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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.

400 votes
8 answers
65k views

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?
109 votes
3 answers
19k views

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 ...
Janus Boffin's user avatar
  • 1,408
104 votes
7 answers
20k views

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 ...
Mason Wheeler's user avatar
87 votes
3 answers
22k views

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 ...
Alex's user avatar
  • 6,015
86 votes
4 answers
7k views

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 ...
Yashas's user avatar
  • 7,203
68 votes
5 answers
16k views

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 ...
cziko's user avatar
  • 783
60 votes
4 answers
8k views

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 ...
nopcorn's user avatar
  • 1,269
39 votes
14 answers
9k views

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 ...
Alex L's user avatar
  • 1,145
37 votes
8 answers
8k views

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 ...
Jim's user avatar
  • 24.5k
34 votes
10 answers
9k views

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 ...
asmaier's user avatar
  • 9,890
33 votes
9 answers
9k views

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 ...
user avatar
33 votes
3 answers
3k views

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? ...
Yossarian's user avatar
  • 6,047
33 votes
7 answers
22k views

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 ...
user avatar
31 votes
1 answer
3k views

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 ...
Bhavesh's user avatar
  • 1,915
30 votes
5 answers
6k views

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 ...
raklos's user avatar
  • 441

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