Positive Catastrophe: The constructive explosion

Today, in this universe, there are about 10⁹⁰ particles and immense information that is still mysterious to us. Our universe is basically held by the four fundamental forces- electromagnetism, gravitation, weak nuclear force and strong nuclear force. Different types of particles interact together and thus form this beautiful and wonderful universe.

The big bang 

Have you ever thought that how this mysterious universe was born?

Well, this was all a major tragedy which eventually turned very beautiful and is still mysterious to us.

It all started in 1225 when the English theologian Robert Grosseteste explored the nature of matter and the cosmos. He had described the birth of the universe from an explosion in his book – De Luce.
Later Edgar Allen Poe presented the description of a universe that expanded and contracted in a cyclic manner in his 1848 essay titled  Eureka: A Prose Poem’.. He stated that the initial state of the universe was a single ‘Primordial Particle’. After that a ‘Divine Violation’, a repulsive force, fragmented it into atoms and further led to the formation of stars and star systems, while the material universe is drawn back together by gravity, finally collapsing into that Primordial Particle stage in order to begin the process of repulsion and attraction once again. This work of Poe was obviously not a scientific work, but its scientific implications have been re-evaluated in recent times.

Further in 1931, Georges Lemaitre proposed his ‘Hypothesis of the Primeval Atom’. He said that the universe has been born by an explosion. After that he was honoured by the tag of being the father of ‘The Big Bang Theory’.

Georges Lemaitre

According to this theory, somewhere around 13.8 billion years ago, the Universe began with a “bang”. Everything happened very fast, in less than a second, the four fundamental forces which were initially joined as a single even more fundamental force, separated. Things unfolded “logarithmically” and suddenly the universe began to expand at an exponential rate. A little later but within that initial second only tiny particles called hadrons formed, and neutrinos ceased to interact with other particles. For the next ten second, particles called leptons began to dominate which eventually gave way to photons. The first galaxies appeared when the universe was about 380,000 years old! And at that time the first glow of light could break through the dark.

But while satisfying and substantially supported by the weight of scientific evidence, this theory is still not perfect. There remain three key problems!

1. The first is the Horizon Problem, if we look far into outer space, billions of light years away, in whatever direction, the photons remain with the same temperature- roughly 2.725 Kelvin. How is this possible? This is “a great coincidence” since the edge points of the Universe are at very much distance to create equilibrium. This is incredibly puzzling, which the Big Bang Theory has been unable to explain.



2. Yet another quirk unexplained by the universe is the Flatness Problem. Almost all scientific evidences collected by cosmologists’ shows that the universe is flat. The spacetime shows almost no curvature and appears to be as flat as a sheet of paper. Well, according to Big Bang, this seems extremely unlikely


3. And at last, we arrive at the problem of the Absence of Magnetic Monopole. The immense energies produced by the Big Bang should have created a magnetic particle that breaks the mould. All magnets have two poles, a north and a south. Even when a magnet is snapped in half the two poles remain. But this particle would effectively be a magnet with only one pole: a magnetic monopole.

So, should we simply ignore the puzzling problems?

Well, scientists do not turn away from problems if they are difficult, rather they prefer to tackle them.

The solutions to these problems of The Big Bang Theory are explained by yet another theory named as the “Eternal Inflation Theory”. So, do checkout our upcoming blog on the Eternal Theory to know about the solutions of these incredibly puzzling problems.