Background Research
The night sky presents the viewer with a picture of calm and unchanging universe.
The 1929 discovery by Edwin Hubble that the Universe is in fact expanding at enormous speeds was revolutionary. Hubble noticed that galaxies outside our own Milky Way were all moving away from us. The quick discovery was led to believe that there must have been an instant in time (now known to be fourteen billion years ago) when the entire Universe as contained in a single point of space. The Universe must have been born in this single violent even which came to be known as The Big Bang.
Astronomers combined models with observations to develop workable theories of how the Universe came to be. The general theories include Albert Einstein's theory of relativity along with standard theories of fundamental particles.
One of the goals has long been to decide whether the Universe will expand forever, or, whether it will turnaround, and collapse back to a single point in space.
Astronomers combined models with observations to develop workable theories of how the Universe came to be. The general theories include Albert Einstein's theory of relativity along with standard theories of fundamental particles.
One of the goals has long been to decide whether the Universe will expand forever, or, whether it will turnaround, and collapse back to a single point in space.
Background Radiation
The structure of the Universe evolved from the Big Bang.
According to the theories of physics, if we were to look at the universe one second after the big bang, what we would see is a ten billion degree sea of neutrons, protons, electrons, anti-electrons (positrons), photons, and neutrinos. As more time passed, the Universe would cool, the neutrons either decaying into protons and electrons of combining with protons to make an isotope of hydrogen.
After the Universe cooled down more, the recombination would have made the Universe more Opaque because the free electrons would have caused the light to scatter the way the sunlight scatters from the water droplets of clouds. However, when the free electrons converted into neutral atoms, the Universe suddenly became transparent. Those same photons became known as cosmic background radiation. It can be observed even today from the night sky.
After the Universe cooled down more, the recombination would have made the Universe more Opaque because the free electrons would have caused the light to scatter the way the sunlight scatters from the water droplets of clouds. However, when the free electrons converted into neutral atoms, the Universe suddenly became transparent. Those same photons became known as cosmic background radiation. It can be observed even today from the night sky.