EPT
Might I recommend some Return to Forever to go with this? Some classic fusion always goes nice with some scientific theories, in my opinion.
![[image loading]](http://www.shtfplan.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/bigbang1.jpg)
bang.
I was unsure when I first thought of doing these where to begin, with such a plethora of information out there. The best place, I quickly confirmed, would be from the very beginning. The Big Bang. The Big Bang is an interesting event, because there is so little to actually be confirmed other than the event itself. When ol' Hubble found that the Universe was expanding at a rapid rate (counter to the static universe idea that has always existed idea at the time) by seeing the galaxies were moving away from Earth at an accelerated rate with gravitational redshift. What is gravitational redshift? Well, think the Doppler Effect -- that's exactly what it is. When we are looking at something far away, it is changing in the spectrum of light depending on its distance. If it is getting progressively redder, it is going further and blue means it's getting closer. Distant galaxies were turning red.
The term "Big Bang" was not even coined until 1950ish, however, the idea was quickly spreading between scientists of the time. Then some time in the 60's we found Cosmic-Microwave Background Radiation, which changed everything. As I mentioned in my introduction blog post, when you see a star millions of light years away you are literally seeing it as it was millions of years ago as it took that long for the light to reach you. Because of this, when we saw the CMBR, which was in every direction and incredibly hot, we got a rough age of the Universe at last -- 13.7 billion years old.
Now with the boring stuff out of the way, let's get into the meat of things. The Big Bang is just an overarching term for a multitude of theories. The prevailing theory right now is that at some point 13.7 billion years ago, the Universe was in an incredibly dense and hot state (much like the brief moment before a star goes supernova, might I add) and then exploded. I'll go more into this later. However, let's get into what we do know first. Now begins the most crucial few minutes of the Universe The first moments after the Big Bang.
In just a fraction of a second, and by a fraction I mean 1 x 10^-43 (that's a one with the decimal point moved to the left 43 times) of a second. In these fractions of a second, the Universe doubled in size multiple times. I won't give hard numbers, because that would be purely speculation, but I think you get the picture. It got big, really god damn fucking fast. Now this is the cool part, the first war in history began. At 1 x 10^-35 seconds, Energy and Matter were separated. There was an equal amount of Matter and Anti-Matter, and they both fought in a violent reaction for survival. Ultimately, as we can see around us, Matter won out by a rather substantial measure.
![[image loading]](http://livefromcern.web.cern.ch/livefromcern/antimatter/imageHomeEn/EtoM.jpg)
Don't want to bore you with a wall of text, so here's a cool picture.
Needless to say, in the ensuing fractions of a second the Universe began to cool to a state where subatomic particles could form -- such as quarks. At .01 seconds, the first actual matter began to come into existence, when the universe cooled enough to allow Protons, Electrons, and Neutrons to first form. I want you to take a second to soak this in. .01 seconds. Blink your eyes, the average time it takes to blink is .015 seconds. It took less time for what I described to happen than it did for you to just blink your eyes.
For the next 100 seconds, stable atoms could still not form however. It was roughly 1 billion degrees Celsius and electrons were still having the time of their lives bumping into positrons and creating more photons and shit. Those silly buggers. Anyways, nothing really happened for another ~330,000 years as the Universe continued to cool. At that point 333,000 years later, the Universe finally reached a cozy 2,700 degrees Celsius, and the first nuclei were combined and Hydrogen was formed. 50,000 years after that, the Universe came into a state of something "normal", out of its violent birth. At this time, light could finally shine in the Universe and what I previously talked about as CMBR began to shine for the first time.
![[image loading]](http://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/WMAP_2010.png)
Scientists put this shit in their fold up magazines. I can see the appeal.
Now this is the part where I can close my sources and actually begin writing off of memory and put some actual flavor into this. Thank fuck. Well, as I said, matter won out and finally matter began to form in the form of Hydrogen -- the most basic element -- with some traces of Helium. In a 10:1 ratio if memory recalls correctly (which still holds true today, fun fact). Remember a few days ago when I said that Stars were just giant forges of Hydrogen Fusion? That's why I love this shit, it just makes sense.
Gravity did its magic. Massive pools of Hydrogen Gas began to form around each other, and at one point the fires of fusion began as the first stars came to life and began churning their fusion, and pumping out new elements such as Helium.
Now is when I have to go into Dark Matter. I was wanting to avoid this topic because it's a bit touchy, but I guess I have to. You see, traditional gravity does not explain galaxies. We have done hundreds of computer generated tests over and over again -- and every single time we get the same result. Physical Matter does not have the gravity to hold galaxies together. Well when these people put these computer tests to work, they found out something awesome -- when they put Dark Matter into the equation -- everything worked perfectly. With this put into the equation, galaxies were being made completely identical to how they were in reality.
You see, we know Dark Matter and Dark Energy exist because we can see its effects. Much like we can't see wind, but we can see how it moves the branches on a tree when it blows violently. Galaxies move too fast, are too ordered and too dense, to not have this force working on them. There has to be a "wind" adding extra gravity to hold everything together. Now I have to bust out the facts again (credit to NASA, as usual). Dark Energy is 70% of the Universe, Dark Matter is 25% of the Universe, and Physical Matter is 5% of the Universe (according to current math). Where is it though? The prevailing idea right now is that empty space is really not empty, but full of the stuff. Even our physical matter, you and me right now, could be surrounded in the stuff and not even realize.
I like to think about it like this. Imagine you were a robot. You did not have any function for breathing, and you lived on a planet with absolutely no wind -- yet there was still air. Oxygen, Nitrogen, so on and so forth. The air would still be all around you, you would be completely unaware. This is a bit skewed, but it helps me personally.
Anyways, back to stars. Most specifically, our Solar System. So our Star was formed after a huge condensation of Hydrogen gas. What happened next? Well, gravity strikes again motherfucker. I would like to note at this point, it's a damn good time into the Universe already. Suns have already lived, died, exploded, so on and so forth. Our Universe is already filled with the makings of heavy metals and whatnot. Dust and particles began to collect around the heat of the sun. Time, once again playing a very crucial role in the grand scheme of things, took its time (hue) and mini-planets began to form. In fact, at one point, hundreds of these miniature planets were circling the sun. Thus, began the first game of bumper-cars as these miniplanets began to hit and form.
![[image loading]](http://panoramicuniverse.com/images/2010/09/solar-system-creation.jpg)
Differentiation began to come into play. As these giant chunks of rock hundreds of kilometers thick would bash into each other, the heavy metals would rest in the middle as the lighter rock would form on the outside. This has been modeled time and time again, and shown to be true in all of our inner planets and a majority of moons in our solar system. Now, the sun was only a fraction as bright as it is today back then. Suddenly it had a bad day and had a massive explosion of heat and sent all the clouds of dust and shit out of the Universe. Now I don't really want to go into the formation of the other planets (for another day, perhaps) -- as I want to focus on Earth for now.
I'm going to close for now on the end of the very beginning.
![[image loading]](http://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/moon_formation.jpg)
Yeah, this shit actually happened.
As I mentioned before, there was a lot of shit just floating around. Well, when Earth was starting to become hot shit (heh), another contender came into the arena and bashed into us. It was more of a glancing blow than a direct hit, but it ripped off the crust of the Earth and sent parts of the mantle flying into space. It also tilted the Earth, on the axis that we now rest on today. That mantle quickly got into orbit of the Earth and in the span of a week this matter culminated together into our Moon.
I don't want to make this too long, as I want to save some shit for later. However, that's a very rough approximation of the first 10 billion years of our Universe. I know I probably missed out on quite a lot of specifics, and I'm sure someone will remind me of such. Well I encourage you to, as I would want as much information out there as possible for me and others to soak in ^^
EDIT: I want to change a statement. A nearby supernova was the cause of the formation of our sun, the massive amount of energy from the explosion pushed all that Hydrogen Gas together which condensed into our Sun, and all those heavy metals formed in the Supernova were pushed into our solar system and began to accumulate. Sorry that I did make that clear. <3
