The Big Bang Michelle Brosseau Mrs Brosseaus Binder
The Big Bang © Michelle Brosseau, Mrs. Brosseau’s Binder
The Big Bang • Most astronomers believe the Universe began in a Big Bang about 14 billion years ago. • At that time, the entire Universe was inside a bubble that was thousands of times smaller than a pinhead. • It was hotter and denser than anything we can imagine. © Michelle Brosseau, Mrs. Brosseau’s Binder
The Big Bang • Then it suddenly expanded! • The Universe that we know was born. • Time, space and matter all began with the Big Bang. • In a fraction of a second, the Universe grew from smaller than a single atom to bigger than a galaxy. And it kept on growing at a fantastic rate. It is still expanding today. © Michelle Brosseau, Mrs. Brosseau’s Binder
The Big Bang • As the Universe expanded and cooled, energy changed into matter and antimatter. • These two opposite types of particles largely destroyed each other. But some matter survived. More stable particles called protons and neutrons started to form when the Universe was one second old. © Michelle Brosseau, Mrs. Brosseau’s Binder
The Big Bang • Over the next three minutes, the temperature dropped below 1 billion degrees Celsius. • It was now cool enough for the protons and neutrons to come together, forming hydrogen and helium nuclei. © Michelle Brosseau, Mrs. Brosseau’s Binder
The Big Bang • After 300 000 years, the Universe had cooled to about 3000 degrees. • Atomic nuclei could finally capture electrons to form atoms. • The Universe filled with clouds of hydrogen and helium gas. © Michelle Brosseau, Mrs. Brosseau’s Binder
The Big Bang • We cannot see anything that happened during the first 300 000 years of the Universe. • Scientists try to work it out from their knowledge of atomic particles and from computer models. Scientists observe the changes in the universe and see most galaxies moving away from one another. If they were to “rewind” time the galaxies would be moving towards one another. © Michelle Brosseau, Mrs. Brosseau’s Binder
The Big Bang • The only direct evidence of the Big Bang itself is a faint glow in space. • Spacecraft and telescopes see this as a patchy pattern of slightly warmer and cooler gas all around us. These ripples also show where the hydrogen clouds were slightly denser. The cosmic microwave background shows that about 300 000 – 400 000 years after the Big Bang the universe looked fairly uniform, with no great differences in temperature between stars and empty space. This shows that stars had not yet formed. © Michelle Brosseau, Mrs. Brosseau’s Binder
The Big Bang • As millions of years passed, the dense areas pulled in material because they had more gravity. • Finally, about 100 million years after the Big Bang, the gas became hot and dense enough for the first stars to form. © Michelle Brosseau, Mrs. Brosseau’s Binder
The Big Bang • New stars were being born at a rate 10 times higher than in the present-day Universe. • Large clusters of stars soon became the first galaxies. • The Hubble Space Telescope and powerful ground-based telescopes are now beginning to find galaxies that were created about one billion years after the Big Bang. © Michelle Brosseau, Mrs. Brosseau’s Binder
The Big Bang • These small galaxies were much closer together than galaxies are today. • Collisions were common. • Like two flames moving towards each other, they merged into larger galaxies. Our Milky Way galaxy came together in this way. © Michelle Brosseau, Mrs. Brosseau’s Binder
The Big Bang Let’s model the expansion of the universe with balloons. Take a balloon – blow it up so it is about the size of a baseball. DO NOT TIE THE BALLOON! Draw 4 or more galaxies about 1” or 2 cm apart. © Michelle Brosseau, Mrs. Brosseau’s Binder
The Big Bang Blow up the balloon until it is the size of a football. What is happening to the distance between the galaxies? Blow up the balloon until it is the size of a basketball. What is happening to the distance between the galaxies? This is like the expansion of the Universe! © Michelle Brosseau, Mrs. Brosseau’s Binder
The Big Bang How will it all end? Michio Kaku explains different ways that the Universe might end. After watching the video, let’s model these end-of-universe possibilities with our balloons. © Michelle Brosseau, Mrs. Brosseau’s Binder
The Big Bang The Big Crunch Deflate your balloon – the galaxies come back together. Maybe it will start another Big Bang! © Michelle Brosseau, Mrs. Brosseau’s Binder
The Big Bang The Cold Death / The Big Freeze Inflate your balloon until the galaxies are very far apart. These galaxies will never come in contact with one another so no new stars will form. © Michelle Brosseau, Mrs. Brosseau’s Binder
The Big Bang The Big Rip Inflate your balloon until it pops! The universe expands so quickly that it tears apart! © Michelle Brosseau, Mrs. Brosseau’s Binder
Any questions? © Michelle Brosseau, Mrs. Brosseau’s Binder
The Big Bang Red-Shifting Watch these videos to help you understanding the idea of red-shifting and how it supports the Big Bang Theory. Illustrate these ideas in your flipbook. What is redshift? Astronomic How do we know the universe is accelerating? minutephysics © Michelle Brosseau, Mrs. Brosseau’s Binder
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