The Big Questions Part 1

11/6/05 – 11/12/05

By C. Zaitz

What happens when you go straight up? Can you reach the edge of the universe? What is outside the universe? How and when did it all begin? As a planetarium director, I field a lot of tough questions like these. I never get tired of them, since they are the very questions I have as well. Much of humanity’s free time, once bellies were full and shelters were built, has been spent pondering these same questions.

Recently I attended a Cosmology course held by the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago. (http://kicp.uchicago.edu) The course is for science educators to be exposed to the latest in cosmology research. The course is not easy. Cosmological research is a heady mix of high energy physics, theoretical modeling, new experimental techniques and some serious out of the box thinking. Actually, it’s more like, “throw out the box and step into the unknown and bizarre.” But it is exciting to know that there are a group of folks trying to get the answers to such big questions.

I’d like to share with you the list of “Seven Things Everyone Should Know About the Universe.” The list can be found at the website quoted above.

1. The universe and all of space is expanding from a Big Bang beginning.
The concept of the Big Bang is that about 14 billion years ago, our universe began expanding at a great rate from a tiny point. People often imagine a big explosion in space, but it’s better to imagine space as cinnamon bread dough, and galaxies as raisins in the dough. When the dough rises, all the raisins get farther away from each other, but they are not moving through the dough, the dough itself is expanding. Our universe of raisin bread expanded very quickly in the beginning.

2. The microwave echo of the Big Bang with us allows us to see back to almost the beginning.
When we look in all directions in the universe, we see a microwave energy with very little variation. This energy can be measured at about three degrees above absolute zero. Very cold, but not ultimately cold. There is leftover energy from something. Theoretical models of the Big Bang predict this leftover energy. Besides providing proof of the big bang, the tiny variations of the background radiation have also unveiled secrets about the state of the very young universe.

3. In the very beginning, the universe was a hot soup of quarks and elementary particles. Apparently the universe was so hot that atoms couldn’t stay together. Hot in this case refers to the enormous energy and speeds the particles had, too much to make anything recognizable. That’s why it’s so very hard to see back to the very beginning of the universe- the universe was a mess and information about the mess didn’t transfer over to when the universe cooled enough for atoms to form. The microwave radiation was from this time, when the universe was about 300,000 years old.

Stay tuned next week for the second half of the list. You can also come to the Ensign Planetarium on November 16th, 7pm for Cool Cosmology. Meanwhile, check out Mars lingering in the eastern sky at sunset, or see him in the morning in the western sky. Venus makes her brief appearance in the west right after twilight.

Until next week, my friends, enjoy the view!