universe? Later, we observed the microwave background radiation that filled the universe, that is to say, the aftermath generated by BIGBANG about 654.38+0.5 billion years ago was weak but did exist. This discovery is a strong support for BIGBANG.
Scientists uncover the secrets of the universe
A few physicists in the United States and Britain recently put forward a new theory about the origin of the universe, which is a blockbuster: there is our universe and another "hidden" universe in the "five-dimensional space". This theory immediately attracted the universal attention of cosmologists.
Professor Li Qibin, the front desk director of Beijing Observatory of Chinese Academy of Sciences, saw this news from the news media yesterday and immediately logged on the website of Physics Department of Princeton University to find relevant papers. After reading it carefully, Professor Li believes that this theory will open up a new prospect for the study of the origin of the universe, so it will inevitably be widely concerned by the scientific community.
Professor Li said that the "BIGBANG" theory was generally accepted by the scientific community because it was supported by practical astronomical observation evidence discovered over the years. At present, the expansion history of the universe after the Big Bang 1 sec accords with this theory. However, if we go back to1500 million years ago when the age of the universe was 10 for 35 seconds, the universe should be compressed into a region with a diameter of 3 mm, but at this early time, the fastest light could only travel to about 10 for 25 centimeters. So what happened in the universe during this time, human beings have never known.
Professor Li believes that the new theory not only explains this problem, but also uses the new theory of physics "superstring", which is groundbreaking. Before BIGBANG's theory used Einstein's quantum theory.
This new theory was put forward by physicists from Princeton University, University of Pennsylvania and Cambridge University. They think that our universe and a "hidden" universe are "embedded" in a "five-dimensional space". In the early days of our universe, two universes collided, and the energy generated by the collision produced matter and energy in our universe.
Interestingly, when someone asks, if this theory is correct, will another universe come out of the "five-dimensional space" and destroy us? Professor steinhardt, an astrophysicist at Princeton University who put forward this theory, replied that it is possible. The process is always repeated.
Professor Li Qibin said that the origin of the universe will be an outline of the laws of the material world that human beings are constantly exploring. When he gave lectures to primary and secondary school students, the second most mentioned question was the origin of the universe, second only to "aliens". The final solution of this problem is not only of scientific significance, but also of philosophical significance.
American scholars believe that the universe has past lives.
A theoretical physicist in the United States said that according to a new mathematical model of time and space he established, our universe was not created out of nothing, but also had "past lives".
According to the current theory, scientists generally believe that the universe was born 65.438+037 billion years ago, and this event called BIGBANG is the starting point of everything, including time and space.
At the beginning of the Big Bang, everything in the universe was compressed into a "singularity"-a point with zero volume and infinite density. Before the Big Bang, there was no matter, space and time.
However, Martin Bojowald, a theoretical physicist at Pennsylvania State University in the United States, published a paper in the new issue of Nature Physics, saying that the Big Bang was not the beginning of time, and our universe was caused by the "rebound" after the contraction of the previous universe. Bojowald's model is based on the theory of circle quantum gravity, which is a theory that attempts to combine Einstein's theory of relativity with quantum mechanics. Bojowald said that the model showed that at the beginning of the Big Bang, our universe was very small but not as small as zero, and its energy was enormous but not infinite, not a "singularity".
The model also shows that the Big Bang was probably triggered by the demise of the previous universe. Unlike our expanding universe, before the Big Bang, the "previous life" of the universe was in a state of contraction. Calculations show that it cannot shrink into a "singularity" without volume, because when the temperature and pressure become extremely high, gravity will become repulsive and prevent the universe from shrinking further.
According to the calculation, because the accumulated gravitational energy is very large, "Big bounce" will occur when the universe shrinks to a certain extent, just like a ball will bounce back after hitting the ground heavily. Bocciowald believes that "Big bounce" triggered the expansion of the current universe, and it is possible to find traces left by its "previous life" in our universe. This model means that the Big Bang is not the beginning of time, and the universe may have an infinite past and future. However, some experts believe that Bojowald's hypothesis has yet to be verified.
The universe will be a super new sun.
According to the British "Independent" reported on May 29th, scientists from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) discovered two giant stars with very close orbits through satellites and ground telescopes, and they may merge into a high-energy supernova, which is 100 times larger than the sun.
Scientists have found that these two giant stars with very close orbits are not more than 3 million years old and belong to relatively young stars. They are about 65.438+0.65 billion light years away from the Earth, and are named LH54-425 by scientists. They are 67 times and 37 times that of the sun respectively. After accurate research, scientists accurately predicted that with the expansion of two stars, their attraction will become greater and greater, and eventually they will merge into one and become one of the largest stars in the Milky Way.
George Sonneborn, a NASA scientist, said, "The fusion of two stars will produce a' super sun', just like the current Eta. In fact, Eta carina, like LH54-425, was two independent planets 6,543,800 years ago. At present, we find that these two early big stars are very rare, which will give us a clearer understanding of the formation process of superstars. "
"These two superstars are still evolving," said Lin Xiawei, a scientist at the Catholic University in Washington. Although they are only 1 10,000 years away from Eta, they look completely different. "
Jason Smith, head of the Astronomical Science Group of the University of California and the University of Texas, said: "In today's Milky Way, star explosions are very common, but such a huge star is unbelievable. Because this means that the explosion will release about 150 times the energy of the sun, and we have never seen this phenomenon. "
Russian scientists deny that the universe was born in the Big Bang.
According to the Russian Independent newspaper reported on 26th, most scientists in the world believe that the universe is the product of the Big Bang. However, Professor Vitaly vasilyevich Bushuyev, director of the Russian Institute of Power Engineering, and Dr. Igor, director of the Moscow Institute of Power Engineering, doctor of technology and winner of the highest national science and technology award in the former Soviet Union? Petrovich? Professor Coplov believes that there has never been a "big bang" in the universe.
The Big Bang theory led God to create the universe.
According to the big bang theory, galaxies and all other stars and planets were born in the so-called singularity.
This singularity gathers all the most primitive matter in the universe. However, the "Big Bang" theory still has a huge flaw, that is, it can't answer where this singularity came from before the Big Bang. Some people even think that the development of the Big Bang theory will lead people's understanding of the birth and demise of the universe to creationism. Pope Joao Pavel II once said in his letter that contemporary cosmology coincides with the exposition in the Bible.
The electromagnetic universe theory can solve the problem.
Two Russian scientists said that the idea of electromagnetic universe can answer many questions about the birth of the universe. The basic ideas of electromagnetic universe theory are embodied in three aspects: first, the universe will exist forever; Second, all substances in the universe exchange energy in various frequency ranges (from ultra-low frequency to ultra-high frequency); Third, all activities in the universe are cyclical (planets are born in black holes and finally collapse into black holes) and follow conservation laws (energy, charge and matter).
Galaxies are born from black hole discharges.
The basic view of electromagnetic universe theory is that the universe is a torus system, in which many galaxies are connected by cosmic magnetic field, and the spiral torus cosmic magnetic field controls all galaxy flows. Each galaxy group is separated by a black hole belt, which is the place where galaxies are bred and produced.
According to the theory of electromagnetic universe, black holes create two types of galaxies, one is the material world composed of negative electrons and protons, and the other is the so-called antimatter world composed of positrons and antiprotons. It is the huge material and charge difference between these two worlds that forms the energy that gives life and development to the universe.
Galaxies were born under the condition of the existence of cosmic magnetic field, and the movement of stellar and galactic materials formed the powerful current of the universe. Just like the discharge phenomenon in thunderstorm days in the earth's atmosphere, there are also discharge phenomena in black holes, which have lasted for billions of years and contributed to the birth and death of many galaxies.
The big bang theory will be forgotten.
According to the theory of electromagnetic universe, BIGBANG is actually the birth process of galaxies. Because there are countless galaxies in the universe, it can be speculated that the Big Bang happens all the time, that is to say, the birth and death of galaxies in the universe happen every second.
Two Russian scientists believe that the advent of the electromagnetic universe theory will make the Big Bang theory forgotten by people over time. Because matter and energy are always transforming each other, time is just a tool to record from one event to another. In fact, time is eternal, and the cycle of life has no beginning or end.
Experts say that the expansion of the universe is accelerating.
The universe we live in is nearly 654.38+0.4 billion years old. It creates raw materials for all kinds of things, such as stars, planets, trees, cities, cars and even humans. Our world is over. But the universe is still evolving. What is its ending? At present, scientists have put forward many inferences about the demise of the universe.
There is a saying that the universe will run out of energy and stop expanding, and stars, galaxies, planets and all atoms will start to collapse and shrink to the size of a needle tip. This is the so-called crash.
To understand whether the universe will collapse, scientists must first find out whether the universe is still expanding or whether the expansion rate is slowing down.
By measuring the brightness of 1A supernova, scientists can study the death of the universe.
Saul Pumit, a professor at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and an astrophysicist, studied the death of the universe by looking for markers in space. These marks are the exploding star-1a supernova.
He said: "As long as enough 1A supernovae are found, their brightness can be measured. Supernovae with higher brightness are closer, and supernovae with weaker brightness must be farther and farther away from us. Supernovae with low brightness are far away. "
1A supernovae are very similar to supernovae that make heavy elements. However, 1A supernovae have an important feature, and the brightness of their explosions is the same.
This is because they are all formed in the same process. Two stars orbit each other under the action of gravity. One of them is a shrinking high-density star, emitting high heat and white light. It is a white dwarf. Another star expands into a giant star, which is a red giant star, and its fuel is about to run out. When these two stars orbit each other, the white dwarf will absorb the gas from the companion star and start to grow year after year. When the mass of a white dwarf reaches 1.44 times that of the sun, it will collapse, collapse and then explode, releasing dazzling light and energy. Each 1A supernova has the same mass. Therefore, all parts of the universe have the same brightness and visibility.
Astrophysicist Pumit found that the expansion of the universe has not slowed down.
Pumit needs to find hundreds of 1A supernovae and measure their speed away from us.
By comparing the position and age of Supergiant star in different time and space, Pumit can calculate whether the expansion of the universe is slowing down.
He got an amazing result: the expansion speed of the universe has not slowed down.
Pumit said: "When we started this project, the purpose was to measure the speed at which the expansion of the universe slowed down, but it was not slow enough to stop expanding. In fact, the expansion rate has hardly slowed down. After completing the analysis, we found that the expansion did not slow down, but accelerated. "
Pumit's amazing discovery means that the universe will not stop expanding and collapse into an ultra-dense substance the size of a needle tip. On the contrary, the universe will continue to accelerate its expansion. The universe is disintegrating.
After about 1000 billion years, all the galaxies will collapse, and the end of the universe will be that everything will come to a standstill.
Professor Lawrence Kraus of case western reserve university, USA, said: "The expansion of the universe is accelerating. Until everything falls apart, it is not limited to galaxies, but also includes matter, earth, stars, planets, humans and atoms, and everything will disappear. "
When the sun burns out, all the galaxies will collapse after about 1000 billion years. Only isolated stars will remain in the universe, and the energy of these stars will soon run out. Some stars will become white dwarfs or brown dwarfs, and some will collapse into neutron stars or black holes. Even black holes will disappear for trillions of years after the big bang. All substances will be broken down into their most basic components. Atoms will also decompose. Finally, even the protons that make up atoms will decay.
Klaus said that the future of the universe is likely to be very bleak and become a cold, dark and empty place. With the expansion of the universe, galaxies began to move away from each other. Space will become empty and dead. Our galaxy cluster will move away from us at a speed faster than the speed of light and disappear into the darkness.
In the end, everything will come to a standstill, and this is the end of the universe. The universe will eventually die, leaving only a cold, dark and lifeless void.
The beginning of the universe
How did The Big Bang Theory come into being?
The once small concept of the universe originated from the great research of American astronomer Edwin Hubble.
In the 1920s, most astronomers believed that all visible objects in the night sky were stars and were part of the Milky Way. But Hubble doesn't think so. After studying the rotating Andromeda nebula, he found that there were many stars in it, which indicated that it was another galaxy outside the Milky Way. Hubble proved that other galaxies are gradually moving away from the Milky Way. The farther the galaxy is from us, the farther it seems. This shows that the universe is expanding.
If the universe is really expanding, it must be much smaller than it is now, and it must have a beginning. Thus, the big bang theory was born.
Of course, no one knows what happened in the big bang. But scientists believe that at first, there was nothing in the universe, no space and no time. Then, there is light. A small light spot appeared and its temperature was extremely high. At the first moment of the Big Bang, everything in the universe and all the matter and energy in the galaxy were contained in this area smaller than an atom. This little fireball is all the space, and time starts here.
How did the universe grow up step by step?
Small light spots grow at high speed, time passes and space expands.
One millionth of a second after the Big Bang, the universe has expanded from less than one atom to eight times the size of the solar system.
380,000 years after the Big Bang, the universe expanded to the size of the Milky Way, and the temperature cooled from several billion degrees Fahrenheit to several thousand degrees.
Nine billion years after the Big Bang, all the elements needed for life appeared. The universe has developed into a huge and complex space with billions of galaxies and countless stars. In a quiet corner of the Milky Way, a cloud of dust and gas began to gather. This is the debris left by a huge supernova. When it reached the critical mass, the debris began to burn violently, and a star was born. This is our star-the sun.
Dust and gas form swirling disks in the orbit of new stars. Under the traction of gravity, the dust and gas in this ring structure began to collide. The dust and gas masses are getting bigger and bigger. This planet was born. The earth is one of these planets.
Scientists say that the universe will split into countless pieces.
According to the report of New Scientist magazine on February 8th, what is the ultimate fate of our universe? Previously, some scientists thought that the universe would be torn by dark energy, while others thought that the universe would oscillate back and forth between the Big Bang and the Big Collapse. Now, these two views are gradually merging into a new view: the universe will be divided into countless fragments, and each fragment will grow into a new universe.
One problem that any model of the universe must explain is the disorder of particle arrangement in the universe, which is measured by the physical quantity "entropy". Cosmologists believe that the universe was orderly and low "entropy" at the beginning of its formation, and then gradually fell into chaos.
However, why the early universe was orderly has never been explained.
This problem involves the way the universe was born and destroyed. The fate of the universe depends on the change of dark energy with time. Dark energy is considered to be the internal driving force leading to the expansion of the universe. If dark energy grows indefinitely, it will lead to the destruction of the universe called the "big tear".
The new model proposed by physicists Baum and Flam Dunn of the University of North Carolina in the United States considers the above problems. The new model holds that the density of dark energy is so great that the universe gradually expands at a certain rate until a "big tear" occurs. The "big tear" split the universe into countless pieces and separated from each other at a speed faster than the speed of light. Then, because the density of dark energy is equal to the density of the universe, the destruction process stops. Every fragment begins to "collapse" itself and start a new round of cosmic growth. Because each sub-universe contains only a limited "entropy" in the mother universe, the universe is orderly at the early stage of its formation.
This theoretical result will be published in Physical Review Express and tested by Planck satellite launched by European Space Agency in 2008. The satellite will detect data about the pressure and density of dark energy and provide the most direct evidence for the correctness of the universe model.