English physicist and professor of particle physics Brian Cox explains the details behind the Big Bang theory.
The moment where space, time and everything else that came into existence which would eventually give rise to the present day cosmos, occurred some 13.75 billion years ago.
The prevailing cosmological model explaining the existence of the observable universe from the earliest known periods is known as The Big Bang theory.
It is one of the best theories we have in all of science. But of course it doesn't explain everything. Like "Why" did the big bang happen in the first place. But maybe the question "Why" is not a good question. As it presupposes the Universe had a purpose. Maybe, a better question is... "How".
Brian Cox points out how the idea that the universe began as an unfathomably single point, then expanded and stretched out to grow as large as it is today is truly mind boggling. But that's what the evidence strongly suggests happened.
Two major scientific discoveries provide strong support for the Big Bang theory: Hubble’s discovery in the 1920s of a relationship between a galaxy’s distance from Earth and its speed. And the discovery in the 1960s of cosmic microwave background radiation.
When scientists talk about the expanding Universe, they mean that it has been increasing in size ever since the Big Bang. But what exactly is getting bigger? Galaxies, stars, planets aren’t getting bigger. Their size is controlled by the strength of the fundamental forces that hold atoms and sub-atomic particles together, and that hasn’t changed. Instead it’s the space between galaxies that’s increasing – they’re getting further apart as space itself expands. And if that's the case, one might wonder: What is the Universe expanding into?
Brian Cox explains that its extremely difficult to imagine the idea that space and time itself may have been created at the big bang.
As counterintuitive and as strange these ideas may sound, they have firm theoretical framework based on our understanding of the laws of physics.
#bigbang #ProfBrianCox #science
SUBSCRIBE to our channel "Science Time": https://www.youtube.com/sciencetime24
BUY Science Time Merch: https://teespring.com/science-time-merch
Sources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mig-FFU3zy8
https://www.uwa.edu.au/study/-/media/Faculties/Science/Docs/Evidence-for-the-Big-Bang.pdf
"Brian Cox" by p_a_h is marked with CC BY 2.0.
