Tuesday, 3 February 2015

Bill Bryson 'How to Build a Universe' chapter summary

Cosmologists still debate on how our universe ‘happened’ and there are many theories put forward by many scientists. One of them is the ‘Big Bang Theory’, which was proposed in the 1920s by Goerges Lemaître, a Belgian priest, astronomer and professor. Although the Big Bang theory was proposed in the 1920s, it didn’t really become an active notion in cosmology until the mid-1960s when two young scientists made an extraordinary discovery.

Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson wanted to use a telecommunications antenna, owned by Hills Laboratories, to have some scientific experiments take place. There was one problem though, a steady hiss that came from everywhere in the sky. They tried everything to eliminate that noise, from dusting plugs to replacing electronic equipment but whatever they did, the noise wouldn’t go away. What they didn’t know is that what they were trying so hard to get rid of, a team of scientists led by Robet Dicke at Princeton University just 50 kilometers away were trying to get ahold of that noise.

George Gamow, a Russian-born astrophysist wrote a book in the 1940s, The Inflationary Universe, in which he put forward the idea that there is still some left over radiation, which was produced by the Big Bang, and that by the time it crosses the universe and reaches us it will be in the form of microwaves. The noise that Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson were hearing were those micro-waves being caught by the antenna.

The Inflation Theory, introduced by Alan Guth in 1979, said that the universe is expanding, but not filling up an empty space, it is growing and creating space as it grows. Alan said that there is no past for the universe to come from. In fact, to the universe there is no such thing as time. Whether it has been here forever or has just recently popped up like a good idea, we will never know.
There is another theory put forward by Martin Rees that there are many universes and that there were many Big Bangs, perhaps trillions of them. He said that the universe we live in is just a thing that happens sometimes and that this exact one just happened to have all of the necessities that we require for life. Edward P. Tryon added to Martin’s theory that ‘no one had counted the failed attempts’.

2 comments:

  1. What is the Big Bang theory?

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    1. It is the theory of the Big Bang. It is only a theory but it is essentially that everything was created by a huge explosion that created all the antimatter and matter in an instant. It was said to happen very quickly and made everything in the universe.

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