Questions tagged [big-bang]
According to the current cosmological theories, it's the model that explains the early life of the universe, starting from a rapid expansion of hot and dense matter.
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Did the Big Bang happen at a point?
TV documentaries invariably show the Big Bang as an exploding ball of fire expanding outwards. Did the Big Bang really explode outwards from a point like this? If not, what did happen?
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Why are some people are claiming that the Big Bang never happened?
A news story is going viral on social media networks claiming that two physicists have found a way to eliminate the Big Bang singularity, or in layman's terms (as claimed by many sensationalist news ...
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Why is there a scarcity of lithium?
One of the major impediments to the widespread adoption of electric cars is a shortage of lithium for the batteries. I read an article a while back that says that there is simply not enough lithium ...
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Why didn't the Big Bang create heavy elements?
In the case of a supernova explosion it is possible to create heavy elements through fusion. Supernovae have a tremendous amount of energy in a very small volume but not as much energy per volume as ...
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What does one second after big bang mean?
Consider the following statement:
Hadron Epoch, from $10^{-6}$ seconds to $1$ second: The temperature of the
universe cools to about a trillion degrees, cool enough to allow
quarks to combine ...
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Can space expand with unlimited speed?
According to this article on the European Space Agency web site just after the Big Bang and before inflation the currently observable universe was the size of a coin. One millionth of a second later ...
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Does the universe have a center? [duplicate]
If the big bang was the birth of everything, and the big bang was an event in the sense that it had a location and a time (time 0), wouldn't that mean that our universe has a center?
Where was the ...
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How could quantum effects occur in the early universe without an observer?
In inflationary cosmology, primordial quantum fluctuations in the process of inflation are considered responsible for the asymmetry and lumpiness of the universe that was shaped. However, according to ...
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Is the Big Bang defined as before or after Inflation?
Is the Big Bang defined as before or after Inflation? Seems like a simple enough question to answer right? And if just yesterday I were to encounter this, I'd have given a definite answer. But I've ...
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How can it be that the beginning universe had a high temperature and a low entropy at the same time?
The Big Bang theory assumes that our universe started from a very/infinitely dense and extremely/infinitely hot state. But on the other side, it is often claimed that our universe must have been ...
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Is space really expanding?
In a book called "Einstein, Relativity and Absolute Simultaneity" there was this sentence by Smith:
There is no observational evidence for a space expansion hypothesis. What is observed are ...
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The age of the universe
Many times I have read statements like, "the age of the universe is 14 billion years" . For example this wikipedia page Big Bang.
Now, my question is, which observers' are these time intervals? ...
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Why was the universe in an extraordinarily low-entropy state right after the big bang?
Let me start by saying that I have no scientific background whatsoever. I am very interested in science though and I'm currently enjoying Brian Greene's The Fabric of the Cosmos. I'm at chapter 7 and ...
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Why haven't we seen the big bang?
The Andromeda galaxy is 2,538,000 light years away, so if we view Andromeda from a telescope, we see Andromeda how it was 2,538,000 years ago. Now the diameter of the visible universe is 92 billion ...
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If the universe is expanding, what is it expanding into? [closed]
If the universe is expanding, what is it expanding into?
When the big bang happened where did it occur?
When the big bang happened how did it occur?
Where did the energy come from? Energy can not be ...
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What does the cosmic neutrino background look like today, given that neutrinos possess mass?
This question is inspired by (or a follow-up to) the threads Where are all the slow neutrinos? and Is it possible that all “spontaneous nuclear decay” is actually “slow neutrino” induced?
The cosmic ...
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Why is the Cosmic Microwave Background evidence of a hotter, denser early universe?
In his book Gravitation and Cosmology, Steven Weinberg says that the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) makes it "difficult to doubt that the universe has evolved from a hotter, denser early stage&...
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Is Einstein's theory really challenged by the recent paper in news?
A recent paper authored by Niayesh Afshordi and Joao Magueijo is in the news claiming to challenge Einstein's theory on constancy of light speed. It says light might have travelled with a faster pace ...
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How can something finite become infinite?
How can the universe become infinite in spatial extent if it started as a singularity, wouldn't it take infinite time to expand into an infinite universe?
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How can the universe expand if there is gravitation?
We live in an expanding universe - so I'm told. But how can that be possible? Everything imaginable is attracted by a bigger thing. So, why can't gravitation stop the expansion of the universe? I know ...
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Why did the universe not collapse to a black hole shortly after the big bang?
Wasn't the density of the universe at the moment after the Big Bang so great as to create a black hole? If the answer is that the universe/space-time can expand anyway what does it imply about what ...
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Did spacetime start with the Big bang?
Did spacetime start with the Big Bang? I mean, was there any presence of this spacetime we are experiencing now before big bang? And could there be a presence/existence of any other space-time before ...
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When did the first carbon nucleus in the Universe come into existence?
I am a chemist with a passion for astrophysics and particle physics, and one of the most marvellous things I have learned in my life is the process of stellar nucleosynthesis. It saddens me how my ...
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Given that matter cannot escape a black hole, how did the big bang produce the universe we see today?
Extrapolation of the expansion of the Universe backwards in time using general relativity yields an infinite density and temperature at a finite time in the past.
If the matter contained within our ...
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Conservation law of energy and Big Bang?
Did the law of conservation of energy apply to the earliest moments of the Big Bang? If so, what theoretical physics supports this?
I hear that Einstein's theory of relativity disputes the law of ...
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Why does CMB radiation propagate towards us?
There is something with CMB radiation that does not sit well with me... It seems very counterintuitive that we are able to see it. If CMB radiation formed at the early phases of the universe, would it ...
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Interpretation of a singular metric
I'm interested to find out if we can say anything useful about spacetime at the singularity in the FLRW metric that occurs at $t = 0$.
If I understand correctly, the FLRW spacetime is a combination ...
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Stephen Hawking says universe can create itself from nothing, but how exactly?
Stephen Hawking says in his latest book The Grand Design that,
Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.
Is it not circular logic? I mean, how ...
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Big Bang and the Pauli Exclusion Principle
Due to some of the basic principles of quantum mechanics, we have the Wolfgang Pauli exclusion principle, where two fermionic bodies cannot occupy the same quantum state simultaneously. If that is ...
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Does red shift evidence necessarily imply that the universe started from a singularity?
We are taught that the universe began as a singularity - an infinitely small and infinitely dense point. At the beginning of time there was a 'Big Bang' or, more accurately, 'Inflation'.
The main ...
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Why can we see the cosmic microwave background (CMB)?
I understand that we can never see much farther than the farthest galaxies we have observed. This is because, before the first galaxies formed, the universe was opaque--it was a soup of subatomic ...
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What was the entropy of the universe at the time of the Big Bang?
(I asked this question in Philosophy.SE; but I was advised to direct it here, despite it is, in my opinion, somewhat too speculative for physics.SE).
High entropy generally means high disorder; and ...
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Does all hydrogen originate from the Big Bang?
I was wondering, if every single hydrogen in the universe originate from the time about ~3 min after the Big Bang.
I know there are nuclear fusion processes going on in stars like the pp-chain ...
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Inflation and the Meaning of Time
I'm not quite sure how to ask this so that it can be answered in layman's terms, but I have lately seen, in several places, that with cosmological inflation, there was a point where the universe ...
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Was the universe a black hole at the beginning?
Big bang cosmology, as far as I understand it, says that the universe was super hot and super dense and super small. It looks like that all the current matter, seen and unseen, were compressed to ...
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Could quantum fluctuations spawn real matter?
Would it be plausible for fluctuations in the QED vacuum to spawn actual matter (such as quarks, electrons the constituents of a hydrgen atom) given enough time and space?
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How long will the Universe's hydrogen reserves last for?
I recently became really interested in learning about physics and cosmology, but I still know very little. Hopefully someone with more knowledge will be able to shed some light on my questions.
Here ...
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How does it make sense for the universe to have started from a big bang?
It has been said that the Big Bang started from a singularity. Think about a balloon radially growing over time. Fix a time $t_0, t_1 > 0$, and let $M_0, M_1$ be two balloons at time $t_0, t_1$ ...
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How long ago was the Universe small enough for interstellar travel?
Currently, even the nearest stars are lightyears away, and impossible to reach in our lifetimes. If space is always expanding, and was once infinitely smaller, then at what point in the past was space ...
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Did time exist before the Big Bang and the creation of the universe? [duplicate]
Does time stretch all the way back for infinity or was there a point when time appears to start in the universe?
I remember reading long ago somewhere that according to one theory time began shortly ...
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Restoration of spontaneously broken symmetry at high energy
It is common to find books saying that above a certain energy, a certain symmetry in particle physics is restored, e.g. the $SU(2)\times U(1)$ electroweak symmetry was unbroken between $10^{-36}$ to $...
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How can the universe be hot or dense in the first moments after the big bang when it has no matter?
From the CERN website:
In the first moments after the Big Bang, the universe was extremely hot and dense.
I've always heard this about the big bang but I've never thought about it before now. If &...
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Why does the low entropy at the big bang require an explanation? (cosmological arrow of time)
I have read Sean Carrol's book. I have listened to Roger Penrose talk on "Before the Big Bang". Both are offering to explain the mystery of low entropy, highly ordered state, at the Big Bang.
Since ...
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Is it possible all matter in the universe emerges from nothing?
If the Universe is flat and the total energy of the universe can be zero (we don't know if it is, but many theorists support the idea, i.e. at BB initial conditions:
t = 0, V = 0, E = 0) then is it ...
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What evidence do we have that CMB is the result of the Big bang?
I got the main picture repeated over and over again about why if there's a Big bang we indeed should see the CMB with this feature. In this question I'm asking something different: what independent ...
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How can a quasar be 29 billion light-years away from Earth if Big Bang happened only 13.8 billion years ago? [duplicate]
I was reading through the Wikipedia article on Quasars and came across the fact that the most distant Quasar is 29 Billion Light years. This is what the article exactly says
The highest redshift ...
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What could explain the measurements that the Methuselah star is older than the universe?
So there has been talk in the news of a star named Methuselah that is "older than the universe". Moreover, this star happens to belong to our very own Milky Way.
The article mentions that Methuselah ...
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Was there a first moment in time?
Disclaimer. I am a mathematician, not a physicist. The extent of my physics training is a couple of high school courses. So, you may have to be very patient with me in understanding your answer(s)/...
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Electric charge neutrality of the Universe: evidences and theories
I've always wondered why the number of protons in the Universe exactly matches the number of electrons. They are such different particles with totally different cross sections. So, first of all, is ...
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Do primordial background neutrinos orbit in dark matter halos?
According to Wikipedia, neutrinos separated from other matter seconds after the Big Bang and formed a separate background radiation field which now fills space at a temperature ~2 K.
Supposing ...
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