by Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you want to answer from an expert, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com.
How can a big bang be the beginning of the universe because intensive explosions destroy everything? – Tristan S., 8 years, Newark, Delaware
Imagine that you are a perfectly flat chess piece in a chess game on a perfectly flat and Wumanen chess board. One day you look around and ask: How did I come here? How did the chess board come here? How did it all? You pull out your telescope and start exploring your universe, the chess board.
What do you find? Your universe, the chess board, is getting bigger. And more time in the course, even bigger! The board expands in all directions you can see. There is nothing that seems to cause this expansion as far as you can judge – it only seems to be the nature of the chess board.
But wait a minute. When it gets bigger and bigger and bigger, it must have been smaller and smaller in the past. At some point, a long time ago, it must have been so small at the beginning that it was infinitely small.
Let us work forward by what happened at the time. At the beginning of her universe, the chess board was infinitely tiny and was then expanded and was expanded until the day you decided to make some observations about the nature of your chess universe. All the stuff in the universe – the small particles from which they and everything else expanded – began very closely together and then spread further apart over time.
Our universe works the same way. When astronomers like me make observations from distant galaxies, we see that they all move apart. It seems that our universe started very small and has been expanding since then. In fact, scientists now know that the universe is not only expanded, but the speed at which it is expanding is increasing. This mysterious effect is caused by something that physicists call dark energy, even though we know something else about it.
Astronomers also observe something that is referred to as cosmic microwave back radiation. It is a very low energy wheel that exists throughout the space. From these measurements we know that our universe is 13.8 billion years old – much older than humans and about three times older than the earth.
When astronomers look back until the event that our universe began, we call it the big bang.
Many people hear the name “Big Bang” and think of a huge explosion of things like a bomb that goes out. But the big bang was not an explosion that destroyed things. It was the beginning of our universe, the beginning of space and time. Instead of an explosion, it was a very fast expansion, the event in which the universe grew.
This expansion differs from an explosion that can be caused by chemical reactions or great effects. Explosions mean that energy goes from one place to another and usually a lot of it. Instead, the energy moved together with space during the big bang when it expanded and moved wildly, but has spread over time over time.
Back in the chess board universe, the “Big Bang” would be like the beginning of everything. It is the beginning of the board.
It is important to recognize that “before” the big bang did not give any place and was not time. If you return to the chess board analogy, you can count the time on the music box after the start, but there is no season before the start – the clock did not run. And before the game started, the chess board universe did not exist and there was no chessboard. You have to be careful if you say “beforehand” because the time until the big bang did not even exist.
They also wrapped themselves around the idea that the universe “expanded something in” because we know that the big bang was the beginning of space and time. Confusing, I know!
Astronomers are not sure what caused the big bang. We only look at observations and see how the universe started. We know that it was extremely small and greater and we know that 13.8 billion years ago started.
What started our own chess game? This is one of the deepest questions that everyone can ask.
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This article will be released from the conversation, a non -profit, independent news organization that brings you facts and trustworthy analyzes to help you understand our complex world. It was written by: Michael Lam, Rochester Institute of Technology
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Michael Lam does not work for a company or an organization that benefits from this article and have not published any relevant affiliations about their academic appointment.
