The big explosion and the origin of the universe. Mysteries of the Universe: What was in the Universe before the Big Bang?

Even modern scientists can not say with certainty what was in the universe before the Big Bang. There are several hypotheses that reveal the veil of secrecy over one of the most difficult questions of the universe.

The origin of the material world

Until the 20th century, there were only two theories of the origin of the universe. Supporters of the religious point of view believed that the world was created by God. Scientists, on the contrary, refused to recognize the man-made universe. Physicists and astronomers were supporters of the idea that the cosmos always existed, the world was static and everything will remain the same as billions of years ago.

However, accelerated scientific progress at the turn of the century led to the fact that researchers have the opportunity to study extraterrestrial spaces. Some of them were the first to try to answer the question, what was in the Universe before the Big Bang.

Hubble research

The 20th century destroyed many theories of past eras. On the vacated place, new hypotheses appeared, explaining hitherto unknown mysteries. It all started with the fact that scientists have established the fact of the expansion of the universe. This was done by Edwin Hubble. He found that distant galaxies differ in their light from those cosmic clusters that were closer to the Earth. The discovery of this law formed the basis of the law of expansion of Edwin Hubble.

The big explosion and the origin of the universe were studied when it became clear that all galaxies "flee" from the observer, no matter where he was. How could this be explained? Since galaxies are moving, it means that they are pushed ahead by some energy. In addition, physicists have calculated that all the worlds once were at the same point. Because of a certain push, they began to move in all directions with unimaginable speed.

This phenomenon was called the "Big Bang". And the origin of the universe was explained precisely with the help of the theory of this long-standing event. When did it happen? Physicists have determined the speed of movement of galaxies and derived a formula by which they calculated when the initial "push" occurred. No one can name exact figures, but approximately this phenomenon took place about 15 billion years ago.

The emergence of the Big Bang theory

The fact that all galaxies are sources of light means that a large amount of energy was released during the Great Explosion. It was she who gave birth to the very brightness that the worlds lose in the course of their distance from the epicenter of what happened. The theory of the Big Bang was first proved by American astronomers Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias. They discovered electromagnetic relic radiation, the temperature of which was three degrees on the Kelvin scale (that is, -270 Celsius). This finding confirmed the idea that at first the universe was extremely hot.

The Big Bang theory answered many questions formulated in the 19th century. But now there are new ones. For example, what was in the universe before the Big Bang? Why is it so homogeneous, while with such a huge energy release the substance should scatter unevenly in all directions? The discoveries of Wilson and Arno cast doubt on the classical Euclidean geometry, since it was proved that the space has zero curvature.

Inflation theory

New questions posed showed that the modern theory of the emergence of the world is fragmentary and incomplete. However, for a long time it seemed that it would be impossible to move beyond the open in the 60s. And only very recent studies of scientists have allowed us to formulate a new important principle for theoretical physics. This was the phenomenon of ultra-rapid inflationary expansion of the universe. It was studied and described with the help of quantum field theory and the general theory of relativity of Einstein.

So what was in the universe before the Big Bang? Modern science calls this period "inflation." At first there was only a field that filled all imaginary space. It can be compared with a snowball launched down the slope of a snow mountain. Com will roll down and increase in size. In the same way, the field changed its structure due to random oscillations for an unimaginable time.

When a uniform configuration was formed, a reaction occurred. It contains the biggest riddles of the universe. What was before the Big Bang? Inflation field, which did not resemble the current matter at all. After the reaction, the universe began to grow. If we continue the analogy with the snowball, then after the first of them other snowballs also rolled down, also increasing in size. The moment of the Big Bang in this system can be compared to the moment when a huge block collapsed into the abyss and finally collided with the earth. At that moment a colossal amount of energy was allocated. It can not run out until now. It is due to the continuation of the reaction from the explosion that our universe is growing today.

Matter and field

Now the universe consists of an unimaginable number of stars and other cosmic bodies. This set of matter exudes tremendous energy, which contradicts the physical law of conservation of energy. What does it say? The essence of this principle boils down to the fact that for an infinite time the sum of energy in the system remains unchanged. But how can this be combined with our universe, which continues to expand?

Inflationary theory was able to answer this question. Such riddles of the Universe are extremely rare. What was before the Big Bang? Inflationary field. After the emergence of the world in its place came the familiar to us matter. However, in addition to it, there is also a gravitational field in the universe that has negative energy. The properties of these two entities are opposite. Thus, the energy released from particles, stars, planets and other matter is compensated. This relationship also explains why the universe has not yet turned into a black hole.

When the Big Bang just happened, the world was too small for anything to collapse. Now, when the universe expanded, local black holes appeared on its separate sections. Their gravitational field absorbs everything around them. From it, even light can not escape. Actually because of this, such holes become black.

Expansion of the Universe

Even despite the theoretical foundation of the inflation theory, it is still unclear how the universe looked before the Big Bang. Human imagination can not imagine this picture. The fact is that the inflationary field is immaterial. It can not be explained by the usual laws of physics.

When the Big Bang occurred, the inflationary field began to expand at a pace that exceeded the speed of light. According to physical indicators, there is nothing material in the universe that could move faster than this indicator. Light spreads through the existing world with prohibitive numbers. The inflationary field has spread with even greater speed, just because of its non-material nature.

The size of the universe before the Big Bang was microscopic. To measure its current size, mathematicians have to erect figures to a great extent. According to the general theory of relativity, the observer inside the material world can not see what is happening outside of it. This rule extends to what was before the Big Bang in the universe. Photo in the textbooks on astronomy can only portray artists' fiction.

Particles and antiparticles

The universe has expanded so much that even the light does not have time to reach its most remote corners. At the same time, the inflationary field outside the world continues to exist, although it is inaccessible to the person living in the material world. The expanding universe is cooling as it grows. The radiation temperature drops, because the wavelength becomes larger, which means that it needs to spend more energy on it.

The state of the universe before the Big Bang was homogeneous. But when it began to expand, new elements and particles appeared in it. These are quarks, neutrons, protons, electrons and photons. There are also antiparticles, the number of which can not be equal to the number of ordinary particles. If this identity took place, then the whole universe would be destroyed by itself.

Nature has done everything necessary to ensure that the number of particles was slightly larger than the number of antiparticles. Because of this relationship, there is a material world. Relic radiation, which continues to spread through the expanses of the universe, arose just as a result of the mutual destruction of some particles and antiparticles. In the scientific lexicon this process is called annihilation. Over time, the energy of the CMB decreases. Now it is about ten thousand times less than a similar index of elementary massive particles.

The emergence of physical laws

When the age of the universe reached one minute, neutrons and protons began to unite in helium, tritium and deuterium. These were the first substances that arose in the material world. The synthesis process was due to nuclear reactions. In the 20th century, physicists studied this phenomenon and even learned how to tame it. Since the nuclear reaction produces an enormous amount of energy, humanity has adapted this process to its economic needs. There were nuclear power plants. Today they are fueling thousands of cities.

The nuclear reaction was also used as a weapon. At the end of the Second World War, the Americans first dropped atomic bombs on Japan. The deadly impact of the blow was just in the huge allocation of energy. But the figures recorded in Hiroshima are negligibly small in comparison with those processes that took place in the first minutes of the existence of the material world.

Due to the fact that modern scientists already know a lot about the nuclear reaction used in the economy and war, the researchers were able to restore an approximate picture of what the universe was before the Big Bang. Using mathematical calculations, it was calculated how many elements and which appeared in the first minutes after the beginning of the reaction in the inflationary field.

Another fact is surprising. All calculations of scientists, based on modern indicators of nature, were exactly applicable to the model of the appearance of the universe. This "coincidence" suggests that the laws of physics began to act immediately after the appearance of the material world. Since then, all the immutable formulas have never changed. They are acting now. For example, we can say about Einstein's theory of relativity. The undeniable nature of the laws facilitates the work of scientists trying to understand what was before the Big Bang in the universe.

The origin of galaxies

With the help of the Big Bang theory, scientists were able to explain the origin of galaxies. When the world first appeared, all the distances inside it rapidly grew larger. However, in some places this process took on special forms. This was due to the fact that in different spatial points the energy density was excellent.

Because of this, in some parts of one large universe, more particles have accumulated. This process was described in detail by American scientists of the 20th century. In popular science form, the theory was explained in a series of films "The Universe Before the Big Bang. In the wake of the mystery. "

In areas with a greater energy density, the temperature fluctuated markedly. This phenomenon was a sign of compression of matter by a gravitational field. The inflationary period spawned areas with greater density. After the emergence of the universe, the gravitational field affected these areas with increased intensity. It was here that galaxies originated - clusters of stars around which planets were formed. Our Earth completely fits into this system. It revolves around its own star (the Sun) and enters the Milky Way galaxy.

The Present State of the Universe

The current period of the evolution of the universe is the best suited for the existence of life. Scientists find it difficult to determine how long this time interval will last. But if anyone took up such calculations, the resulting figures were no less than hundreds of billions of years. For one human life, such a segment is so large that even in the mathematical calculus it has to be written down using degrees. The present has been studied much better than the prehistory of the universe. What was before the Big Bang, in any case will remain only the subject of theoretical research and bold calculations.

In the material world, even time remains a relative value. For example, quasars (a kind of astronomical objects), existing at a distance of 14 billion light years from the Earth, lag behind our usual "now" by the very 14 billion light years. This time gap is colossal. It is difficult to determine even mathematically, not to mention that it is simply impossible to imagine such a thing with the help of human imagination (even the most ardent).

Modern science can theoretically explain to itself the entire life of our material world, beginning with the first fractions of seconds of its existence, when the Big Bang has just occurred. The complete history of the universe is being supplemented so far. Astronomers discover new amazing facts with the help of modernized and improved research equipment (telescopes, laboratories, etc.).

However, there are still not understood phenomena. Such a white spot, for example, is dark matter and its dark energy. The essence of this hidden mass continues to arouse the consciousness of the most educated and advanced physicists of our time. In addition, there was not a single point of view about the reasons why there are still more particles in the universe than antiparticles. On this occasion, several fundamental theories have been formulated. Some of these models are most popular, but none of them has yet been accepted by the international scientific community as an indisputable truth.

On the scale of universal knowledge and the colossal discoveries of the twentieth centuries, these gaps seem quite insignificant. But the history of science shows with an enviable regularity that the explanation of such "small" facts and phenomena becomes the basis for the entire representation of mankind about discipline in general (in this case we are talking about astronomy). Therefore, future generations of scientists, of course, will have something to do and what to discover in the field of knowledge of the nature of the universe.