Sizes and Distances Asteroid Mining Space Station
Sizes and Distances Asteroid Mining Space Station
Now that we have a pretty good idea about the size of the Universe, let's delve into it's history. Cosmologists are fairly unanimous about the Universe's origins immediately following creation. From decades of research and evidence gathering, the Big Bang Theory has become the most widely accepted scientific explanation for what we see in the Universe around us.
Recent detailed studies of the cosmic background radiation by WMAP (see previous page) puts the age of the Universe at about 13.6 billion years, or roughly 3 times the age of our planet Earth. Other research on distant galaxies and quasars obtained from the Hubble Space Telescope, and spectroscopic analysis of galaxy redshifts used to measure the Universe's rate of expansion, agree very nicely with WMAP's findings.
So what was the Big Bang? Imagine all the building blocks of the Universe, the stuff that made all the stars and galaxies, compressed into a volume smaller than a proton. This was the seed of our Universe. Temperatures at the moment of the Big Bang's expansion were trillions of times hotter than our sun. At these temperatures it was too hot for normal matter to exist. In fact, it was too hot for even the most fundamental forces of nature (electromagnetism and gravity) to exist. This microscopic "subatomic soup" was to become our Universe.
The best explanation of modern cosmology I have come across is at NASA's WMAP Site. It explains the Big Bang and much, much more far better than I can. Please click HERE to go to this site in a new browser window.
