SEMINAR
EVIDENCE OF THE BIG BANG
Sometimes called the "afterglow" of the Big Bang, this light is
more properly known as the cosmic microwave background
(CMB). It was first predicted by Ralph Alpher and other scientists
in 1948 but was found only by accident almost 20 years later.
This accidental discovery happened when Arno Penzias and
Robert Wilson, both of Bell Telephone Laboratories in New Jersey,
were building a radio receiver in 1965 and picked up higher-than-
expected temperatures, according to a NASA article. At first, they
thought the anomaly was due to pigeons trying to roost inside the
antenna and their waste, but they cleaned up the mess and killed
the pigeons and the anomaly persisted.
Simultaneously, a Princeton University team led by Robert Dicke
was trying to find evidence of the CMB and realized that Penzias
and Wilson had stumbled upon it with their strange observations.
The two groups each published papers in the Astrophysical
Journal in 1965.
The scientists came to conclude about the big bang theory
because of some of the evidences given below:.
Astronomers think the Big Bang is the best way to explain how
the Universe started and how it changed over time. All science is
based on evidence. So what is the evidence for the Big Bang?
1. Redshift of Galaxies
The light we observe from galaxies has been stretched by the
time it reaches us. It looks redder than it should. This redshift is
the result of galaxies moving away from us. Observations show
that pretty much everything in the Universe is moving apart. The
redshift of distant galaxies tells us the Universe is expanding.
If you could wind time backwards, you would see galaxies getting
closer together. If you could go back far enough, everything in the
Universe would have been in one place.
2. Microwave Background
A long, long time ago, the whole Universe was very hot. As it grew
in the size, the heat left a "glow" which fills the entire Universe.
The Big Bang theory predicts this glow should still exist. It also
predicts that we should be able to detect this glow as microwave
light.
Scientist have found this Cosmic Microwave Background. They
have accurately measured it using orbiting detectors. It is very
good evidence that the Big Bang theory is correct.
3. Mixture of Elements
Some chemical elements were created soon after the Big Bang.
Elements like hydrogen and helium. The Big Bang theory predicts
how much of each element was made in the early universe. When
astronomers look at very old galaxies and stars, the amount of
each chemical they see agrees with the Big Bang theory.
You cannot look for this evidence in new stars, like the Sun. This
is because newer stars contain chemical elements made by older
stars. So the chemical make-up of new stars is very different from
stars which existed soon after the Big Bang.
WHAT IS THE UNIVERSE?
The universe is everything. It includes all of space, and all
the matter and energy that space contains. It even
includes time itself and, of course, it includes you.
Earth and the Moon are part of the universe, as are the other
planets and their many dozens of moons. Along with asteroids
and comets, the planets orbit the Sun. The Sun is one among
hundreds of billions of stars in the Milky Way galaxy, and most of
those stars have their own planets, known as exoplanets.
The Milky Way is but one of billions of galaxies in the observable
universe — all of them, including our own, are thought to have
supermassive black holes at their centers. All the stars in all the
galaxies and all the other stuff that astronomers can’t even
observe are all part of the universe. It is, simply, everything.
GALAXIES
A galaxy is a huge collection of gas, dust, and billions of stars
and their solar systems. A galaxy is held together by gravity. Our
galaxy, the Milky Way, also has a supermassive black hole in the
middle.
There are many galaxies besides ours, though. There are so
many, we can’t even count them all yet! The Hubble Space
Telescope looked at a small patch of space for 12 days and found
10,000 galaxies, of all sizes, shapes, and colors. Some scientists
think there could be as many as one hundred billion galaxies in
the universe.
Some galaxies are spiral-shaped like ours. They have curved arms
that make it look like a pinwheel. Other galaxies are smooth and
oval shaped. They’re called elliptical galaxies. And there are also
galaxies that aren’t spirals or ovals. They have irregular shapes
and look like blobs. The light that we see from each of these
galaxies comes from the stars inside it.
ROTATION OF THE GALAXY
Galaxies do indeed rotate. This rotation is what gives typical
galaxies a flattened round shape, a bit like how throwing and
spinning pizza dough makes it round and flat. In terms of the
tangential speed of its parts, galaxies rotate at an incredibly high
speed. For instance, our entire solar system speeds along at
about 500,000 miles per hour as it takes part in the galaxy's
rotation. So why do galaxies look so frozen in place if their parts
are moving so quickly? It's because galaxies are unimaginably
huge. An object traveling at high speed across a very long
distance appears to be moving slowly when viewed from far
away. This is not a psychological effect. The object is actually
traveling very slowly when its speed is expressed in terms of the
percentage of the total distance it has to travel.
