Surprise! The big bang isn't the beginning of the universe anymore!
The universe is an unending ambiguous space that is constantly evolving
as it evolves it reveals bits of itself that were previously unknown to men recently it
was discovered that the big bang theory which was the widely accepted origin story of the universe
is not as accurate as we once thought hello and welcome to Factnomenal in this video we'll
explore the big bang theory its shortcomings and the newly discovered pre-big bang era
the beginning of time there are many theories that explain the beginning of the universe
each representing the ideology of a group of people practically every religious and
cultural group has a peculiar explanation for a phenomenon that is so extensive
in science generally the more widely accepted theory of the beginning of the universe is the
big bang theory this theory is more practical because scientific laws have entirely proved it
the big bang occurred at a specific point in time and for a long time scientists have agreed that
nothing existed before this period the general idea is that the big bang occurred approximately
13.7 billion years ago and before that there was absolutely nothing neither matter
time nor space matter began to exist only during and after the big bang and this theory attempts to
explain what happened during this moment according to this theory there was a singular atom at the
beginning of the universe imagine this atom to be a tiny ball that held everything that now exists
in the universe in one place this ball-like atom had an unimaginably small volume but its overall
density and temperature were extremely high theoretically this singular atom was located
at the points of intense gravitational pressure now called the black hole no one can explain
where the atom came from or why it appeared but what scientists know is that this tiny ball
exploded violently and everything that exists in the universe was an aftermath of this explosion
the big bang birthed not only the concept of matter but also that of time and space
the explosion caused this really dense singular atom to split into tinier particles with less
density these particles began to interact with each other causing the expansion of the universe
when you think of expansion you think of an object stretching its defined boundaries within a bigger
environment but with the universe it didn't quite work like that you see the universe has no borders
the universe is all there is so rather than say it was expanding into space the universe was
expanding on itself and quite interestingly it has been expanding ever since within the first second
energy from the explosion was converted into two opposing types of particles matter and antimatter
matter and antimatter interacted within and between themselves producing both energy and more
particles as time went on the quantity of both forms of particles became theoretically equivalent
as this expansion continued matter and antimatter continued to oppose each other however matter one
and today there is barely any antimatter left the universe expanded over a billion
times its original dimensions and temperature and density were spread unevenly throughout
less energy was expelled as energy was utilized to hold particles together to form larger ones
quarks came together in different combinations to form hadrons like electrons protons and neutrons
as the universe became less hot protons began to combine with neutrons and the first atom was
created hydrogen many hydrogen atoms were made and after accumulating for millions of years
the hydrogen atoms which had been under intense gravitational pressure
exploded stars were formed and visible light began to permeate the universe
from tiny particles larger particles began to form and the universe birthed itself into a
long gradual and continuous process which produced everything we see today however contrary to what
we've believed over the years the universe did not begin with a big bang the nature of the universe
in the 20th century great scientists came up with theories that explain the nature of the universe
and many of these theories supported the big bang theory one of the most significant was einstein's
theory of relativity in 1915 when einstein proposed this theory it was very complicated
and not all the variables of the equation were clearly defined however the genius
scientist predicted some of these variables which were discovered a few years later
for example in 1916 carl schwartz child found the solution which describes a non-rotating black hole
as aforementioned the black hole is a point in the fabric of space where the gravitational
force is at its greatest as objects approach the black hole their speed of rotation increases but
should this object fall in all motion ceases and there's no coming back out from it
in 1922 alexander friedman discovered the solution for an isotropic and homogeneous universe
all types of energy including matter and radiation were present here an immense significance of
friedman's discovery is it describes how the universe is never sedentary it must either
contract or expand friedman's equation describes very accurately the series of events that occur in
each stage of development of the earth from the pre-big bang era to the big bang itself
today and far into the future the dynamism of the universe was further elaborated by astronomer
edwin hubble for who the hubble telescope is named after in the early 1900s astronomers observed that
nebulae which are essentially clouds of hydrogen and also cosmic dust were moving faster than any
other object in space the closer they observed the more they noticed smaller nebulae moving away
from us with greater speed than the previously observed ones edwin hubble conducted further
research in the 1920s and measured the distance between the stars in each nebula he noticed they
were moving away from each other and the more distant stars were moving apart faster than
the closer ones hubble and a few other scientists confirmed that the universe was indeed expanding
from this experiment according to them the further you looked into space the further you looked into
time therefore the theoretical prediction of the state of earlier elements of the universe
could be confirmed practically this experiment confirmed that shortly after the big bang the
universe consisted of tiny particles which were mostly unstable due to the infinite temperature
although the big bang theory has provided factual explanations of the beginning of the universe
there are a few limitations of the theory some of which are explained by cosmic inflation what was
earth like in the beginning we have established that the big bang theory was the driving force of
the expansion of the universe however there are specific natures that are observable in
the universe that the big bang theory cannot explain an example of this is the uniformity
of the universe the idea of the big bang is that a tiny particle exploded into smaller particles
however the uniformity of the universe that is now observable can only mean that these particles in
the beginning must have been smaller a phenomenon called cosmic inflation explains this similarity
cosmic inflation gives an explanation that precedes the big bang and is fundamentally
based on the fact that gravitational force can sometimes act as a repulsive force
obviously this contradicts our high school idea of physics because we know that gravity is an
attractive force between two bodies according to newton's universal law of gravitation
however einstein's theory of relativity explains that ideally gravity and attractive force can
sometimes act repulsively under certain conditions modern particle physics indicates that some forms
of particles would produce the repulsive form of gravity at very high energy levels
according to einstein's theory in essence the big bang wasn't a random occurrence
it was driven by repulsive gravity within the particles of the initial singular atom
now that we have an idea of cosmic inflation how does it explain the characteristics observable in
the universe acceptance of the cosmic inflation theory makes it possible to see the universe
as an initial tiny universe that the big bang blew up and projected on a larger scale
before the inflation the similar components of the universe were close enough to produce
the uniformity we now see this means that the universe was already uniform before inflation
occurred which in turn provoked the big bang the most substantial evidence of this uniformity
is cosmic background radiation it indicates that the universe on the largest possible
scales is almost uniform with an accuracy better than one in ten thousand no one knows
precisely how long the inflation period lasted in fact time wasn't even existent in that era
what we know is that cosmic inflation triggered the evolution of the universe and because of it
there is an existing balance between matter energy and the expansion rate of the universe
in summary cosmic inflation doesn't debase the big bang theory in any way it just tells us that the
latter wasn't the beginning as we once thought how do you think the universe began tell us in
the comments section below and as always thanks for watching Factnomenal we'll see you next time