We explain to you what was the origin of the universe according to the Big Bang Theory supported by science. Also, other alternative theories.
What is the universe origin?
The origin of universe, that is, the origin of all things that exist in all known places, is one of the oldest and most fundamental questions that the humanity. Despite the fact that today we have technological tools capable of shedding new information and finding revealing clues, it remains a subject that defies human knowledge and is addressed by cosmology.
In ancient times, the answer to this enigma belonged to the oracles and religions. They interpreted the reality observable and proposed mystical, magical or divine explanations, in which one or more deities were responsible for the creation of the world and, therefore, of everything that exists.
The very different are known myths cosmological factors of humanity, according to which the world rested on four elephants standing on a giant tortoise, or had been created by a giant out of primeval chaos, or was simply a mysterious work of God.
However, the science and empirical research methods allowed us to begin to better understand the universe that surrounds us, and to establish some of its fundamental laws, from which, in turn, make deductions regarding the origin of everything. Thus, the prolonged study of the cosmos, of the matter and of the Energy, allowed to establish certain hypothesis and formulate theories that give you a probable answer.
This does not mean, of course, that the mystery of the origin of the universe today is perfectly explicable, but it does mean that we have been able to find the best and most complete scientific explanation possible, based on the evidence and knowledge that we have accumulated up to the date. This explanation is called Big Bang Theory (or "The Big Bang").
Big Bang Theory
The Big Bang theory is the most accepted and scientifically proven so far. It arose thanks to the new understanding of the physical that made possible the studies of Albert Einstein (1879-1955) and several later astrophysicists, such as Stephen Hawking (1942-2018), George Ellis (1939-) and Roger Penrose (1931-).
These scientists were in turn heirs to important astronomers such as Edwin Hubble (1889-1953) and Georges Lamâitre (1894-1966). So it was the result of the confluence of many brilliant minds of the 20th century.
Its name, "The Big Bang", refers to the fact that the universe originated in an event called singularity, comparable to a gigantic explosion in which matter, space Y weather they were formed jointly.
It is not, however, an explosion in already existing space, like a supernova, but a violent expansion of everything that was contained in a single infinitely small and dense point, so much so that its laws did not obey any known physics.
This means that the cosmological model of the Big Bang serves to explain the origin of the universe about 13.8 billion years ago, which is the amount of time it has been expanding. However, this theory is unable to explain how the universe worked before this happened, or how such an explosion took place.
What science is sure of is that the universe is currently expanding, that is, moving away from itself in all directions, and that expansion would be a consequence of the Big Bang.
Thanks to her, in addition, the initial universe (whose temperature was around 100,000 million degrees Celsius) could have been cooled enough to allow the appearance of subatomic matter. This matter in turn was organized in dense clouds of atoms simple hydrogen (H) and helium (He), that is, the basic material of which the stars.
Thus, the gravity was grouping the matter in nebulae and later in stars, in which it was possible to fuse atomic nuclei generating new heavier elements, and thus give rise to rocks, minerals and, eventually, planets.
According to these calculations, our Solar system arose about 4.6 billion years ago, when our main star, the Sun, was born from the collapse of a gigantic cloud of molecular gases. It is still being investigated how exactly this happened, but it is thought that the accumulations of heavy materials were generated from the same solar material that would later give rise to the different planets and some of its satellites.
Other theories of the origin of the universe
Although the Big Bang is the most accepted scientific theory and that best responds to the scientific evidence that we have accumulated throughout history, it is not the only possible interpretation of the facts, and there are other hypotheses formulated from scientific sectors that propose processes of very different origin. Some of the most important are:
- The Electric Universe Hypothesis. Also called the ambiplasma hypothesis, it is attributed to the Swedish physicist Hannes Alfvén (1908-1995) in the 1960s, and it is an attempt to explain the origin of the universe through the electromagnetic laws in astrophysical plasma, that is, in a fluid similar to gas, but electrically charged. However, this explanation contradicts the widely accepted Theory of relativity Einstein's general.
- The steady state theory. Emerged at the beginning of the 20th century as a proposal by the British astronomer James Hopwood Jeans (1877-1946), and later revised by scientists such as Fred Hoyle (1915-2001), Thomas Gold (1920-2004) and Hermann Bondi (1919-2005) This theory proposes that the universe compensates for its expansion through the creation of matter, keeping all of its physical properties stable, that is, stationary. The problem with this theory was that from 1960 it was found that the universe, indeed, expands, moving away from itself.
- The "Big Rebound" hypothesis. It is a complementary explanation to that offered by the Big Bang, which does not see in said explosion the beginning of the universe, but only an expansion phase, which would have been the consequence of a previous contraction phase, in the manner of a "rebound" elastic. If so, the universe would be continually expanding and contracting, prey to its own physical laws.
- The cosmology of "branes". Fruit of the string theory and M theory, this scientific explanation proposes that the observable universe of four dimensions (three physical dimensions + time) is just a “brane”, that is, a kind of physical membrane that is part of a “mole” (bulk, in English) multidimensional, thus allowing the existence of multiverses (parallel universes) or cyclical universes that interact with each other.
- The conformal cyclical cosmology (CCC). This cosmological model is defended by the theoretical physicists Roger Penrose and Vahe Gurzadyan (1955-), within the framework of what is established by Einstein's Theory of General Relativity. According to them, the universe would be the fruit of a series of cyclical and infinite repetitions, at the beginning of each of which there is a Big Bang, but instead of happening linearly, these cycles called eons would overlap in time, in an infinite succession of ever greater expansions.