History of the Universe

I watched a science documentary called "The Creation of the Universe" and made some notes on the program that I would like to post here to maybe stir up some constructive discussion:



Albert Einstein dreamt of finding a Unified Field Theory. A single equation that might account for every fundamental process in nature, from the jostling of atoms to the wheeling of the galaxies. Today science is close to fulfilling Einstein's dream. The nucleus of the atom has yielded up evidence of an elegant simplicity underlying the wild diversity of the universe.

New unified theories are being written that reveal traces of this primordial simplicity. These theories indicate that the universe began in a state of perfect simplicity, evidence of which was burned into the heart of every atom in the heat of the big bang at the beginning of time.

We can't observe the early universe near the beginning of time, but we can observe its consequences in the universe today.

Every single atom in 'your' body was once inside a star. We are all brothers in that sense.

To know the atom it seems that we must know the universe and to know the universe we must know the atom.
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What we see in the [night] sky is the past. The big dipper is 75 light years away. That means it takes the light from the big dipper 75 years to reach earth. So if you live to be 75, then you get to see the big dipper as it existed on the day you were born.

Also, every stone on the beach is a galaxy of atoms which have a history that is older than the earth. Before the earth was formed those atoms were adrift in interstellar space. Before that some of them were incorporated into ancient stars. The subatomic particles that make up these atoms can trace their lineage back fifteen billion years to the beginning of time.

In Times Square New York: It has been shaped by its natural history too. The natural planetary processes that shaped it are by and large too slow and imperceptible for us to see on a human scale.

Walking away from Times Square we imagine that each step we take is equal to one hundred years in the past:

The first step and a hundred years back in time and Times Square was then called Long Acres Square was dark and a non-commerical area with electricity just being invented.

The second step and two hundred years into the past and Times Square was farmland. The "Hopper" family raised cabbages at Broadway and 50th Street.

A few more steps into the past and Broadway was an Indian trail...and only 70 steps, 7,000 years ago and Manhattan has yet to be discovered by the Indians...A little over a hundred steps and we come to the epoch of the Mastedons "This" was one of the Mastedons favourite grazing grounds, we today call it "Central Park".

Only 150 paces suffices to take us back to the most recent ice age, when Manhattan was buried under a sheeth of ice over 1,000 feet thick. And you can see that some of the large rocks in Central Park were polished by glaciers that once moved over the area. But the rocks themselves are millions of years old.

Now we walk in the past with each step equaling ten times the previous step: 100 million years ago and Manhattan lay at the floor of the cretacious sea. Prior to that North America was still connected to Africa. Volcanoes spewed forth lava in over skies in the place where Manhattan would one day take root. One billion years ago and New York city was the site of a mountain range as imposing as the Alps. ...Four to five billion years ago and the earth was still condensing from fragments of rock circling the sun. ...Before that there was no earth, just a drifting interstellar cloud from which the sun and the planets were to form.

"O earth, what changes hast thou seen! There where the long street roars, hath been The stillness of the central sea.
The hills are shadows, and they flow From form to form, and nothing stands; They melt like mist, the solid lands, Like clouds they shape themselves and go."
[RIGHT]--Tennyson[/RIGHT]

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We can investigate history by looking at nature on the atomic and the subatomic scale.

The pollen blossoms the he finds caught in a tree he says, 'are young' but their Colour and Form are generated by genes that are older than the plant itself. The genes in turn are built upon DNA molecules (molecules become visible at a magnification of 10x one million). Each DNA molecule is a library of genetic information that has been accumulated over eons in the evolution of life.

Looking more closely still, we can see the carbon atoms of which the DNA molecules are made of. They're even older than the earth. The outer precincts of the carbon atom are 'patrolled' by a shell of negatively charged particles: the electrons. And 'photons' carry the electromagnetic force between the electron shells.

Then we pass through the inner-shell of the carbon atom and we are approaching one of the oldest and one of the most magnificent structures in nature, the nucleus of the atom. The nucleus is made of protons. And also the electrically neutral particles, the neutrons.

These nuclear particles are, in turn, made of trios of even older and more fundamental particles, the Quarks. We've reached the realm of the nuclear forces. The "weak force" mediates the process of radioactive decay. While the "strong force" binds the Quarks together weaving webs of energy into the forms we call matter.

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Particle accelerators reveal a wide variety of particles that interact by way of four fundamental forces: gravitation, electromagnetism and the weak and strong nuclear forces. The way physics sees it forces and particles are the authors of every event in our world, from the exotic to the everyday.

Matter is mostly empty space. It's solidity is an illusion created by the electromagnetic force field that binds atoms together. Infinite in range electromagnetism in the form of photons is what carries to us light from the sun and stars. And the weak nuclear force is what helps power the sun and presides over the phenomenon of nuclear decay. Tremendous amounts of energy are bound up in the nucleus of each atom some nuclei are unstable and can't contain their energy forever. When they decay it is the weak nuclear force carried by particles called weak bosons that governs the process. The strong nuclear force binds Quarks together to make protons and neutrons. Without it there would be no atoms and the universe would be a Quark-fog. The strong force is carried by particles called guons because they act like glue. Gravitation, the universal attraction of all massive particles toward one another is the weakest of the four forces. But gravity has infinite range and it always attracts, never repels.
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But no laboratory on earth can produce the energy in which the four forces would act as one. Only the fires of the big bang genesis were hot enough for that. The search for simplicity in the realm of the atom draws us out into the realm of the galaxies and back toward the beginning of time.

We live in a major spiral galaxy that we call the Milky Way. Our galaxy belongs, in turn, to a cluster of galaxies. Astronomers call it the 'local group'. And the local group is part of the Virgo Super Cluster, an archipelego of galaxies stretching across one hundred million light years of space. The galaxies are marching away from one another as the universe expands.

The expansion of the universe is predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity in 1915. In 1929 Hubble discovered that the universe is indeed expanding.

The further you look into the universe the older the light that you see.

If we were to plot our place in cosmic history we might make a line representing time starting with the big bang beginning of time and stretching down some 15 billion years or so to the present day.