Since the dawn of humanity we have  always wondered where we came from  

not just as a species but also how  the entire universe came into being  

perhaps that is why every religion offers  its own take on how the universe was created  

but after thousands of years of staring at the  stars we're led to believe that things were a  

bit more complicated than somebody proclaiming  let there be light for a century or so the big  

bang theory has been reigning supreme as the  most probable scientific answer to this question  

but not for a lack of options over the  decades many theories have challenged  

the big bang theory for the title of the reason  why everything exists welcome to Factnomenal and  

today let's find out what these alternative  origin theories are and why they FAILED

the big bang theory states that the universe began  as an extremely hot and dense point that inflated  

over roughly 13.8 billion years becoming bigger  and colder all the evidence that the universe  

offers us about what the past was like supports  the idea of the big bang origins the expansion of  

the universe the formation of the light elements  the existence of the cosmic microwave background  

the evolution of the cosmic web and many more  but before the big bang theory was developed  

the prevailing consensus among everybody  who had an interest in science and cosmology  

was that the universe just sort of always existed  like this and always will the idea of a certain  

point of creation of the universe only existed  in religions myths and legends but those origin  

theories also proposed that the universe always  functioned and existed in a similar state that it  

is like today none of them ever talked about the  evolution of the universe it was always considered  

the brightest constant of our reality scientists  agree that yeah once in a while a star blows up  

and a random comet appears in our night sky but  on the whole the universe simply is it is one  

great cosmic tapestry that at large scales at  least remained unchanged for eternity however this  

eternal universe theory proved to be wrong when  astronomer edwin hubble discovered the expansion  

of the universe that discovery immediately threw a  wrench in the idea of an eternal universe because  

in an expanding cosmos the universe is obviously  different in the past than in the present  

and the future will be even more different the  universe was now alive a dynamic evolving being  

that has a life cycle just like us and everything  else but that wasn't the end of the debate  

even dr stephen hawking once suggested that  the universe mustn't have had a beginning  

in 1981 many of the world's leading cosmologists  gathered at the pontifical academy of sciences a  

vestige of the coupled lineages of science  and theology located in an elegant villa in  

the gardens of the vatican about 50 years after  the belgian physicist and catholic priest george  

lemaire pioneered the big bang theory people were  beginning to cast out on the idea of the universe  

beginning as a hot dense bundle of energy they  were arguing that an expanding bundle of energy  

would grow into a crumpled mess rather than the  huge smooth cosmos that modern astronomers observe  

also another burning question was about the  mystery of where did the initial energy come from  

even in 1980 cosmologist alan guth realized  that the big bang's problems could be fixed  

within addition the possible prehistory is a  more controversial thing more speculative there  

certainly could have been a prehistory various  theories predicted there probably was a prehistory  

the theory that i've worked on called inflation  

seems to imply that there almost certainly was a  prehistory but still there would be a beginning  

someplace an initial exponential growth spurt  known as cosmic inflation would have rendered the  

universe huge smooth and flat before gravity had  a chance to wreck it this idea was well perceived  

as it did present a reasonable explanation of  what happened immediately after the big bang  

but there was one new mystery that arose from this  explanation what was the source of the miniscule  

patch that allegedly ballooned into our cosmos  and of the potential energy that inflated it  

who was 39 at the time and still able to speak  proposed that there is no end or beginning at all  

instead he suggested there ought to be something  very special about the boundary conditions of  

the universe and what can be more special  than the condition that there is no boundary  

the no boundary proposal which hawking and  his frequent collaborator james hartle fully  

formulated in a 1983 paper envisions the  cosmos having the shape of a shuttlecock  

just as a shuttlecock has a diameter of zero at  its bottommost point and gradually widens on the  

way up the universe according to the no boundary  proposal smoothly expands from a point of zero  

size honking and hardell defined the no boundary  wave function by describing such a universe  

using an approach invented by hawking's hero the  physicist richard feynman the wave function here  

is a probability distribution indicating the  different possible states of the particles  

after the collision however calculating the wave  function wasn't as easy as harlan hawking thought  

while using feynman's method harlan hawking  had to drastically simplify the situation  

ignoring even the specific  particles that populate our world  

it means that this formula was nowhere close  to being able to predict the stock market  

let alone the functions and events of the universe  and this brings us back to the big bang theory  

still reigning as the most accurate explanation  of the universe where the universe expanded from  

a singularity not from a rounded off cap  of pure space as harlan hawking predicted

edwin hubble's discovery of the universe expanding  consistently wasn't enough for many astronomers to  

agree with the big bang theory one such astronomer  was fred hoyle who proposed the steady state model  

of the universe in this model the universe is  always expanding but there is always new matter  

appearing in the void to replace it so according  to fred no matter how big the cosmos becomes  

the density of the universe remains the  same fred hoyle was basically advocating  

yet again the idea of an eternal universe he just  accepted the idea of the universe being dynamic  

but not dynamic enough to have a starting and  an end but overall remaining unchanged for a  

while the steady state universe model was the  biggest contender against the big bang theory  

but two major observations brought the  campaign for this theory to a screeching halt

intensely bright sources of radio emission found  exclusively in the distant universe quasar showed  

astronomers that almost all of the hydrogen gas in  the early universe was ionized into proteins and  

free electrons within a billion years after the  big bang a combination of observations and theory  

suggests that the first quasars and galaxies  formed about a billion years after the big bang  

and since then larger structures have been  forming such as galaxy clusters and superclusters  

thus the observation of star formation galaxy  and quasar distribution and larger structures  

agree well with the big bang simulations of  the structure formation likewise when pansies  

and wilson discover 2.72 k cosmic microwave  background radiation in 1965 as predicted by  

the big bang theory they proved that the universe  is indeed cooling down also the temperature of  

these decoupled photons will continue to drop  as the universe expands on the other hand  

the steady state model had no explanation for  these two important phenomena of our universe

after the steady state model of the universe  was done and dusted the electric universe theory  

stepped up as the number one contender to the  big bang theory nobel prize-winning physicist  

hannes alphin was a master of understanding  the forces inside electrically charged gases  

known as plasmas and he developed an entire branch  of physics known as magnetohydrodynamics he also  

argued that because electromagnetic forces are  far stronger than gravitational forces what we  

observe in the cosmos should be better understood  as consequences of electromagnetism not gravity  

by using the argument that the universe is  composed of large pockets of matter and antimatter  

he explained the process of the birth of stars the  evolution of star systems and the expansion of the  

universe are byproducts of the competition between  the two types of matter he proposed that standard  

matter and anti-matter expand against each other  and this territorial war is what causes the  

expansion of the universe he also theorized that  cmb is generated because of the friction caused  

by the matter war now he could be on to something  here but unfortunately for alfin there is no way  

for an electric universe to match all observations  most importantly hubble's law for nearby galaxies  

the speed of their recession is proportional to  their distance but in alphans version all galaxies  

receded at an equal rate the speed of recession  for galaxies is neatly explained by general  

relativity and the expansion of space sorry to  say mr alfin but your model is wrong as well

the reason why there are so many opponents to the  big bang theory is that it's not perfect but the  

same is true about most scientific theories  which is why we call them theories not facts  

another puzzling feature of the universe is  how smooth it is at large scales regions of  

the cosmos vastly separated from each other have  roughly the same temperature there simply wasn't  

enough time in the early universe for all of  these patches to even out scientists address  

this mystery as the horizon problem whether or not  the entire universe is infinite and our horizon is  

the universe could be twice our horizon or  infinitely larger than our horizon same with  

the ocean you don't know how much bigger the  ocean is than your horizon is you can keep sort  

of wandering around maybe you'll hit land as we've  done of course so now you go there if the universe  

is really really big that will be the center  of their own horizon in 1969 physicist charles  

meisner attempted to come up with a solution  to it calling it a mix master cosmology after  

the popular brand of kitchen blenders in a mix  master universe he suggested that the early cosmos  

was incredibly chaotic with space constantly  sloshing back and forth this chaotic action  

did two things it mixed up material at small  scales that eventually gave rise to structures  

such as galaxies and even things out at large  scales to make the overall universe homogeneous  

unfortunately despite being a very simple and  straightforward idea the math never checked out  

in favor of meesner's theory the inflation theory  by alan guth was way better at explaining how the  

early universe worked with backing evidence  however there is still the question about  

the mysterious catalyst that caused the rapid  inflation in the early days of the universe

the biggest shift caused by the big bang theory  in the world of cosmology was that it gave the  

universe a beginning that meant that there was  a time with no universe and then a time with  

a universe the big bang model doesn't attempt  to explain the true beginning of the universe  

there have been many attempts over the years to  come up with some scenario that generates a big  

bang from some other physical process most of  the theories that tried to improve upon the big  

bang model of the universe ended up giving us  a cyclic universe according to these theories  

the current universe is just one of an infinitely  long string of universes where every universe is  

born from a singularity with a big bang and then  collapses back into a new singularity with time  

ready to cause yet another big bang  to repeat the process all over again  

in essence the cyclic models represent  an eternal universe but with more steps  

another problem is that all of these cyclic  models rely heavily on highly speculative physics  

such as higher dimensional brains colliding to  trigger the big bang other possibilities proposed  

by these models are eternal inflation causing  the birth of a multiverse and the probability  

of the universe eventually collapsing  back to a singularity to bounce back again  

all of these models found themselves  lacking at pretty much the same milestone  

they failed to answer for dark energy the force  behind the accelerating expansion of our universe  

which has no plans of slowing down so as far as  we can tell the cosmos is a one and done affair  

maybe just like us the universe 2  has only one chance at everything  

and it seems like the big bang will remain  the most widely accepted story of its birth  

that is until something truly revolutionary is  discovered so tell us in the comments how you  

think our universe came into being and as  always thank you for watching Factnomenal