Big Bang

Big Bang and expansion of universe

The logic of the dot
The shift in visible light spectrum towards red was noticed by V. M. Slipher in 1912 and the phenomenon was carefully studied by E. Hubble for a decade until he published what is known as Hubble's Law in 1929.

Red shift indicates dynamic movement of galaxies as if the entire universe were expanding. The further away from us a galaxy is the faster it is flying.

So every minute and second these huge galaxies are getting further from each other? Does that not mean that if we reverse the process, run the video backwards in time, they start to come closer to each other?

Yes.

That is the idea. At some finite time in the past - nowadays the estimate is somewhere between 13.5 and 15 billion years - all those galaxies did not exist and everything that is in them - and in us - was one.

One what?

Perhaps a dot smaller than this dot - all the universe .

Makes sense?

Nope.


Initial state
Modern scientists are practical. They cannot explain that dot and there is no evidence at the moment to explain what was there before the bang bang. So they study what can be studied and make fabulous calculations that are almost divine in nature. And voila! It all adds up.

The thinking model that we cannot possibly test at the moment and can also not imagine - since Einstein said that time and matter are dimensions so without matter there is no time - works very well microseconds later when things begin to happen.

British astronomer Fred Hoyle (1915-2001)

Bang
The British astronomer Fred Hoyle (1915-2001) coined the word Big Bang in a 1949 radio lecture. He was very much against the idea and wanted to defend the static model of an eternal universe without beginning and without end where there is somehow a balance between matter and energy.

In 1964 we humans detected cosmic microwave radiation all around us that probably is from that bang. Now the Europaeans are building a phenomenally expensive infra-red telescope to be put soon on the orbit to look at the glow of the bang.

People are pretty convinced that this is how things are

So - hard science, mathematics, expensive telescopes, generations of astronomical observation, theoretical physics, general theory of relativity.

What all this has to do with religion?


Hmm.. the guy who proposed the theory of the Big Bang in 1927 was a Catholic priest.