The knowledge itself that the universe exists has not satisfied mankind’s curiosity for further understanding. One of the most common asked questions is how the universe was created. Most people believed that the universe had no beginning or end.

The Big Bang theory is the dominant scientific theory about the origin of the universe. According to the Big Bang the universe was created about 10-20 billion years ago from a tremendous cosmic explosion that send matter and energy in all directions. At the point of the explosion all the matter of the space was contained at one point.

Before the Big Bang the entirety of the universe was contained into the confines of an atomic nucleus. This is known as singularity and this was the condition of the universe before its creation when time and space did not exist.

In 1927, the Belgian priest George Lamaitre was the first person who proposed that the universe began with the explosion of a primeval atom. The proposal of that theory came due to the observation of red shift in distant nebulas by astronomers to a model of universe based on relativity.

Nevertheless, the origin of the Big Bang theory is credited to Edwin Hubble. Hubble made the observation that the universe is continuously expanding. He discovered that a galaxy’s velocity is proportional to its distance. That means that galaxies that are twice as far from the earth move twice as fast.

Since the Big Bang, the universe has been continuously expanding and thus there has been more distance between clusters of galaxies. This phenomenon of galaxies moving further away from each other is known as the red shift. As light from distant galaxies approaches the earth there is an increase of space between the earth and the galaxy, which means that wavelengths have been stretched. The Big Bang explains why distant galaxies are travelling away from us at great speed.

Also, the theory predicts the existence of cosmic background radiation and the theory received strong confirmation when this radiation discovered in 1964 by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson. As it is reported in “http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/academy/universe/b_bang.html” the two astronomers tried to detect microwaves from outer space. In that attempt they discovered a noise that it did not emanate from one point but it came from all directions at once. What they had discovered was radiation from the farther universe, which had been left over from Big Bang.

After the Big Bang the universe was extremely hot and was the result of matter and antimatter rushing apart in all directions. According to the research that is released in “http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/smith_18_2.html” after a few seconds, the universe began to cool and in that moment there was asymmetrical amount of matter and antimatter. These two materials destroy one another creating pure energy. The particles, which began to dominate, were those of matter.

For the next 300,000 years the universe continued to expand and cool to a temperature of 10,000oK. These conditions allowed the helium nuclei to absorb free-floating electrons and form helium atoms. Moreover hydrogen atoms were bonding together and formed lithium.
In 1814, William Wollaston an English physicist, who launched the spectroscopy, noticed that there were some dark lines that separated the continuous spectrum of the sun. Joseph Von Fraunhofer a German optician and physicist who plotted the position of those lines also noticed these dark lines.

Christian Doppler discovered that the frequency of a sound wave was dependent on the relative position of the source of the sound and it is reported in “http://ssscott.tripod.com/BigBang.html”. As the sound moves away from the observer the pitch will lower. Similar if the source is not moving but the observer is moving there will be a change in the wave frequency of the sound.

In 1848, the French physicist Armand Fizeau proved that if an object moves away from the observer then the lines in the visible spectrum would shift toward to the red end. And conversely, if the object moves towards the observer then the lines in the spectrum would shift toward the blue end. The “red shift” indicated that Sirius was moving away from the earth.

As is reported in “http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/gr/public/bb_home.html” in 1913, Hubble calculated the distance of the Andromeda Galaxy to be 900,000 light years away. Using the radial velocity measurements in combination with Hubble’s own calculations, he noticed the correlation between the distance of these galaxies and their radial velocities. Hubble had proofs that the universe was expanding.

Finally Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson in their attempt to measure the radiation from the Milky Way Galaxy they noticed a noise. The noise originated from cosmic radiation and had a temperature of 3 oK. It seemed to be coming from all directions and never fluctuated. That was the most important discovery that confirmed the Big Bang theory.

Recently, according to the “http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/academy/universe/” NASA has made some discoveries, which lead to the proof of the Big Bang theory. Also in 1995, scientists detected primordial helium, such as deuterium, in the far reaches of the universe. These findings are considered being fundamental for the proof of the Big Bang theory.

The Big Bang theory was initially suggested because it explained why distant galaxies are travelling away from the earth at great speed. Although the Big Bang theory is widely accepted, it will never be totally proved.

On the other hand, there are many great problems with the Big Bang theory that have not bee solved. These problems tend to oppose the Big Bag theory and prove that it is false. These problems include the idea that many objects observed that are older than the time from the Big Bang.

Stars and globular clusters in our galaxy are thought to be older than 15 billion years. Also there seem to be similar stars that are seen in galaxies that are many billion of light years away from our galaxy. And that means that these stars are closer to the time of Big Bang.

Our galaxy is rotating at a speed that only permits from 45 to 60 rotations since the Big Bang. But this is not enough time for it to achieve its spiral shape. Moreover many spiral galaxies have been observed at a large distance and therefore from a time closer to the Big Bang. But that would indicate that they have had time for even fewer rotations, which is not enough for a galaxy to achieve a spiral shape.

There are also some problems with “singularity” of the Big Bang as it is indicated in “http://www.angelfire.com/az/BIGBANGisWRONG”. The supporters of the Big Bang theory cannot answer to the question “what happened before the Big Bang”. They even consider useless these kinds of questions.

According to the Big Bang theory the temperature of the background radiation was much higher in the past. But some scientists have observed cosmic ray particles, which are protons or nuclei of atoms that are travelling through space at speeds almost the same of speed of light. This would have been impossible if the temperature in the past was very high because these particles would interact with the photons of such a high temperature and would be stopped.

Another fact that leads to the conclusion that the Big Bang is wrong, is that the cosmological red shift is due to the Compton effect and not because of the Doppler effect. The red shift on the sun, for instance, is not Doppler effect since the sun is not moving away from the earth. According to the research that released in “http://cosmology.berkeley.edu/Education/IUP/Big_Bang_Primer.html” this shift shows a variation in magnitude that correlates with the number of electrons along the line of sight.

If the Compton effect causes the red shift, then the universe is not expanding, but is static as it is referred in “http://www.umich.edu/~gs265/bigbang.htm”. Some scientists, among them was Max Born, did an analysis of the background temperature of such a universe and found that it does not differ from the already observed 3 degree Kelvin background.

Summing up all the above pieces of information, the Big Bang model attempts to explain the origin and the structure of the universe. The findings and the observations of all great scientists in the history forced them to draw the conclusions they arrived at. The conception of the Big Bang theory originally came up to explain some rules of the universe that considered being unknown. The Big Bang theory is not perfect and still requires some answers about the origin of the universe. Even though, it is generally accepted, many people are opposed to that theory. It seems mankind’s request for knowledge will always continue to exist until modern science will be able to provide firm theories for the answers that now are called hypothesis.



References

http://cosmology.berkeley.edu/Education/IUP/Big_Bang_Primer.html
http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/gr/public/bb_home.html
http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/academy/universe/b_bang.html
http://ssscott.tripod.com/BigBang.html
http://www.angelfire.com/az/BIGBANGisWRONG/
http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/smith_18_2.html
http://www.umich.edu/~gs265/bigbang.htm



Bibliography

Freedman Kaufman III. Universe-sixth edition

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